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JUSTICE LAMAR. 



LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAK: 



HIS LIFE, TIMES. AND SPEECHES. 



1525—1595. 



BY EDWARD MAYES, LL.D., 

EX-CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OP MISSISSIPPI. 



"It is, tlierefore, as the inspired pacifieator that Lamar will stand out unique, al- 
most incomprehensible to other times."— T/ie lUuslraled Amerimn. - 



."^tVO- -^ 



Nashville, Tenn. : 

Publishing House op the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. 

Barbee & Smith, Agents. 

lS9fi. 



e: 






COPYRUmTED, 18S13, 

BY EDWARD MAYES. 



ELeCTHOTVPED AND PRtNTEO BY 

BARBEE & SMITH, AGENTS, 

NASHVILLE, TENN. 



3 >-^' 



PREFACE. 



The writing of Mr. Lamar's biograph}' was not, with me, a pelf-assiimed task. 
When he died the members of his more immcdiatf family requested nie to undertake 
the work. Notwithstanding the grave objections that I possessed no adequate Uterary 
preparation, either of study or experience, and wiis much pressed by the imperative 
demands of an active law practice, there were certain other considerations which 
compelled my consent. Of these the principal was a belief that my long-continued 
and intimate association with jMr. Lamar, which began in 1869 and ended only with 
his life, qualified me especially to collect the facts of his history and tii understand 
and interpret much of his thoughts and designs which to any other who could be in- 
duced to assume the labor woidd be obscure or even incomprehensible. Bound to 
him by many ties of gratitude and tender memories, I could not decline to render the 
service desired. 

It is not the purpose of this memoir to rake over the ashes of old quarrels or to 
stir up the embers of dying anim.isities. Nor is its object either to vindicate the [leople 
of the South or to convict those of the North. Nor is it an apology for, or a glorification 
of, the career of Jlr. Lamar. The-aim is to give the story of his life as it was; to show, 
so far as is possible, what he did and why he did it, conceiving that the story will be 
not only a merited tribute to a brave and patriotic man who dared much and sufiered 
greatly for the good of his people, and in the end was greatly rewarded, but also a 
useful illustration of the unprecedented times in which he lived and of the novel 
events among which he moved. Those events extended over forty years of most 
exciting and fruitful struggles in all departments of our government. They included 
the subjects of slavery, secession, civil war, reconstruction, constitutional amend- 
ments, reconciliation, in all of which Mr. Lamar was actively and prominently con- 
cerned. In order, therefore, that his biography may be read with full comprehen- 
sion and sympathy, it has been necessary to venture upon the delicate and dangerous 
task of presenting occasional brief expositions of some of those great controversies, 
as appropriate and helpful settintr for the man and his work. I have earnestly tried 
to do this in a nonsectional spirit. Unless that lias been done, I have not only fallen 
short of my duty as a man and patriot; but also I have departed from the way of the 
great-hearted subject of the work, and have been untrue to his teaching. 

The principal labor and end of Mr. Lamar's later and greater life, that indeed to 
which all other efibrts were but a means, was the molding of a public sentiment— a 
sentiment in each section of our unhappily divided Union for a broad and lasting na- 
tional love. What success was his, and how much of that success was his work, this 
volume may help to indicate. It was manifestly impossible to tell that story without 
recalling and unfolding the conditions of then existing sentiment, both North and 



4 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR. 

South, with which he and his colaborers had to deal. Let the reader be assured that 
in discussing those topics the statement of them is designed to be historical only, and 
not polemic. 

The new South holds the old in highest lionor. The South of to-day thrills with 
filial love for the South that was; and in her innermost heart sits enshrined an un- 
wavering faith in the purity, the nobility, and the patriotism of the former genera- 
tion. But aspirations and hopes change with the lapse of time and the drift of events, 
and the Southern dreams of the present are not those of the past. Our people, 
throughout all the republic, are by the South believed to be now united as never be- 
fore. Prejudices of section and the passions of war and the humiliation of conquest 
have alike and all failed to rend us asunder; and the voice of the sower of dissension 
is felt to be the voice of a criminal. Edward Mavbs. 

.Jackson, Miss., November 5, IbQS. 



CONTENTS. 



I'AUE 



Preface 3 

CHAPTKK I. 

The Family of Lamar — Thomas, the Immigrant — Thomas, His Son — John I^amar — 
Mirabeau B. Lamar— Lucius Q. C. Lamar, the Elder — Micajah Williamson and 
Sarah Gilliam, His Wife— Dr. Thompson Bird and Susan Williamson, His 
Wife— :Mrs. Sarah ( Bird) Lamar 13 

CHAPTER n. 
The Old Lamar Homestead— The Old Georgia-Conference Manual-Labor School — 
Lucius' Character and Habits as a Child — Anecdote — Removal to Oxford, Ga. 
— Emory College — Graduation — College Influence upon His Character and 

Views 27 

CHAPTER in. 
Legal Education and Admission to tlie Bar— ^larriage- Judge Longstreet— Mrs. 
Longstreet — Mrs. Lamar and Mrs. Branliam — " Influence of Women " 37 

CHAPTER IV. 

Removal to Oxford, Miss.— Admitted to the Mississippi Bar— Elected to an Ad- 
junct Professorship in the University of Mississii)pi— Dt'^^ui as a Political 
Speaker— The Compromise Measures of 1850— Debate with Foote over the 

Compromise '^5 

CHAPTER V. 

Religious Impressions— Hon. Jacob Thompson— Prof. Albert T. Bledsoe— Return 
to Covington, Ga.— In the Georgia Legislature — Moves to Macon, Ga.— Candi- 
date for Congress from Third District— Returns to Mississippi— " Solitude "— 
Practices Law— C. H. Mott— James L. Autrey— Congressman or Professor? 56 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Kansas-Nebraska Bill— The Struggle for Kansas— The Nicarasrua Affair- 
Elected to Congress from the First District— Correspondence on Questions of 
the Day— First Speech in Congress— Rozell Letter— The Keitt-(4row Fight— 
The Vallandigham-Campbell Contest— A Professorship Contemi)lated—Dr. Bar- . 
nard's Letter— Speech at Jackson on Douglas— Eulogy on Harris— Speech on 

the Tarifl" ^^ 

CHAPTER VII. 

Thirty-sixth Congress; Reelected— Speech at Jackson— Speech on Election of 
Speaker— Letter to Barnard- Speech on Southern Slaven,'— Charleston Conven- 
tion—Letter to :\Iott— Baltimore Convention— Accepts Professorship in Uni- 
versity — Speech at Columbus ^" 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Election of Lincoln— Conference of Congressmen— Speech at Brandon— Legisla- 
ture of 1860— Resigns Seat in Congress— Liddell Letter— Member of Secession 
Convention— Passage of Ordinance— Lamar's Views on Secession— Blaine on 

Lamar and Secession 8(> 

(5) 



6 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR. 

CHAPTER IX. PAGE. 
Appointed to Confederate Congress^Lieutenaiit Colonel of tlie Nineteenth Mis- 
sissippi Regiment— Speech in Riclimond— Military Service— Battle of Wil- 
liamsburg— Honorable Mention— Official Report— Illness- Resignation— Death 
of Jefferson M. Lamar 9'i 

CHAPTER X. 

Envoy to Russia— Special Letter of Instructions— Trip to England— Official Dis- 
patches—Mission Terminated— Anecdote of Thaclieray— Anecdote of Disraeli- 
Speech in England— Return to the Confederacy— Speech at Atlanta— Death of 
Thompson B. Lamar— Judge Advocate of Third Corps— Speech in Lines— Sur- 
render 



103 



CHAPTER XL 

Southern Sacrifices and Condition— Cien. Walthall— Settles at Coffeeville— Condi- 
tion of Law Praitice— Abstains from Politics— B. N. Harrison— C. C. Clay- 
Southern Sufferings- Correspondence — Accepts Professorship of Metaphysics- 
Made Law Professor— Character and Methods as Professor- Resigns Profess- 
• orship— Address at University— Death of Judge Longstreet— Address at 
Emory College— Agricultural Address— Lee Letter— Letters to Reemelin— 
U. S. Marshal Pierce— Debate with Alcorn at Holly Springs 117 

CHAPTER XII. 

Reconstruction: President Lincoln's Plan— Southern States: In or Out?— Presi- 
dent Johnson's Plan— Provisional Governments— Southern Constitutional Con- 
ventions—Temper of Southern People— Temper of Congress— Howe and Ste- 
vens—Gloomier Days— Reconstruction Legislation— Military Rule— Demorali- 
zation— Carpetbaggers— Reconstruction Constitutions— Three Delayed States- 
Radical Rule— Freedman's Bureau— The Negro Problem— Southern Sentiment 137 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Reconstruction in Missiscippi— Ejection of Gov. Clarke— Constitutional Conven- 
tion of 1865— Gov. Humphreys— Col. Lamar on the Situation in 1866— Leg- 
islation of 1865 and 1867 about Freedmen— Rejection of Fourteenth Amend- 
ment—The Fourth Reconstruction District— Participation or No?— Constitu- 
tion of 1868-69— Removal of Gov. Humphreys— Adelbert Ames, Military Ctov- 
ernor— Louis Dent and Election of 1869— Gov. Alcorn— The Kuklux Prnsecu- 
tions— Col. Lamar in Retirement— The New Outlook 156 

CHAPTER XIY. 
The Liberal Republican Movement- -Lamar's Letter on Greeley and Brown— La- 
mar for Congress in 1872- Nomination, Canvass, and Election— Letters— Re- 
moval of Political Disabilities— Illness— Deliberations, 1873— Democratic Party 
Disbanded — Supports Alcorn against Ames— Illustrative Letters of November, 
1873— Enters Forty-third Congress— I>etters to Judge Wharton on Grant— First 
Speeches : West Virginia Contested Election 169 

CHAPTER XV. 
The Eulogy on Sumner: Pieparation— Letter to Reemelin— Mr. Sumner's Flag 
Resolution — Memorial Services in the Senate — In the House— I^amar's Ora- 
tion—Its Delivery— Its Reception— Letter to Wife— Comments of the Press: 
Extracts— Anecdote— Criticisms— ;\Ir. Blaine on the Eulogy— Effects 181 



COS TEXTS. 7 

CHAin'ERXVI. I'AUE. 
Speech on Misrule in the Soiitheni SkiU's— Radical Rule in Louisiana- McEnery 
and Kellogt!— Judge Duiell's Kxtraonlinary Order— Kellogg Installed— Mr. 
Lamar's Speech— Its Reception— Incorrect Newsiiaper I'ersonals— Further 
Events in Louisiana— Contlict of September 14, 1874- Ivellogg Again Installed 
by United States Troops— Mr. Lamar's Canvass of 1S74 The "Landslide"— 
Critical Era in the South— Coiu-se of Events in Louisiana— DeTrobriand Purges 
the Legislature— Gen. 1\ H. Sheridan's "Banditti" Dispatch- Excitement 
in the North— Debates in Congress— CorrespondiMuc on Southern Policy— La- 
mar's Remarks on Civil Rights Bill— The Force Bill— Filibustering— Letter to 
New York Herald on Afiairs in the South— Its Reception— Canvass and Speech 
in New Hampshire— Press Comments— Interviewed by Henry Grady— Corre- 
spondence ^"^ 

CHAPTER XVII. 
The Question of Reelection— Rescue of the State from Radicalism— Mississippi 
and Louisiana— Gov. Ames's Administration- The Taxpayer's Convention of 
187,5— The Vicksburg Riot— Congressional Investigation— Ames's Message- 
Address of the Legislators— Invidious Police Laws— The Color Line— Lamar's 
Growing Fame— Renominated— Reorganization of the Democratic Party of the 
State— County Mass ]Meetings— Siwech at Falkner's Station— The Color Line 
Again— The State Democratic Convention of 187.5- Lamar's Speech— Demo- 
cratic Platform— The Press on Lamar's Renomination and Speech— Address of 
the Sfcite Democratic E.xecutive Committee— Campaign of 187.5— George's Let- 
ter on the Black Code— Riots at Clinton and Yazoo City— Gov. Ames Calls for 
Federal Troops— Democrats Triumph and the State is Rescued— Impeachment 

of Ames, Davis, and Cardozo 228 

CHAPTER XVIIL 
Forty-fourth Congress Convenes— Mr. Lamar Chosen Chairman of Caucus— The 
Caucus Address— Press Comments— Senator Alcorn's Term Expiring— :Mr. La- 
mar Discussed as His Successor— Calls from outside the State— Nominated by 
Acclamation— Speech before the Legislature— Election and Comments on It— 
The Centennial Year— Debate on the Amnesty Bill— Lamar's Centennial 
Speech— The Scene Described— Press Comments— The Belknap Case— Lamar's 
Speech on Parliamentary Privilege— Press Conmients— The Hamburg Massa- 
cre— Speech and Its Reception— Charged with Inconsistency, and His Vindica- 
tion-Speech on the Policy of the Republican Party and the Political Situation 

in the South 

CHAPTER XIX. 
The Presidential Election of 1876— The Result Contested— Storms Threatening— 
The Electoral Commission— Mr. Lamar Speaks in Favor of the Bill— Sijeech— 
Additional Reasons for Supporting the Bill- Popular S|)eech— The Electoral 
Count— Democrats Disappointed— Filibustering- Feeling in Mississippi-Un- 
founded Rumors of Collusion— Press Discussions and Correspondence— The 
Gain Found in Defeat— President Hayes' Inaugural on Southern Pacification- 
Republican Chagrin-Mr. Blaine's Tilt with Thurman-Mr. Lamar's Letter to 
the President— Withdrawal of the Troops-The South Relieved-Mr. Lamar's 

Speech of 1879 on Hayes' Administration 

CHAPTER XX. 
Doubts About Admission to Senate— Causes Thereof-Elections of 187o-Tbe 
Boutwell Committee of Investigation-Correspondence— Reports of the Bout- 
well Committee -The Presidential Contest Intervenes-The Complication 



265 



290 



8 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAE. 

PAGE. 

with Kellogg's Case — Mr. Blaine's Unexpected Turn — Seated — The Democratic 
State Convention of 1877 — Independentism in Mississippi — Gen. George's Ad- 
dress to the Convention — Mr. Lamar a ;\Ienil)er— Spealis — Silver— Platform of 
1877 — Called Session of the Forty-fifth Congress — Speech on the Seating of Sen- 
ator Butler, of South Carolina 311 

CHAPTER XXI. 
The Silver Speech — Summary of the Question — President Hayes' Message — The 
Bland Bill — The Matthews Resolutions — Debate on the Resolutions — Mr. La- 
mar's Speech — Newspaper Comments — The Legislative Instructions — Corre- 
spondence — Refusal to Obey Instructions — Speech — Public and Private Com- 
ments — The Double Question of Statesmanship Involved — Uarper's Weekly — 
"A Heart Almost Mated to Despair " — Campaign Speech of 1879 — Defense of 
Vote on the Resolutions — The Texas Pacific Railroad — Report and Speech on 
the Same 323 

CHAPTER XXII. 
Returns Home — His Reception — The Epidemic of 1878 — The Congressional Elec- 
tions of 1878 and the Solid South — The Cincinnati Interview — The Presi- 
dent's Message — Mr. Blaine's Investigation Resolution — The Debate^Mr. 
Lamar's Speech — Press Sketclies — The Debate Resumed — Anecdote — Jefferaon 
Davis' Open Letter on the Right of Legislative Instruction — The Bill to Pension 
the Soldiers of 1812 — Senator Hoar's Amendment Excluding Jefferson Davis — 
Angry Debate — Mr. Lamar's Speech — Mr. Chandler's Sjjeech — Correspondence 
with Davis — Symitosium in Norlli American Reviewou the Negro Question — Pen 
Sketches and Anecdotes of Senator Lamar 352 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

Struggle in Congress over the Army Appropriations — Troops Must Not Be Used 
at the Polls — The Debate of 1879 — Mississippi Opinion — Senator Conkling-- 
The Mississippi River Commission Bill — The Army Bill — Republicans Filibus- 
tering — Senator Conkling's Speech — Mr. Lamar's Reply — Exciting Personal Col- 
lision — Current Comment — ^Ir. Lamar's Letter to Gen. Walthall — Press Com- 
ments on the Incident — Effect in Mississijipi — Mr. Lamar's Views on Dueling. 377 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
Mississippi Politics in 1879 — Democratic Party Threatened with Disru|ition — 
Mr. Lamar's Position before the People — Letter to Wright — The F.pidemicof 
1879 — Canvass of 1879 — The Right of Lej^'islativelnstruction Again — Question 
Kept in Agitation — Mr Lamar's Argument and Discussion of It — His Power 
as a Stump Speaker — Reception of His Speeches — Death of Mrs. Troutman — 
The Succession to Senator Bruce — Judge George Elected Senator — Mr. Lamar's 
Illness 394 

CHAPTER XXV. 
Returns to Washington — Interview with Blaine — The Exodus — Mr. Lamar's 
Views — The "^''oorhees Investigation Resolution — The Debate on the Commit- 
tee's Report — Mr. Lamar's Speech — Speech at the Democratic National Con- 
vention of ISSO — Lafayette Sjirings Speech — Letter to Hon. J. W. C. Watson — 
Mrs. Lamar's Failing Health — Holly Springs Speecli, and Fall Canvass — The 
" Grant Bill "—The Executive Session of March, 1881- Political Complexion of 
the Senate — Virginia Readjusters — Senator Mahone— Struggle in the Senate 
over the Committees — Struggle over the Election of Officers — The Debate — Mr. 
Lamar's Speech — Its Reception 41-1 



CaV7AVV7*. 9 

CHAPTER XXVI. lAUE. 
Candidiite for Reflection — Opposition and Complications — Cioss Currents — Voice 
of tlie Press — Address at tlie A. and M. College — Progress of the Senatorial 
Question — The State Convention— A Selliack or Xo? — Mr. Lamar's Great Can- 
vass of ISSl— The DeKalb Speech— The Canton Speech— The Yazoo City 
Speech — Letter to Mcintosh — The Forest Speech — The Hazlehurst Speech — In- 
terest outside the State — Reelection and Vindication 431 

CHAPTER XXVII. 
Mrs. Lamar's Failing Health — The Taritl' Speech of 1883 — Press Comments — 
Speech on National Aid to Education — Presidential Camijaign of 1884 — The 
Holly Springs Speech— The Aberdeen Speech— The Xews of Cleveland's Elec- 
tion — Death of Mrs. Lamar — Senator Edmunds' Condolences — Letter to a 
Friend — The Shemian-Davis Imbroglio — Senator Hawley's Resolution— The 
Debate — Mr. Lamar's Speech, and His Last— Letter to West on Davis and Se- 
cession 44!i 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 
JVIr. Lamar Discussed as a Possible Member of the Cabinet — Cleveland's Inaugu- 
ration—The Cabinet Named and Confirmed- Comments and Congratulations — 
Calls for Resignations of Heads of Departments— Mr. Lamar's Methods— Sale of 
the Government Carriages— The Land Office— The " Backbone " Patents— The 
Death of Jacob Thompson— The Throng of Office Seekers— Views on Office- 
holding in Washington— Limitations in the Bestowal of Offices— Civil Service 
Reform— Watchfulness over Character of Subordinates— Freedom from Ne- 
potism—First Annual Report— Management of the Indian Bureau— The Re- 
port on the Indians— The Report on the Public Lands— The Report on the 
Railroads— The Report on the Pensions— Minor Subjects— Education— The 
Second Annual Report— The Third Annual Report— Third Report on Public 
Lands— Adjustment of the Railroad Land Grants— Thir<l Report on Indians- 
Minor Titles '^69 

CHAPTER XXIX. 
Anecdotes of Mr. Lamar— Honorary Degree Confen-ed by Harvard University- 
Second Marriage- Oration on John C. Calhoun— Speech at Banciuet of New 
York Chamber of Commerce— Death of Mr. Justice Woods, of the Supreme 
Court— Mr. Lamar Discussed as the Successor— Correspondence— N<innnated 
by the President— Objections to Confirmation— Corresi)ondence— Complexion 
of the Senate— Resigns Office of Secretary— Cliaracter as an Administrative 
Officer 



506 



CHAPTER XXX. 
Senator Stewart's Letter on Lamar for the Supreme Court-Senator Walthall's 
Friendship-Adverse Report bv the Judiciary Committee-Conlinned-lress 
Comments— The Burial of the Bloody Shirt-Congratulations-Installed in 
Office-Labors as a Judge-Character as a Judge-The Neagle Cast— Kid.i m 
Pearson-Lamar's Opinions-Enjoys His AVork-Anecdote-AVork on the Cir- 
cuit-Interviewed on Cleveland's Administration-Ad.lress at Emory College 
-Letter to Barker on Mississippi Politics-Address at Center Cr,llege-Letter 
to Mr. Cleveland-Letter on Chief Jiistice Marshall-Reminiscences of Mr. 
Lamar's Last Summer-Joins the Church-Religious Experience and Character. oM 



20 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR. 

CHAPTEK XXXI. iaue. 
Failing Healtli— Diagnosis— Illness, April, 1892— Visit to Macon, Ga.— Death- 
Action of Supreme Court— Congress— Interior Department— Reception of the 
News in Mississippi— In Other States— In Georgia— Proceedings in Macon, Ga. 
—The 01)sequies— Dr. Candler's Sermon— Bishop Fitzgerald's Discourse— Ear 
Meeting of the Supreme Court of tlie United States— Mr. Vilas' Remarks— Sen- 
ator 'Walthall's Trihute— Hon. J. Randolph Tucker's Remarks— In the Supreme 
Court— The Remarks of tlie Attorney-general— The Response of the Chief Jus- 
tice— Resolutions of Illinois State Bar As-ociation— The Removal of Mr. La- 
mar's Remains to Oxford, Miss. — Conclusion '^''f> 

SrPPLE:\IENTARY CHAPTER. 

1. Tribute of Hon. Blanche K. Bruce, ex-Senator o!13 

2. Tribute of Senator George F. Hoar, of Massachusetts o!l4 

3. Tribute of Rev. Charles B. Galloway, Bishop of the Methodist Church, South.. 594 

4. Extract from Address of Hon. John L. T. Sneed, at tlie Meeting of the Mem- 

phis Bar 5''<5 

5. Tribute of ex-Chief Justice James M. Arnold 598 

(i. Study V)y Harry Pratt Judson, Head Dean of the Chicago University 000 

7. Resolutions of the Legislature of North Dakota ''O- 

8. Collection of Newspaper Comments ''03 



APPENDIX. 

1. Speech on Kansas and Nicaraguan Afi'airs: House, January 13, 18.'58 609 

2. Speech before the Legislature at Jackson, Miss., November 3, 1858 (il8 

3. Speech on the Election of Speaker: House, l>ecember 7, 1859 ()21 

4. Speech on Southern Slavery anil Slaveholders: House, February 21, ISOO 624 

5. Letter to P. F. Liddell, December 10, 1860, on Formation of a Confederacy. . . 033 

6. Credentials to Russia, November, 1802 ''39 

7. Speech on the State of the Countiy (Confederacy) : April 14, 1864 639 

8. Letter on the Cliaracter of Robert E. Lee, December 5, 1870 650 

9. Speech on Misrale in the Southern States: House, June 8, 1874 659 

10. Letter of H. C. Carter on Carpetbag Misgovernment, April 25, 1874 069 

11. Speech on the Centennial Celebration: House, January 25, 1870 070 

12. Speech on Parliamentary Privilege (Belknap Case): House, March 7, 1870. . . 074 

13. Speech on the Southern Policy of the Republican Party, etc.: House, August 

2, 1876 6S2 

14. Speech on the Electoral Commission : House, January 25, 1877 69S 

15. Speech (Undelivered) on the Electoral Count: House, February, 1877 699 

10. Speech on the Payment of Government Bonds in Silver: Senate, January 24, 

-1878 " 701 

17. .Vrticle on the Enfranchisement of tlie J\egn)— North Amcrinin Rei-ieir, March, 

1879 "1^ 

IS. Speech on the Exodus of Negroes from Southern States: Senate, June 14, 1880 723 

19. Speech on Placing Gen. Grant on tlie Retired Army List: Senate, .January 25, 

1881 "'^8 

20. Speech on the Election of Othcera in the Senate: Senate, April 1, 1881 739 

21. Speech on the TarifT: Senate, Feliruary 7, 1883 "-18 

22. Speedi on National Aid to Education: Senate, March 28, 1884 "74 

23. Oration on Life and Services of John C. Calhoun: Charleston, April 26, 1887. 779 

24. Speech at Emory College, June 24, 1890 SOI 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

TAOE. 

1. Justice Lajiiar Frontispiece. 

2. Mirabeau B. Lamar '. 16 

3. Judge Lucius Q. C. Lamar, of Georgia 20 

4. Rev. Augustus B. Longstreet 38 

5. Mississippi Senators and Congressmen at the Time of Secession (Group) 86 

6. Gen. Edward C. Walthall 1 18 

7. Liberal Republican Leaders, 1870-75 (Group) ,, 108 

8. Charles Sumner 182 

!). Senator L. Q. C. Lamar . . . ^^'O 

10. Some Democratic Senators (Group) S-'iS 

11. Some Republican Senators (Group) 378 

12. Mr. Lamar's Children (Group) -120 

13. President Cleveland and His Cabinet (( iroup) -186 

14. The Funeral of the Bloody Shirt 536 

15. The Supreme Court of 1891 (Group) 546 

16. Campus Views at Emory College 5o2 

(11) 



LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 



CHAPTER I. 

The Family of Lamar— Thomas, the Immigrant— Thomas, His Son— John Lamar— 
:Mirabeau B. Lamar— Lucius Q. C. Lamar, the Elder— Micajali Williamson ami Sa- 
rah Gilliam, His Wife -Dr. Thompson Bird and Susan Williamson, His Wife— Mrs. 
Sarah (Bird) Lamar. 

THERE is a tradition amongst tlie Lamars of Georgia that their 
family was of Huguenot origin, and was planted in Maryland Uy 
four brothers who fled from France in the celebrated exodus consequent 
upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. In part this report 
is probably correct; but there are public records still extant in Mary- 
land which show that the Georgia tradition is incomplete and, in de- 
tails, erroneous. 

In the early days of Maryland all of the papers which found their 
way into the records, and so have been preserved, were prepared by 
petty officials and lawyers who seem to have had very limited educa- 
tional advantages. The spelling of names varied almost with the num- 
ber of the documents in which they appeared; for example, Brown was 
spelled Broun, Brown, Browne, and Broune, all in instruments intended 
to convey property to the same individual. It seems also to have been 
customary for one person, in making deeds, to spell his own name in 
different ways, in order to conform exactly to the various spellings by 
which he had received conveyances of the properties alienated. It is 
not strange, therefore, that a Frenchman in an English colony should 
have his name spelled phonetically, and differently by different parties. 

It is more than probable that the first Lamars came to Maryland prior 
to the year 1663. There is a Maryland tradition that there were three 
brothers. Huguenots. If their religion formed any part of the motives 
which led them to seek the New World, the immediate cause certainly 
could not have been the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, but probably 
was only the general disfavor and oppression of Protestants under the 
administration of Cardinal Richelieu following upon the destruction of 

Rochelle in 1628. 

Maryland being an English colony, the English laws obtained, anil no 
immigrants could hold lan.ls in fee except sucli as were of British na- 

^ (13) 



14 lAVirS Q. C. LAMAR: 

tioiiality. lu lG-49 Lord Baltimore issued a circular to the people of 
France, Germany, and other countries, offering inducements to immi- 
grants to join his Maryland colony, and assuring to them the same priv- 
ileges as immigrants of English birth. On November 17, 1663, he 
granted a certificate of nationality — or "denuozacou," as it was called — 
wherein it was recited that 

Whereas Thomas and Peter Lamore, late of' ]'irginia, and subjects of the crown of 
France, having transported themselves into this province here to abide, have besought 
us to grant them, tlie said Thomas and Peter Lamore, leave to here Inhabit as free 
denizens, and freedom land to them and their heirs to purchase. Know ye, that we, 
willing to give encouragement to the subjects of that crown, do hereby declare them, 
the said Thomas and Peter Lamore, to be free denizens of this our province of Mary- 
land, etc. 

Various record entries and documents, extending from 1663 to 1684, 
give the names tif these men, and of a John of the same name, as La- 
mer, Lamare, Lamair, Lamaire, De Le Maire, Lemaire, Lemarre, Le- 
mar, Le Marr, and Lamar. Not infrequently the name was spelled va- 
riously in the same document. The records of this period are so per- 
fect that it would seem impossible to confound these men and their fam- 
ilies with other persons. There are no names similar to these three. 

John Lamaire was naturalized about ten years after Thomas and Pe- 
ter, from which it is inferable that he came over at a later date. His 
naturalization papers sliowed that he, at least, was born in Anjou. 

Peter and Thomas " Lamore " located in what was then Calvert County, 
on the Patuxent River, and engaged in ijlanting; while John, who was 
a doctor, as the records show by numerous administrator's accounts, 
settled in the more populous community of Port Tobacco, the county 
seat of Charles County. 

However, all of this is more or less speculative. What is certain is 
that Peter Lamer's will is of record, dated in 1693; while that of Thom- 
as Lamar, dated October 4, 1712, is also recorded, and shows that he 
was then living in Prince George's County. By that instrument he left 
what seems to have been quite a considerable estate, both in Maryland 
and in England, to his wife, Ann, and to his two sons, Thomas and John. 

The second Thomas also left a will. It is dated May 11, 1747. He 
distributed a large estate between his six sons and two sons-in-law, by 
name. In the year 1755 three of those sons (Robert, Thomas, and John) 
and one of the sons-in-law ( Clementius Davis) on the same day sold 
their lands to the Rev. John Urqi;hart, " Minister of Al-Faith Parish in 
Saint Mai-y's County," their mother's brother, and moved down into 
South Carolina and Georgia, settling at Beach Island and on the Geor- 
gia side of the Savannah River. This settlement in these Southern col- 
onies may have given rise m later years to the Georgia tradition that 
four brothers came to America. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 15 

John Lamar, son of John, was graiidsou of tlie Joliu who moved to 
Georgia. He was born in the year 1769, aud married his cousiii-germnn, 
Rebecca Lamar. That union produced nine children who attained ma- 
turity. Four were sons (Lucius Quintus Ciucinnatus, Thomas Ran- 
doli:)h, Mirabeau Buonaparte, aud Jett'ersou Jaciison) and tive were 
daughters ( Mrs. Evalina Harvey, Mrs. Mary A. iloreland, Mrs. Aurelia 
liandle, Mrs. Louisa McGehee, and Mrs. Loretto H. Chappell 1. 

This John Lamar, the grandfather of Justice Lamar, was a planter, 
and a thrifty one. His residence was for a time in Warren County; 
but later iu Putnam, eight or ten miles south of Eatonton. Here, about 
the year 1810, he established what is still locally known as the "olil La- 
mar homestead," now the property of Mr. Mai-k Johnson. The house 
still stands in good condition: a tine, old-fashioned, two-story, frame 
building, constructed after the strong and enduring models (>f that 
period. Little River winds near by, aud cultivated fields offer a wide 
prospect. Here for many years, iu great happiness and moderate pros- 
perity, lived the old couple. 

With them lived a bachelor brother, Zachariah— a ;^elf-t;iuglit uuin — who, like many 
of the men iu old plantation times, gave himself up to the ideal world of literature 
aud history, without any further purpose than the enjoyments of that fairyland. 
These honest, happy— some might consider them useless — members of society belong 
to an extinct fauna, but they were loved and revered and humored in their day and 
little circles. This Lamar was one of this sort, perhaps its most striking e;iample. 
Over all his immediate surroundings was cast the glamour of that realm of letters in 
which he lived. When he le.l in family prayer, good Methodists that they were, he 
did not think it inapt to thank God for the heroic examples of Roman or English or 
American history, for the march of science, or for exemption from the crimes and mis- 
eries of less favored lands into which Ids geographical studies had last led him. So when 
son after sou was born to the head of the house this bookish enthusiast claimed the 
privilege of naming his infant nephews after his fevorite of tlie moment, and the 
amiable and doubtless amused parents consented. Thus Lucius Quintus Ciucinnatus, 
Mirabeau Buonaparte, Jefferson Jackson, Thomas Randolph, and J>avoisier Legrand 
(a grandchild ) indicate how his interest shifted from history to politics, and from 
politics to chemistry.* 

At this old homestead, buried in a quiet garden, by the side of his 
daughter Evalina, lies John. His grave is kept in excellent order, and 
over him is a slab bearing the following inscription, written by his son 
Mirabeau: 

In memory of John Lamar, who died August ,S, 1S33, aged sixty-four years. He 
was a man of unblemished honor, of pure aud exalte.l benevolence, whose conduct 
through life was uniformly i-egulated by the strictest principles of iirobity, truth, and 
justice; thus leaving behin<t him, as the best legacy to his children, a noble example 
of consistent virtue. In his domestic relations he was greatly blessed, receiving from 
every member of a large fannly unremitting demonstrations of respect, love, and obe- 
dience. 



'William rreston ,Iiilinston, in tlie Farmer's Wurhl ^i Feliniary .1. isro. 



16 LUCirS Q. C. LAMAU: 

That is the testimony of a son. Here is the impartial evidence of one 
who was connected by no such endearing tie. In the " Bench and Bar 
of Georgia" Hon. Joel Crawford says this: 

Though not a rich man, Mr. John Lamar, by dint of industry and good manage- 
ment, found means to give his children the best education wliich the schools of the 
country aflbrded. None of them had the benefit of a college course, nor were they (it 
is believed) acciuainted with the ancient classics or any other language l)ut English. 
But, if the children of this worthy man did not bring into practical life any great 
amount of literary and scientific lore, they certainly brought what was infinitely more 
valuable: mind, morals, and most of the virtues which elevate and adorn it. In the 
regimen of no other family were strict veracity, temperance in all things, probity, and 
benevolence more peremptorily and successfully inculcated. 

John Lamar had the rare good fortune that two of his sons achieved 
distinction. Of these, Mirabeau, the yt)uuger, was born in 1798. He 
was a man of considerable, genius and of great versatility of talent. 
M'riter, soldier, lawyer, statesman, and diplomatist — in each career he 
was successful, and in some brilliant. Beginning life as a planter and 
merchant, he cultivated letters; and in 1828 established the Columbus 
Inquirer, a State rights paper. Some of the best essays upon the gov- 
ernment of the United States, which appeared in the public press of 
Georgia, were from his pen; and later he proved a capacity for poetry 
of no mean order, publishing a volume of " Verse Memorials." 

He was already distinguished for eloquence when he came to Texas, in 1835, to aid 
the constitutional cause, and is said to have l>een the first to declare publicly for inde- 
pendence. He was not less ardent as a soldier than as a speaker; and, in the cavalry 
skirmish on the day before the battle of San Jacinto, saved the life of Gen. Rusk by a 
free exposure of his own. He was conspicuous for gallantry at San Jacinto, and, hav- 
ing first served as Attorney General, was soon after appointed Secretary of W.ar by 
President Burnet, and was elected Vice President in 1836. His impetuous valor, en- 
thusiastii' temper, and unselfish aspirations for the honor and welfare of his country, 
made liim tlie fit choice of Texas as her President. Lamar was a man of high, un- 
bending honor; his native gifts were fine: lari.'eness and brilliancy of conception, 
fancy, eloquence, readiness, and courage. Though ardent, impulsive, and open tci pres- 
ent impressions, sometimes, es|iecial!y in seasons of ill health, he gave way to the re- 
action that dis'iJays itself in waywardness, dejection, and lassitude. But lie was biave, 
aifectionate, open as the day, lofty, and magnanimous. . ' . . 

To the eloquent appeals of Lamar are due the foundations of the educational sys- 
tem of Texas, and tlie consecration of nolile grants of public lands to the school and 
university funds. By him, too, a great tide of corruption and public (ilunder was 
s\iddenly stopjied.* 

After the annexation of Texas Mirabeau Lamar served efficiently in 
the Mexican -War. In 1857 he was appointed United States Minister to 
the Argentine Republic, and in 1858 to Costa Eica and Nicaragua. 
He died in the year 1859. Between him and Justice Lamar existed the 
deepest attachment and mutual admiration. His rare combination of 
qualities, his fiery and chivalric nature, his enthusiasm, his patriotism 

* Willi.-iiu Prest.in .I.>lin..t(>i.. in •• I.ilr' of Gen. A. S. .lolin-t ii." ]>v- ii3. M. 



HIS LIFE, TUfES, AND SPEECHES. 17 

and fervid partisanship— all strongly drew and deeply iutluenced the 
nascent character of his observant and thoughtful yonng nephew. 

As a specimen of the literary style of Mirabeau Lamar the following 
lyric, which does not appear in the " Verse Memorials," is given. The 
poem is the last he wrote, and was inspired by a rarely beautiful wom- 
an whom he saw in Central America. 

THE DAUGHTER OF MENDOZA. 

O lend to me, sweet nightintrale, 

Your music by the fountains! 
And lend to me your cadent'es, 

O river of the mountains! 
That I may sing my gay brunette 

A diamond sparli in coral set, 
Geui for a prince's coronet — 

Tlie daugliter of Mendoza. 

How brilliant is the morning star! 

The evening star, how tender! 
Tlie light of botli is in her eye, 

Their softness and their sjilendor. 
But for the lash that sliades their light, 

They were too dazzling for the figlit; 
And when she shuts them all is night — 

The daughter of IMendoza. 

O! ever bright and beauteous one, 
Bewildering and beguiling. 

The lute is in thy silvery tones. 
The rainbow in thy smiling. 

And thine is, too, o'er hill and dell. 
The bounding of the young gazelle. 

The arrow's flight and ocean's swell- 
Sweet daughter of Mendoza! 

What though, perchance, we meet no more? 

Wliat though too soon we sever? 
Thy form will float like emerald light, 

Before my vision ever. 
For who can see and then forget 

The glories of my gay brunette? 
Thou art too bright a star to set — 

Sweet daughter of Mendoza! 

Lucius Q. C. Lamar, the father of the late Justice, was John La- 
mar's oldest son. Born in Warren County, on the 15th of July, 1797, 
he passed the most of his early youth in Putnam, to which county his 
father had removed. Much of his time was spent behind the counter 
as a salesman; bitt in 1816 he began the study of law in the office of 
Hon. Joel Crawford, at Milledgeville. Reading with great ddigence, 
lie acquired, amongst other things, accuracy in pleading. After twelve 
months or more he repaired to the celebrated law school of Judges 
2 



18 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

Eeeve and Gould, at LituLtield, Conn. About the year 1818, having 
been admitted to practice in the courts of law and equity in Georgia, 
he opened an office in ^Lilledgeville. There, on tlie 10th of March, 
1819, he married Sarah W. Bird, daughter of Dr. Thompson Bird, au 
eminent physician of that city. 

Though few young lawyers have brought to the bar higlier quahfications, he lacked 
some, ami for a few years liis prospects were anything but bright. While 
others, with not a tithe of his genius or learning, were seen to be reaping rich har- 
vests of fees and crowded with clients, he remained poor and almost briefless. How 
and why did this happen? Courage, truth, and honor were among the most con- 
spicuous elements of his character, and he seemed to have the esteem and confidence 
of every one. But he could not court clients nor solicit patronage; his characteristic 
independence and legitimate self-esteem would not tolerate even the semblance of 
unworthy conilescension. He doubtless wanted what is commonly called addrrss: he 
liad no turn for frivoliius chat, story-telling, anecdotes, etc. In short, he lacked those 
qualifications on which humbler natures rely for conciliating ijopular favor. 

When quite young in his profession Mr. Lamar was chosen by the Legislature to 
compile the laws of Georgia from 1810 to 1820. He arranged the several acts under 
their apjiropriate divisions, and made such references and explanations in notes as 
were necessary to show what had been repealed or modified. The result of his la- 
bors was reported to Gov. Clark in 1821, and by him was accepted after a careful 
examination at the hands of a committee. It was then published in a quarto vol- 
ume of thirteen hundred pages, constituting Volume III. of the "Georgia Statutes." 

Mr. Lamar also revised Clayton's "Georgia Justice" (now rarely 
found ) about 1819. 

In the summer of 1821 Judge Crawford, who had retired from the 
practice some four or tive years before, resumed it, and Lamar be- 
came his partner. 

This copartnership by its terms was limited to three years, and before the expira- 
tion of that time Lamar had so many oijportunities of exhibiting proofs of his great 
legal ability that he never afterwards wanted clients or fees. 

Mr. Lamar doubtless had ambition — a legitimate ambition — to acquire by merito- 
rious actions that fame and fortune which may at all times be justly awarded to use- 
ful and brilliant achievements; but he had an insuperable aversion to catching oflice 
as a mere fortuitous windfall, or getting it by surrendering himself to the arbitrary 
management of a jiolitical party. Under the influence of snch generous self-denial, 
he more than once refiLsed his name as a candidate when success was little less than 
certain. His conduct when Thomas W. Cobb (about the fall of 1828) became a candi- 
date for the bench of the Ocmulgee circuit will serve to exemplify some of the lofty 
traits which belonged to his character. 

Mr. Cobb was an experienced and confessedly an able lawyer; had been for 
many years a respectable member of Congress, desired to continue in the public serv- 
ice, but, in the decline of life, preferred a station nearer home. The popularity, 
however, which had carried him three terms to the House of Representatives, and 
afterwards to the Senate of the United States, now forsook him. He was beaten on 
joint vote of the General Assembly by a large majority; but, for some cause best 
known to himself, his successful opponent within a few days resigned the commis- 
sion of judge, and the vacancy had again to be filled. Cobb's friends again jiresent- 
ed his name, and Lamar was importuned to offer as a rival candidate. Had he con- 
sented, his election was morally certain ; but he had a becoming respect for Mr. 



Ills LIFE, TIMES, ASD SPEECHES. 19 

Cobb's seniority and past services, was no stranger to tho uiiwiuthy motives of tliose 
who were most intent on a second defeat, nor to the plasticity of tliat ill-organized 
college of electors, the General Assembly. His refusal was jienMnptory, and Mr. 
Cobb was permitted to take the office he so much coveted. 

Before the term for which Mr. ("obb had Ijeen elected expired, his death made a 
vacancy which Mr. Lamar could honorably consent to fill. He came then, on the 
4th of November, ISliO, while only in his thirty-fourtli year, into oliice on such con- 
ditions as met bis approbation, and continiicd until the day of his own lamented 
death to discharge its duties with signal ability, and witli jiuMic applause which few 
injudicial stations have had the good fortune to receive. 

He presided with great dignity, and was most elfective in the dispatch of busi- 
ness. No one who knew the man ever ventured on an act of rudeness or disrespect 
to his court; yet every person whose deportment was worthy of it had unfailing as- 
surances of his kindness. His lectui-es of instruction to the grand juries, at the 
opening of a term, were delivered in aduiiralile style; and his charges to special and 
petit juries in the trial of dilhcult and nmch-Utigated cases might well serve as mod- 
els to any bench. 

As specimens of Judge Lamar's style and reasoning on legal topics, 
reference may be made to two cases in Dudley's "Keports:" Brensfer 
vs. Hanlcinan and Kendrirk vs. the Central Baid; the latter sustaining 
notes when the statute required bonds. They are both fine instances. 
A remarkable case was one which was brought from Jasper b(>fore the 
convention of Judges. It was well argued, was thoroughly discussed, 
and the authorities examined by the Convention, Judge Lamar 
leading the convention to adopt his view. Au opinion was rendered 
unaitiiiwHsli/. During the succeeding interval before the next conven- 
tion he met with a case which gave him a new view. He pursued the 
examination closely during several weeks. When the next convention 
assembled, he stated what had occurred, and that his opinion had un- 
dergone an entire change. The authorities were reviewed, criticised, 
and applied by the convention, and it iiiianhnonsli/ reversed its former 
decision. Judge Lamar leading both times the argument, and writing 
out the final decision of the judges. This remarkable episode furnishes 
a high proof of his mental powers and intellectual and moral integrity; 
more especially when it is remembered that William H. Crawford, 
Judge Law, Judge Dougherty, and perhaps Judge Warner, were mem- 
bers of the convention. Of this decision, and of that of Brewster vs. 
Hanlciiiiin, Hon. Joseph Henry Lumpkin says, that they "may be 
placed on a level with the best productions of the American or Eng- 
lish bench." 

Nothing delighted him more than for his brethren of the bar to mingle literary 
anecdote or classical allusion in their arguments. He was a great admirer of Hugh 
S Legare, of South Carolina, as presenting the finest model of the profound lawyer 
and accomplished scholar; and such, since Legare's death, was the judgment of 

Mr. Justice Story. ■ ~. ^ i 

From boyhood Judge Lamar was a lover of books, readmg with good effect al- 
most everything that came within his reach, but had a decided partiality for poetry 



20 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

and other works of imagination. In after life he was distinguished for his attain- 
ment ill belles-lettres, for tlie classic purity of his compositions, and for his forensic 
eloquence. He was fond of poUtics, and wrote many articles of that nature for jjub- 
lication. 

His active genius, lofty virtues, and profound erudition would have given eclat to 
any name. There is no instance in England or America where a judge so rapidly 
gained public favor. In less than four years from his accession to the bench he was 
commonly known as "the great Judge Lamar," and was its brightest luminary. He 
could not have been displaced; there was no desire felt by his political opponents 
to give his otKce to another; and it was his singular merit, his crowning glory, that 
both Union and State rights men would equally have renewed his commission. 
And, to complete his blessings, he was happy in his domestic circle. Wife and chil- 
dren, relatives and friends, everybody loved him, and he loved all. 

Yet amid all this innocence and honor and felicity a withering bolt 
fell; and Judge Lamar's sudden death occurred on the 4th of July, 
1834, when he was thirty-seveii years of age. 

A lengthy and beautiful " Tribute of Respect " was adopted by the 
bar of the Baldwin Superior Court, from which the following extract is 
taken : 

At the bar he was an ingenious and able advocate and excellent jurist. Possessing 
a mind far above the ordinary grade, distinguished alike for acuteness and discrimi- 
nation, it could grapple with the giant difficulties of the science and master its abstruse 
theories. On the bench he exhibited a soundness of judgment and depth of learning 
beyond his years. His candor, ingenuousness, and modesty were no less conspicuous 
than his amenity and kindness to all in any way connected with the administration 
of justice. His expositions of the law, his charges and instructions to juries, were uni- 
formly marked by piecision, beauty, and eloquence, imjiarting interest to the suliject 
and instruction to the hearer. Devoting himsi-lf to the arduous duties of his station, 
he seldom erred in judgment; but, ever anxious that his judicial opinions should be 
correct, he sought occasion for their revision, and, with the noble impulse of an up- 
right mind, rejoiced in the opportunity for their revision. Always guided by human- 
ity, he truly administered justice in mercy. To the youthful aspirant for professional 
distinction he was indeed a friend, exciting his ardor, aiding his exertions, commend- 
ing his efforts, alluring him onward, and extending a fostering hand for his support 
when difficulties surrounded him. 

In all the relations of private life he was blameless, ever kind, ardent, and affec- 
tionate. Of unblemished integrity and pure morals, no whisper injurious to either 
ever rested on his name. He was beloved for his amiable disi^osition, his bland de- 
portment, his noble frankness, and his generous sentiments.* 

Judge Lamar had eight children, five of whom attained maturity. 
The sons were Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus, Thompson Bird, and Jeffer- 
son Mirabeau. The daughters were Mrs. Susan E. Wiggins and Mary 
Ann, who first married James C. Longstreet, Esq., and afterwards John 
B. Ross, of Macon, Ga. 

The maternal ancestors of Justice Lamar are historic in Georgia. 
They shotild be briefly noticed, not only because they are noteworthy in 

" These quotations are trom tlic " Ilench ami Jiar of Georgia; " title, " L. Q. C. Lamar." 




JUCGE L. Q. C. LAMAR. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 21 

themselves, but also because both by inheritance and by education they 
materially contributed to the production in him of those (jualities of 
mind and soul with which he was endowed, as well as the sentimeuts by 
which his life was greatly influenced. The women especially were at 
once lovely and heroic. Sarah Gilliam, Susan Williamson, and Sarah 
Bird were all of such sort as was the Roman Cornelia. 

The first is believed to have been a niece of the Eev. Devereux Jarratt, 
the celebrated Episcopalian divine of Tirginia. A native of Henrico 
County, Va., and descended from a Huguenot stock, she married Mica- 
jah Williamson, of Bedford County, whose grandfather was from the 
North of Ireland, and who was himself a man of quite considerable 
wealth. The two, in the year 1768, moved to Georgia and settled in 
Wilkes County, where Mr. Williamson purchased a valuable plantation 
from Col. Alston, giving him sixty negroes in exchange therefor. 
Wilkes County was then on the frontier, and subject to great afflictions 
from Indian aggressions. Here and then, and in the later stormy days 
of the great Revolution, the Williamsons were conspicuous from both 
their services and their sufferings. 

The country was almost a wilderness. The houses of settlers were 
built as near together as possible, for union and for capacity of fortify- 
ing against hostile attacks. In the Indian wars Williamson became 
prominent. He was brave but prudent, and inspired such confidence as 
made him by common consent a leader. He soon became intimate with 
Elijah Clarke, even then the most prominent man of that region, and 
later a colonel in the continental army. Their intimacy continued 
through the Revolution. In that struggle they were associated in the 
army of the South, which was assigned to protect the western frontier 
of Georgia. Williamson was Clarke's lieutenant colonel and was his 
chief dependence. In all hazardous enterprises requiring skill, caution, 
and perseverance he was selected to command. This, of course, im- 
mensely increased his risks, and he was more frequently wounded than 
any other officer in the command. The scene of this war was in the im- 
mediate neigliborhood of his home, and his wonderful wife was not only 
a witness of many of the conflicts, but also often a participant in them. 
Hers was a character as marked as was that of her husband. While he 
was in the field fighting she was in the fields at home supervising the 
management of the farm, and contriving to support a large family of 
sons and daughters. In one of the inroads of the English, Tories, and 
Indians, during the absence of Col Williamson with his command, 
their liouse and outbuildings were burned, with all their mova])les. A 
son, a youth of twelve years, was hung in the presence of his mother. 
Following this a proclamation was issued, offering a large reward for the 
head of Col. Williamson. The wife and cliildren were forced to flee to 
the mountains of N(n-th Carolina for safety. This was near the end of 



22 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

the war. It was only on the cessation of hostilities that the suffering 
family returned to their desolated fields. Then Williamson went to 
work to i'e2:)air his shattered fortunes. A few slaves were left; and, 
uniting with theirs the labor of himself and his sous, the farm was cul- 
tivated actively and successfully. He also kept an inn in the town of 
Wa.shingtou. In a few years he was again comparatively independent, 
and directed as best he could the education of his family. In this his 
wife, who was well educated for the times, assisted. But the fatigues, 
the wounds, and the anxieties of the troubled life he had, added to the 
severe labors of the reclamation, broke down the old soldier's constitu- 
tion. He dietl in 1795, aged about sixty years. 

Col. Williamson left five sons and six daughters. The sons were 
Charles, Peter, Micajah, William, and Thomas Jeffenson. The daugh- 
ters were Mrs. Nancy Clarke, Mrs. 8arali Griffin, Mrs. Susan Bird, Mrs. 
Martha Fitch, Mrs. Elizabeth Thweat, and Mrs. Mary Campbell. 

It was a most remarkable family of women. Thej' were celebrated for 
their beauty antl intellects. Any one of them would have made a home 
distinguished, and no sisters ever took a wider hold iiijon a State. Mrs. 
Clarke was the wife of Gen. John Clarke, afterwards Governor of the 
State. Mrs. Griffin was twice married; both husbands were judges, and 
"the second, Hon. Charles Tail, served two terms in the United States 
Senate. The husbands of Mrs. Bird, Mrs. Fitch, and Mrs. Thweat were 
all men of high standing and influence. Mrs. Campbell was the wife of 
Hon. Duncan G. Campbell, a lawyer of prominence, who was one of the 
two commissioners of the United States who negotiated the treaty 
whereby the Creeks surrendered their lands in Georgia and Alabama; 
and she became the mother of the Hon. John A. Campbell, late Justice of 
the Supreme Court of the United States. It is believed that the William- 
son family occupy the unique position that it was the first in the United 
States to give two of its members to that great tribunal, since the com- 
mission of Judge Campbell antedated that of Justice Field, while Jus- 
tice Lamar was appointed before Justice Brewer. 

Dr. Thompson Bird, the husband of Mrs. Susan (Williamson) Bird, 
and tlie grandfather of Justice Lamar, was a son of Empsou Bird, of 
Cecil County, Md., who died there in 1787. Thompson graduated at 
William and Mary, and afterwards at the celebrated medical college 
in Philadelphia. His older half-sister, Mrs. Mary Montgomery, and 
her husband (from whom are descended a fine family of that name), 
having found their way to Georgia, induced Thompson to follow them. 
He settled first in Milledgeville, and later at Macon, at which place he 
died July 8, 1828. He was one of the most eminent, successful, and 
popular physicians in the State. His nature was frank and generous; 
quick to resent an injury, he was yet easily conciliated. He was dis- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, A\D SPEECHES. 23 

tinguisbed for hospitality; and his cheerfulness and vivacity gave liiui 
great prestige in society. For example, in 1823 he was selected to pre- 
side over the festal board at the first banquet ever given in the then 
newly organized C(junty of Bibb in conimetnoration of the Declaration of 
Independence. His superior skill and many jjersoual virtues secured 
for him a high place in popular esteem. 

However, the chief interest along this branch of the family history 
gathers about Mrs. Bird. The personal and mental graces, the intel- 
lectual and spiritual glory of a perfect woman — who shall paint them? 
And who shall sound the mysterious ways in which God moves to per- 
form his wonders? or guess why it is that a star whose brightness and 
serenity seem worthy of a cloudless heaven shall yet go down in dark 
cloiids and in storm? This magnificent woman died, under the most 
tragical and dramatic circumstances, of a broken heart. 

Her sister, Mrs. Fitch, with her husband and children, lived at St. 
Angnstine. Attracted by them, thither also had gone Mrs. Bird's only 
son then living, just entering upon manhood, a most amiable and gifted 
young man, who when only twenty-one years of age had been appointed 
United States Attorney for the Territory. To him his uncle and aunt 
were very kind. On one fatal occasion in the fall of 18'21, while trav- 
eling off the coast, Mr. Fitch found floating on the o'cean a mattress 
which seemed to be good. He had it taken aboard, dried it, and slept 
upon it. The result was yellow fever. This dread disease spread. 
When it became epidemic Mrs. Bird wrote to her son, praying him to 
come away; but in the meantime every member of his aunt's family 
had been taken ill, and she, rising from her bed of sickness, threw her 
arms about her nephew and implored him not to leave her in her de- 
spair. He knew that to stay was death; but he wrote his mother 
that he must meet his fate; and stay he did, and died November 15, 
with his uncle, his aunt, and both of his cousins. From this blow 
his mother never recovered. Her grief was supposed to have in- 
duced organic disease of the heart. 

On the 22d of March, 1822, Mrs. Bird's niece, Nancy Clarke, the 
daughter of the Governor, was married to John W. Campbell, the 
ycmuger brother of Hon. Duncan G. Campbell. Mrs. Bird laid aside 
her mourning, if not her sorrow, and assisted in the prepai'ation for 
the wedding. When the ceremony was over, she approached the hap- 
py and blushing bride, kissed her, wiped from her eyes the gathering 
tears, and said, "Dear Nancy, if your happiness shall be equal to my 
wishes, you will never know misery. Excuse me now, I am fatigued 
and must go home." She kissed her niece again, and left the draw- 
ing-room. 

The elite of the young people of the State were present. Everybody knew Nan- 
cy Clarke, and everybody loved her, and was responding in mirth to her happiness. 



24 LUCIUS Q. C. LA MA II: 

The clock struck twelve, the dancers were upon the floor, when that stern old man, 
Gov. Clarke, with his military stride, entered the room, and authoritatively said: 
"Stop this!" All were startled, and an instantaneous silence ensued. There was a 
pause of a moment, when the Governor said: "Mrs. Bird is dead. "* 

Aye; the wrung heart had ceased, from its labors, aud the stricken 
mother had fallen on sleep, slain through the noble conduct of her ilu- 
tiful aud loving son. Again was illustrated the singular and terrible 
fact that acts of the highest virtue and those of the lowest depravity 
often lead to the same bitter result; tiiat in the strange complexity of 
this mysterious life many of the jjurest altars bear the burden of that 
tremendous offering, the broken heart. 

The mother of Justice Lamar, Sarah Williamson Bird, was born in 
Milledgeville on the 2-ith of Februar}-, 1802. She was married when 
only seventeen years of age. Left a widow by the cruel stroke already 
narrated, at thirty-two, with five young children to rear, she was not 
overwhelmed by so great a calamity, but bravely gathered her men- 
tal and moral forces to meet the duties cast upon her. In her widow- 
hood she was not altogether aloue, for she had many warm and devoted 
friends, both of her husband and of her own. She was spared the sharp 
bitterness of poverty. Her husband left her a comfortable loroperty, 
which was considerably increased by the skillful management of his 
brother, Mr. Jeflerson Lamar. Her daughters were educated at good 
boarding schools; her oldest son, Lucius, at Emory College; her second 
sou, Thompson B., at the same institution, aud afterwards at the Jef- 
ferson Medical College, in Philadelphia; and her youngest son, Jeffer- 
son M., at the University of Mississippi. 

In July, 1851, after remaining a v\'idow for seventeen years, she was 
married to Col. Hiram B. Troutmau, of Yineville, near Macon, Ga., and 
removed to his home, where she lived until her death. 

She had much in this world — beauty, intellect, education, social po- 
sition, a competency, admirati<jn, friends, dutiful aud bright children — 
aud she had need of them all, for her life was often stricken by the 
sharpest darts of agony. First, was the great shock of her brother's 
death, followed by that of her mother. Then came that of her Tins- 
band. In the year 1858, her youngest daughter's husband, James C. 
Longstreet, to whom she was tenderly attached, died. In September, 
1862, her youngest son, then a lieutenant colonel of Cobb's Legion, 
fell while leading his command in the engagement at Cramptou's Gap. 
In May, 186-1, her eldest daughter, Mrs. Wiggins, passed away after 
losing both of her children, and after a painful illness jjrotracted 
through several years. In 1864, also, her second son, then colonel of 
the Fifth Florida, was killed in a battle near Petersburg. In the clos- 
ing period of her life, there came both upon her and upon her second 

*Col. Sparks, in tlK' Atlanta Constitution ; artick", '*01d F-.iniilies of Geo gia." 



Ills I.IFK, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 25 

husband, the* companion of her old age, the great shadow of darkness, 
the liorror of blindness. But amid all these continuinLif troubles she 
had the great consolation. From early life n humble and devout Meth- 
odist, the native strength of her character was not her only resource. 
She had taken the eternal truths into her heart, her feet were planted 
firmly upon the Eock of Ages, and her liand was clasped closely in that 
of the loving Christ. On the 31st of October, 1879, she died suddenly 
of heart disease. It was her last request that her body be taken to 
Milledgeville, and there be buried by the side of her first husband. 

A few of the tributes paid to this noble lady will be given here in or- 
der to illustrate her own charactei", as well as that of her son. An 
obituary by the Rev. G. G. Smith says: 

She was one of the most elegant women in a circle of women of rare accomplish- 
ments. . . . She presided over a large establishment and dispensed a queenly 
hospitality. ... 1 have known few such women. She was accomplished, talent- 
ed, dignified, pious. She adorned every circle into which she was thrown. In pros- 
perity slie was not proud, in adversity she was not despondent. She had a true 
Christian faith, and it sustained her through all the varying circumstances of a sadly 
checkered life. I liave known her all my life, and never knew aught but good of her. 
She was truly an elect lady, and sleeps in Jesus. 

The Rev. Joseph S. Key, now Bishop Key, said: 

She lived and died loved and honored by all who knew her. Endowed by nature 
with great beauty of person and amiability of disposition, she added the graces of 
education and culture, and laid all these in consecration at Jesus' feet. Religion 
with her was no mere profession or theory; it was an experience felt and seen. She 
literally " put on the Lord Jesus Christ," and to her dying day through good and ill il- 
lustrated him. Her last years were years of testing. Blindness came lirst upon her, 
and then upon her husband. She anticipated its coming, and stored her memory 
with many precious passages of scripture on which to dwell in meditation in the 
darkness. A most touchini; sight it was to see the two aged saints sitting together, 
under the cloud of their Ijlindness, repeating to each other the promises and hopes of 
the Word of God. The stroke which took her off was sudden and unexpected, leav- 
ing no opportunity for dying testimony. It was not needed. Her life was monu- 
mental goodness. Her end was peace. 

The blindness of which Bishop Key spoke was relieved before her 
death, as also was that of her husband, by successful operations for cat- 
aract. 

Judge John A. Campbell, under date of November 3, 1879, wrote to 

his own sister: 

Ml/ Dear Rebecca: I was grieved to receive your notice of the death of my cousin 
Sarah, Mrs. Troutman. I remember her a long while ago, when I was but a boy, as 
she was at Aunt Griffin's. I remember her as I saw her about 1821, newly married, 
when I went to Milledgeville. I remember her as I saw her after my return from 
West Point in 1829. I have seen her since. She was much connected in my mind 
with mother, of whom she reminded me. I held her in the highest esteem and re- 
spect. There were sincerity, truth, gentleness, good breeding, high honor, religious 
culture, and refinement in her demeanor and in her thoughts. I felt proud of her as 



26 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR. 

a relation by blood. I cannot too strongly express my sympathy for Col. Troutman. 
Please tell him how much I grieve with him. 

The gentleness and good breeding to which Judge Campbell referred 
produced one of the most striking of Mrs. Troutmau's personal traits. 
This was her most nnnsually soft and low voice. Hardly audible across 
a small room, it was never raised, even in moments of intensest excite- 
ment. Nothing could induce her to speak loudly. 

This review of the ancestry of Justice Lamar shows how completely 
and wholly he was a Southerner. Himself born and reared in Georgia 
and adopted by Mississippi, his forefathers to the remotest generations 
in America, so far as known without exception, were citizens of the 
States of Maryland, Virginia, and Georgia. Every inherited trait and 
predisposition, every tradition, every feature of his education — all of his 
instincts and all of his teaching — were distinctively and strongly 
Southern. 



CHAPTER II. 

The Old Lamar Homestead — The Old Georgia-Conference Manual-Labor School — Lu- 
cius' Character and Habits as a Child — Anecdote — Removal to Oxford, Ga.— Emory 
College — Graduation — College Influence upon his Character and Views. 

LUCIUS QUINTUS CINCINNATUS LAMAK was born at the 
"old Lamar Homestead,"' in Putnam County, Ga., on the 17th of 
September, 1S25. Much of his c-hildhood was spent there. To his hatest 
days he retained a longing for the old place, and delighted to indulge 
in reminiscences of it and of the old life when he was a child. The 
scenes were apparently as clearly and darably cut upon his memory as 
if they had been cameos. There was a large, old-fashioned, two-story 
house or mansion, with a wide gallery along its entire front. The 
whitewashed walls of the airy rooms were hung with pictures, of which 
one, symbolizing a nightmare, had been painted by " Uncle Mirabeau " 
— a beautiful woman asleep ujson a sofa with her hair aHow, and a great 
shadowy horse's head thrust through the window above her. An im- 
mense front yard was filled with grand oaks and Lombardy poplars. 
To the east and front lay rolling lands, and a widespread plain in the 
rear shelved gradually down to a beautiful river which gave to the owner 
of the farm the sobriquet of " Little Eiver John." There was an orchard 
filled with fruit trees, resonant with the hum of bees busy about the 
labors of their hives, and thrilling with the insistent songs of birds. In 
wide fields the odor of the freshly turned earth hung heavily, and the 
cracking of the growing maize was heard after the summer showers, 
under the hot suns of noon. The house was a relay; and down the far- 
reaching red lane which stretched away like a long orange ribbon, the 
stage coaches would daily drive with rattle and halloo and call of bugle 
from afar, emptying their bustling bevies of hungry but genial travelers 
for the midday meal. In the evenings, as the darkness gathered, from 
the oaks and the forest about came the long-drawn, drowsy droning of 
the locusts, punctuated with the quick but melancholy cry of the 
chuck-Will's-widow, while waving branches gave half-admittance to the 
moonlight, and made eerie shadows about the house. Then there were 
the black "mammy"— the indispensable factotum of the Southern 
nursery — and the fascinated terrors of those restless nights when she 
would try to frighten Lucius to sleep with threats of the devil, who 
would come out of the black hole under the garret stair and catch him 
if he wasn't good. There was one adventurous hour when, with the 
courage which comes of desperation, he explored that recess and found 
that there was no hole. How he triumphed over the old nurse in his vain 
childish imagination! and what was his disappointment and dismay 

(27) 



28 LUCirS Q. C. LAMAR: 

wbeu, with the facility of her kind, she replied to his exultation that the 
devils concealed the hole from boys except as suited themselves. All of 
these things, and many more of similar character, Mr. Lamar loved to 
lecall, and to recount to sympathizing friends. 

However, dearly as he loved this grandfather's home, his own resi- 
dence was, of course, with his father in Milledgeville. Judge Lamar, it 
seems, had also, at one time, a residence in Hcottsboro, a village some 
four or five miles from Milledgeville; and it was there, so far as appears 
from the papers still extant, that Lucius got his first schooling. He 
also attended a school at Midway, in that vicinity, of which Beman and 
Mead were the Principals. Then came the sad event of his father's 
death, shortly after which Mrs. Lamar moved to the town of Covington 
for the jDurpose of educating her boys. To this object, like the wise and 
true mother that she was, she devoted much of her personal attention, 
carefully directing his course of reading. SiJeaking of this period many 
years afterwards, he said: 

Books? I was surrounded witli books. My fatlier's library was unusually large and 
varied for tliose times. The first bonk I remember liaving had put into my hands by 
my mother, after juvenile books, was Franklin's Autobiograpliy. The next was 
Kollin's History. Then came Plutarch's Lives, which I keenly enjoyed. Then 
Mrs. Hemans' innocent poems were intrusted to me, and Young's Night Thoughts. 
As an antidote, or at least a foil, for these, came Byron, wliich I devoured with eagerness. 
It was not till later years that I discovered that I had read an expurgated edition — 
'Don Juan' had been carefully cut out. After this was Robinson's America, Mar- 
shall's Life of Washington, Locke on the Understanding, Stuart's Mental Phi- 
losophy, Brown's Lectures on the Intellect, and, after a while, Cousin's Psy- 
chology. 

Near Covington was located the old Georgia-Conference Manual-La- 
bor School. At that early period there was quite an enthusiasm, espe- 
cially amongst educators, over the importance of developing the physical 
powers simultaneously with those of the mind. ' Robustness of frame 
was regarded as greatly favorable to robustness of intellect. Hence, 
amongst other results, was the establishment of this school, where farm 
labor, supplemented by mental drill, would, it was thought, best prepare 
the boys for their life's work. Dr. Alexander Means was the Principal. 
Under him were Profs. Round, Lane, Myers, and several assistants. 
The campus was surrounded by numerous dormitories for the boys, res- 
idences for the professors, and schoolrooms. Adjoining was the school 
farm. The labor was by no meitns arduous, and the boys, of all ages, de- 
voted (piite as much time to those games in which they delight as would 
have been done even had they not wielded a hoe or guided a plow for 
two or three hours daily. Aliout two hundred and fifty students were in 
attendance, and various sections relieved each other at intervals through- 
out the day. The boys were paid for their work a few cents per hour. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 29 

tlie amounts being graduated, not according to the amount of labor done, 
but according to the size of the laborer. The small fry therefore had but 
a poor showing when pay day came, wliich was at the close of the ses- 
sion. To this school Lucius was sent for three years, during the period 
from 1835 to 1838. It was a wise step. He needed something of the 
kind. Eeared, so far, in a town, he was diminutive, pale, and troubled 
with dyspepsia. The hours of labor tried him greatly. He was unac- 
customed to handling farm implements, and was not partial to the exei-- 
cise. He had none of the fondness for it which was entertained by 
many of the boys from the rural districts. But irksome although this 
duty was, his old schoolmates testify that he went to it with a quiet res- 
olution, never needing to be pushed up by the Superintendent and nev- 
er doing it slovenly. In after years he himself said of this period that 

" I was a delicate lioy, never so athletic as ray two lirothers, and being put to work 
strengthened and toned up my whole system. We all had to work three hours every 
day at the ordinary work of a plantation — i^lowing, hoeing, cutting wood, picking cotton 
and sowinn it, pulling fodder, and every item of a planter's occupation. When we 
left that school we could do not only this ordinary drudgery in the best way, but the 
most expert could shoe a hor.se, make an ax helve, stock a plow, or do any plain bit 
of blacksniitliing and carpentry. It was a great training for us all, for we became 
perfectly versed in the details of the work of a farm. Many of Georgia's most distin- 
guished men were reared there." — His mental tendencies were toward history, [loHt- 
ical economy, sociology, and biology. He said: "Poetry, too, took a strong hold of 
me. When I was in college I read through the i)Iays of Sliakespeare and the dramatic 
poetry of that remarkable woman, Joanna Baillie, recommended to me by my mother." 

He was not regarded by either pupils or teachers as possessed of re- 
markable intellectiial powers, or as a promising boy in any respect. 
Very frail in appearance, small for his age, and with a sallow complex- 
ion, he w^as (juite reticent, slow in movement, giving the impression of 
constitutional weakness, of sluggishness and indolence, rather than of 
the nascent physical and intellectual strength which was in him. He 
was considered a good, commonplace boy, who, if he came to manhood 
at all, would run a common career and disappear in the common way. 
When in the full maturity of his powers he spoke of his own mind even 
then as dull and slow in its operation. 

He seemed to have but little love for books. His recitations were 
seldom perfect; biityet he was scrupulously faithful to his class duties, 
never missing a call of the roll. For this reason his deficiencies in les- 
sons were put down to the account of dullness, and not to any want of 
inclination to respond to the demands of his masters. 

He was never wild and thoughtless like most boys, but was remarka- 
ble for his quiet and manly manners. The oldest of his mother's boys, 
even as a child he seemed her stay and companion. He was one of the 
purest of boys. His conduct and conversation were always chaste. 
One of his old classmates decribes his morality as " that of a Samuel or 



30 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

a Timothy." He mingled but little with the other lads, and hardly ever 
took part in their sports. He loved retirement, and seldom engaged in 
conversation; and this predisposition was regarded as an idiosyncrasy 
of a nature inclined to solitary musing. Even when, with his young 
comrades, he roamed through the woods and fields, hunting for sqir- 
rels and rabbits, it was noticed that he "often seemed abstracted, as if 
he were communing with the invisible, and hunted for thoughts and 
ideas" rather than for small game. 

The other boys thought him at times morose, and made but little 
efibrt to get near him; but this moroseness was only in appearance. 
He was given to deep and earnest thought from his earliest days. When 
any subject engaged his attention he had the faculty of withdrawing 
his mind from everything else. At such times he would hardly notice 
his most intimate friend; but rouse him from his contemplations, and 
no one was more genial or lovable than he. His heart was as tender as 
that of a girl, and his attachments were like those of Jonathan. The proof 
of this fact is that those affections endured throughout his life; and 
amongst his vast correspondence are to be found to this day the fresh- 
est and most loving letters, written, over a period of three-score years, 
to and from the friends of his youth. He loved to have the good will 
and confidence of his comrades; and while he used no blandishments to 
secure them, yet no one enjoyed them more than he when secured. Said 
one of those old friends, writing from Milledgeville, in 1885: "It is a 
glad advantage I have of you to look across the creek and over the hills 
to Midway, where dear ' old Bemau ' used to direct the studies of our 
early school days ; and to write from the old Forte homestead, about a 
hundred yards from where you once lived, to my old classmate, whose 
boyhood, principles, and impulses have changed not in character, but 
'from glory to glory,' till his name adds fame to the country." 

Even at this time Lucius possessed to a remarkable degree the powers 
of abstraction and of concentration of mind upon any subject which 
interested him. The boys at the school were required to write compo- 
sitions and were, for the most part, left to themselves in the large dor- 
mitory appropriated to the small boys to do as they pleased and to write 
what they could on any subject. To write original essays without hav- 
ing received any instruction whatever on that branch of education, and 
in the midst of a babel of voices free to be used as loudly and as long 
as their owners pleased, was no easy task; and the productions of those 
callow brains were curious in the extreme. But Lucius would seat 
himself to his task, seemingly unconscious of the conversations, the 
laughter, and the general confusion, and write with intelligence and 
coi'rectness, if not with elegance. 

The lads were also required to declaim, every week or two, such se- 
lections of prose or poetry as they might fancy; and, while the hours of 



HL^ LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 31 

the small boys for speaking iu tlie chapel wore times for amusemeut 
aud hilarity to the larger youths, Lucius was uever their sport. 
Although extremely modest and diffident, never seeking applause, and 
apparently uever caring for anything approaching notoriety, his little 
efforts on those occasions were marked by a dignity and a self-pos- 
session which won admiration. He seemed always to comprehend 
fully the meaning of tlie author, and made every syllable he spoke his 
own; so that emphasis, intonation, and gesture were admirably fitted to 
the subject. Doubtless he received assistance from his accomplished 
mother. So, also, iu the debating society he would often astonish and 
overwhelm his little rivals with argument masterly for a child. He 
never spoke unless he understood his subject thoroughly. He not only 
thought out his line of argument, but evidently also the very language 
in which it was expressed, and those expressions were unusually succinct 
and forcible. Nor did those little victories ever seem to render him 
vain or dispose him to underestimate the abilities of his mates. 

He was remarkably fond of listening to sermons, orations, aud dis- 
cussions, and even as a child seemed to have the ability to sift out the 
good from the bad, and to engrave the former upon his memory, as if 
with a burin upon steel— a capacity which became remarkably developed 
with him in after life. An illustration of this gift will be found in the 
following amusing anecdote, which he related at a dinner table to a cir- 
cle of friends in 1891, while the Methodist Ecumenical Conference was 
iu session in "Washington City: 

AVhile living in Covington his mother took him to hear a discussion 
between a professed Universalist (who was in reality an infidel) and an 
old Methodist local preacher. A great crowd had assembled. He and 
his mother secured favoral)le seats, and he listened with eager in- 
terest. Child as he was, he took in aud retained the whole scope of the 
argument, and he rehearsed it to his friends after the lapse of about fifty- 
five years. While pretending to believe the Bible, the infidel yet 
ridiculed the doctrine of the immortality of the soul; and in the course 
of his argument quoted from the Scriptures quite a number of passages 
to prove his position. In concluding he said that the soul was nothing 
but a breath of air, a something that lingered iu connection with the 
body for a time, and at death was exhaled like the breath, which was the 
last of it. He was a fine speaker, and clothed his thoughts in beautiful 
language. Just in front of him sat a lady who held a vinaigrette, which 
she occasionally applied to her nostrils. The speaker pointed to her 
and said: "See that smelling bottle in the hand of this lady: now the 
soul is nothing more than that! " 

The old preacher's time came for reply. He answered argument after 
argument in a masterly manner. Finally he alluded to this figure of 
the vinaigrette. He said: "Our friend has asserted that the soul is 



32 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

nothing more than a smelling bottle. He has quoted Scripture in proof 
of his position. Let us see how his theory will work. In the Scriptures 
it is said: 'And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, 
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a 
living smelling bottle.' — How beautiful is the thought contained in 
Jacob's remark to his father: 'Arise, I pray thee, sit and eat of my ven- 
ison, that thy siiielliiig bottle may bless me!'" By this time the crowd 
were thoroughly aroused to the situation, and the infidel began to show 
signs of wincing. The preacher continued: "What complacency must 
Jacob have felt in his possessions! for it is said: 'AH the smell ing hot- 
ties of his sons and his daughters were thirty and three.' And again: 
'All the smelling bottles that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out 
of his loins, besides Jacob's sons' wives, all the smelling bottles were three- 
score and six.' " — By this time the crowd had lost all control of them- 
selves, and were roaring with laughter. But the old preacher went on 
with his quotations: " 'Bless the Lord, O my smelling bottle! and all that 
is within me, bless his holy name! ' " At this his antagonist, completely 
routed, rose to leave, but the preacher said: "Just one word more: 
'Why art thoi; cast down, O my smell Ing bejttle? and why art thou dis- 
quieted within me? hope in God: for I shall yet praise him, who 
is the health of my countenance, and my God.' " And thereupon the 
infidel lied from the field. 

Mrs. Lamar's selection of Covington as a residence had been brought 
about by the recommendation of Mr. Harmong Lamar, a half uncle of 
her late husband. This gentleman was a very wealthy planter from 
Alabama, who had moved to Covington for the purpose of educating his 
sons. He was a devoted Christian, and was widely known for his kind- 
ness and generosity to the poor. After some years he returned to Ala- 
bama, but meanwhile his hand had something to do with directing the 
life of the young nephew. 

About the year 1838 the labor school was converted into Emory Col- 
lege, at Oxford, some two or three miles from Covington. Mrs. Lamar 
and Mr. Harmong Lamar disposed of their respective properties in the 
latter place and erected handsome residences in the former. Mrs. La- 
mar's premises were large and attractive. There was a two-story frame 
house, with all the conveniences and adjuncts then used and a beau- 
tiful flower garden at the front. Here she remained for a number of 
years, educating her boys at the college, and taking a few student 
boarders to help defray her expenses. Many of the letters found among 
the correspondence of the Justice refer in tender and grateful terms to 
her kindness to, and her ennobling influence over, the writers while they 
were youths at school. 

Here it was mainly that Lucius received the early bent which impart- 



ins LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 33 

ed a devotional strain to all his aftor life. The mother was a typical 
Georgia lady, in the possession of those qualities of shrewd, practical, 
and strong common sense for which the people of tliat State, as a class, 
are noted. Her generons hospitality, her agreeable personality, and her 
enthusiastic Methodism, made her home the rendezvous for the Meth- 
odist clergy of that time, and " Sister Lamar " was known far abroad. 
Thus Lucius' early life was subjected, in the most agreeable and fruit- 
ful way, to the eloquence, the fervid piety, and all of the fascinating in- 
fluences of the able clergy of that period. He loved to listen to the 
words of wisdom that fell from the lips of such men as Sam Anthony, 
James Evans, Lovick Pierce, and many others of the great preachers 
whose names are now historic in the Church; and the memory of their 
kindling and powerful utterances formed a treasury of reminiscence and 
deliglit from wdiich he drew largely until the day of his death. 

In August of the year 1841 Lucius Lamar entered the freshman class 
of Emory College at Oxford, Ga. He graduated in July, 1845. This 
institution had been chartered in 1837, and in 1841 its first class grad- 
uated. The social, religious, and educational advantages were excep- 
tionally fine. Under the auspices of the Methodist Church, its Presi- 
dent was then the Eev. A. B. Longstreet, eminent as a lawyer, judge, 
polemic, educator, and divine. 

During the first year of his college course Lucius manifested no spe- 
cial ability in his classes. Nor did he ever do so; but after his advance- 
ment to the sophomore class there was a marked improvement in stu- 
diousness and scholarship. His grade was highest in the classics and 
lowest in mathematics. This, however, was the result, not of any inca- 
pacity to deal with mathematics, but of a distaste for it which led to a 
comparative neglect. Here again his ability as a speaker was manifest- 
ed. He was a member of the Phi Gamma Society, and its records show 
that he was the leader in its debates. On every occasion throughout 
his college course he was awarded a speaker's place. 

In later days, in a Commencement address delivered at Emory Col- 
lege in July, 1870, he said this of his college life: that it was "bright 
and happy;" and then: 

No spot on earth has so helped to form and make me what I am as this town of Ox- 
ford. It was here, in tlie church which stands a little farther up the street, that I be- 
came fully impressed with the value and peril of my soul, and was led to pour out my 
contrite confessions. It was in yonder building, which now seems so deserted, that 
I became conscious of power. It was here, in the Phi Gamma Society, that I received 
my training as a debater. I see before me now many who wrestled with me then in 
the arena of debate. There sits a man who was one of the first (he was the second) 
to suggest that I had powers within me to stir men's hearts and to convince their rea- 
son. Wesley Hughes was the first. I know not where he is, but I send to him my 
greetings wherever he may be. Ihere sits the venerable man who, when I delivered 
3 



34 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR.- 

my graduating speech, in approval of its sentiments, placed his hand upon my head 
and gave me his blessing. There is another old man (Dr. Means) who sat at the very 
fountain head of my mind, and with loving hand directed the channel into which it 
was required to flow, and who, when I arrived at manhood, gave me my betrothed 
bride, who has ever since held the choicest place in my ati'ections and made my life 
one constant song of joy. 

]Manv of those whom I then knew have disappeared. Tliere was Prof. George W. 
Lane, who unlocked for us the pure springs of Gsecian literature, shedding over them 
all the rich light of his holy precepts and example; long since he went to his reward. 
There was also Lucius Whitie, the eloquent speaker, the ripe scholar, the refined gen- 
tleman, who in a-few years followed Lane to the grave. And many youniier have 
passed away. Robert Goodloe Hai-per, to whose soul my own was knit as was David 
to Jonathan, has gone. My two brothers and a host of the Emory students, who fell 
in defense of the noblest earthly cause that ever dawned upon humanity, now fill 
soldiers' graves. 

Many years later, ou May 13, 1887, while lie was Secretary of the In- 
terior, Mr. Lamar wrote to Eev. Edward Tliomson, o£ Los Angeles, Cal.: 

The obligation I am under to your sainted father (Bishop E. Thomson) through his 
writings is very great, and the sense of it grows in intensity and force the longer I 
live. . . . Much of my practical success in life among men is due to the principles 
I imbibed from the speeches of your father when he was President of a Western col- 
lege which I read during the formative state of my intellect and character. Those 
speeches were published in a magazine entitled the Ladies' Repository, and my atten- 
tion was called to them by my widowed mother, who was at a Methodist college in 
the South educating her sons. 

The fact that Mr. Lamar was educated at Emory College, and was so 
educated at the particular period during which he attended that insti- 
tution, is one most noteworthy. All are aware of the formative effects 
upon an ingenuous and noble youth of his college life. Mr. Lamar's 
life at Emory doubtless contributed largely to produce in him those sen- 
timents and opiiuous anent the question of slavery and its relation to 
the ijolitieal frame of the Federal Government which made him shortly 
afterwards a conspicuous and aggressive leader in Southern politics. 

It must be remembered that Mr. Lamar's mother and his uncle were 
Methodists so ardent that the location of the Methodist schotJs deter- 
mined their places of residence; also that Emory College was the expo- 
nent and the center of Georgia Methodism, while Georgia Methodism 
in turu was nearly or quite the center of that of the South. Again, the 
period was that of 1841 to 1845, which was that of the intensest agita- 
tion of the slavery question within the Church, and of the final rupture, 
on that issue, of that great denomination into its present Northern and 
Southern branches. At the General Conference at Cincinnati in 1836 
there had been agitation by the abolitionist wing within the Church, 
whereby it was sought to so alter the book of Discipline as to bring the 
Church as a whole more into line with tbe movement for abolition, and 
to free it "from the evil of slavery"; but the Conference refused to 



i//,S; LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 35 

take any action in that direction, and resolved that it was " docidodly 
opijosed to modern abolitionism," and disclaimed any right, wish, or in- 
tention to interfere in the civil and jjolitical lelation between master 
and slave as it existed in the slaveholding States of the Union. 

Nevertheless the agitation was continued, especially in the New En- 
gland States; and "extraordinary preambles and resolutions," in spite 
of the efforts of the bishops to prevent it, " were thrust upon the An- 
nual and Quarterly Conferences. Some of these resolutions censured 
the acts and attitude of other Annual Conferences, especially in the 
South; unchristianized a lai-ge proportion of American Methodists; re- 
flected seriously upon the administi'ation; and pronounced harsh judg- 
ment upon ministers and members in good standing in the Church who 
had not been arraigned."* Eepeated charges were brought, by two of 
the bishops and others, against some of the leaders in this excitement, 
of slander, defamation, etc., resulting in Church trials. The agitators 
claimed that no slaveholders should be admitted to membership in the 
Church; while on the other hand, in other quarters, even in the North, 
ministers were disciplined for attending abolition meetings and partici- 
pating in them. Tlie Wesleyan Methodist Church was established in 
1842, and made nouslaveliolding a condition of membership. 

When the General Conference of 1844 met in New York a resolution 
was introduced requesting the resignation of Bishop James O. Andrew, 
of Georgia, because of his ownership of slaves, which led to an anima- 
ted debate of several days' duration, culminating in the adoption of a 
resolution that Bishop Andrew desist from the exercise of his office so 
long as that impediment should exist. Thereupon, on June 5th, Dr. 
Longstreet, then the President of Emory College, "offered what is 
known as the 'Declaration of the Southern Delegates,'" to the effect 
that 

The delegates of the Conferences in the slaveholding States take leave to declare to 
the General Conference of the IMethodist Episcopal Church that the continued agit;i- 
tion on the sul:iject of slavery and abolition in a portion of the Church, and the fre- 
quent action on that suljject in tlie General Conferenco, and especially the extrajudi- 
cial proceedings against Bishop xVndrew, winch resulted, on Saturday last, in the vir- 
tual suspension of him from his office as Superintendent, must produce a state of 
things in the South which renders a continuance of the jurisdiction of this General 
Conference over those Conferences inconsistent with the success of the ministry in the 
slaveholding States. 

On this declaration the " Plan of Separation " was adopted three days 
subsequently.* 

It may be easily imagined with what deep feelings and eager discus- 
sion all these agitations and their final consummation were watched 
from Emory College. The questions touched the Southern people, not 
only as citizens and property holders, but also as Christians. It so hap- 

•"Historvof Methcwlisni." JIcTyeii-e, pp. 601-637. 



36 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR. 

peued that the ultimate struggle came over the qualification as a Chris- 
tian minister of a Georgia bishop, and the declaration for severance 
came from their own honored President. Inevitably such stirring- 
events, with which they were brought into such close relation, must 
have produced in the students impressions deep and lasting. It was 
certainly so with Mr. Lamar, and with him those impi'essions remained 
throughout life firmly fixed. 

Naturally it would happen that convictions thus acquired, and so 
burned in, as to the right of the Southern peoi^le to regulate their own 
domestic relations free from interference or dictation from the other 
portions of the Union, although coming through a religious controversy, 
should become metamoriDhosed into articles of political faith; and to a 
temperament such as Mr. Lamar's it was inevitable that such a political 
belief should, under the circumstances, reach the altitude and firmness 
of a religious dogma. 



CHAPTER III. 

Legal Education and Admission to the Bar— Marriage— Jud-re Longstreet— Mrs. Long- 
street— Mrs. Lamar and Mrs. Branliam— "Influence of Women." 

UPON his graduation, in the year 1845, Mr. Lamar began a study of 
the law. This work was prosecuted at Macon, in the office and 
under the direction of the Hon. Absalom H. Chappell, a lawyer of dis- 
tinction who had married his youngest aunt, Loretto. After two years 
he was admitted to the bar at Vienna, iu Dooly County, Judge Litt 
Warren presiding. After the admission, Judge Christopher B. Strong, 
long a Georgia judge for two different circuits, rose and openly congrat- 
ulated young Lamar upon his examination, saying, amongst other things, 
that he was a friend and cotemporary of the deceased Judge Lamar. 

Mr. Chappell then took young Lamar into partnership, and a firm of 
Chappell and Lamar was formed to practice at the Macon bar. This 
arrangement, however, lasted but a very short time. Mr. Chappell soon 
moved to Columbus, and Mr. Lamar offered for practice iu Covington. 

It is an interesting and noteworthy fact that the aunt whose amiable 
and accomjjlished husband gave her nephew liis first training and start 
in business outlived the Justice, and yet resides in Columbus, Ga. 

On the 15th of July, 1847, Mr. Lamar was married to Miss Virginia 
Lafayette Longstreet, daughter of the Kev. Augustus B. Longstreet, then 
President of Emory College. In his life many fortunate events befell 
him, but this was perhaps the most fortunate of all. "We have his own 
testimony going very nearly to that extent. Years afterwards, when he 
was a member of Congress, in a large assemblage of Mississippi's bright- 
est and noblest men and women, he was heard to say to a knot of uni- 
versity students: "Young gentlemen, I hope every one of you will get 
married, and that none of you will have more cause to regret it than I. 
For if I am worthy of the respect and confidence of my fellow-citizens, 
or ever shall be in the future, I want my wife to have full credit for it." 

This Longstreet family, into which Mr. Lamar married, became in 
the fullest sense his own family. With it he lived on the most intimate 
and affectionate terms so long as they all did live; and their love, en- 
couragement, and assistance pervaded and greatly colored his subse- 
quent history. It is therefore necessary, at some length, to consider 
them. 

Judge Longstreet was descended, in the fourth remove, from Dirk 
Stoffels Langestraat, a Dutchman wlio in Ifio? settled ui)mi Long Is- 
land, then a part of the Dutch colony of New Netherlands. His parents, 

(37) 



38 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

William Longstreet and Hannah Randolph (formei'ly FitzRandolph), 
were natives of New Jersey; but he was born in Augusta, Ga., on the 
22d of September, 1790. 

Graduating at Yale College in 1813, he immediately entered the cele- 
brated- law school of Reeve & Gould, at Litchfield, Conn. In 1815 he 
was admitted to the bar, and in 1817 settled in Greensboro. He was 
successful, and quickly rose to eminence in his profession. In 1821 he 
was elected to the legislative assembly; and on the 8th of November, 
1822, was commissioned judge of the Ocmnlgee Circuit, than which 
there was then no higher judicial position in Georgia. He was the 
youngest practitioner, as, later. Judge Lamar was the youngest man, 
raised to that position in the State. 

It was at this period of his life that he began that series of inimitable 
humorous sketches which have been since published to the world as the 
"Georgia Scenes." 

In 1821 he was a candidate for Congress, with every prospect of suc- 
cess; but the death of his only son, to whom he was tenderly attached, 
following, as it did, closely upon the death of a beautiful little daughter, 
and that of his wife's mother, clipped the wings of his worldly ambition 
forever, and turned his thoughts heavenward. He withdrew from the 
congressional race, and he and his wife became earnest seekers and pro- 
fessoi's of religion. 

About the year 1827 he moved to Augusta, and there continued the 
practice of his profession, with much success. But his mind was bent 
on other things, and in the very flood of success, during the year 1838, 
he became a minister of the gospel in the Methodist Church. 

Judge Longstreet was an ardent politician, and was devoted to the 
cause of State rights and the Jeffersoniau school of strict construction. 
His articles, over the signature of "Bob Short," in the days of nullifi- 
cation, exerted a jaowerful influence on the public mind. During that 
period of excitement he established and edited the Augusta Sentinel. 

In the latter part of the year 1839 he was elected President of Em- 
ory College. Under his superintendence that institution greatly pros- 
pered, soon rivaling the State University in patronage and importance. 
Here he remained until July, 1848, when he resigned: and in February 
or ^[arch, 1849, was installed as President of the Centenary College 
(also a Methodist institution), at Jackson, La. In September, 1849, 
however, he was inaugui-ated as President of the University of Missis- 
sippi, located at Oxford, in that State, which position he resigned in 
185(3. Late in 1857 he was chosen President of the South Carolina 
College, and continued to occupy tliat jxjsition until the institution was 
deserted by the students in a body for the Confederate army on the 
breaking out of the Civil War. This closed his public career, and he 
lived quietly at home, at Oxford, ^liss., except such interruption as was 




REV. AUGUSTUS B. LONGSTREET. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AKD SPEECHES. 39 

caused by the war, uutil liis death, which occurred on the 9th of July, 
1870. 

Judge Lougstreet's figure was tall aud spare, his carriage easy and 
quietly graceful. He had a fair complexion, with brown hair and blue 
eyes; mouth rather large aud very flexible, with strong aud perfect 
teeth, which never decayed, but were worn down by age. Abounding 
in physical vitality, in his younger days he was fond of athletic sj^orts 
aud exercises. With a pleasant and winning address, he was courteous 
and regardful of the feelings aud rights of others. He had the power 
to draw frieuds strongly and to hold them firmly. He was a modest 
man, yet possessed a high sense of personal dignity, was sensitive to 
affront, and prompt to resent it; under all circumstances self-possessed; 
by no means quarrelsome, yet he was combative. His piety was deep 
and ever present. An enthusiastic Methodist, aud devoted to all spe- 
cial interests of that denomination, he neither believed in any repression 
of individual opinions or compulsory conformity to arbitrary rules, nor 
entertained any narrow jealousies of other sects of Christians; he was 
thoroughly catholic. As a writer his style was fluent, limpid, jDi-ecise, 
idiomatic, and fascinating; his letters especially were charming. He 
was a ready and attractive speaker, but was not a pulpit orator, since 
he studiously avoided in his sermons anything which might savor of 
intellectual pride rather than of the humility becoming to a minister 
of the gospel. His friends thought him overscrupulous in this resi^ect. 

He was very energetic aud industrious. When over seventy -five 
years of age, iu order that he might write an article on Biblical trans- 
lation, he undertook a study of the Hebrew, aud made some advance- 
ment in that difficult tongue. As a lawyer he was acute, learned, sym- 
pathetic, and generous. The best work of his life was done, however, 
as an educator, in which calling he displayed to greatest advantage all 
of his varied qualities aud accomplishments, including a ti-ue pedagog- 
ical instinct and an iin usual capacity for organization and administra- 
tion; while his learning without pedantry and his iinquestionable gen- 
ius gave him a strong hold upon the fancy of his pupils. He was 
gifted with both a ready aud sparkling wit and a shrewd aud rollicking 
humor, both of which were kindly, true, spontaneous, and apparently 
inexhaustible; while also he was an accomplished mimic. The rendi- 
tion of one of his own " Scenes " by himself was a thing not soon to be 
forgotten by any who heard it. 

Finally, he was shrewd, systematic, and orderly in business; very 
thrifty, yet always capable of generous expenditures and large chari- 
ties. No man was ever a kinder or more indulgent husband and father, 
or a kindlier counselor to any who were in troulile. 

Such was the man under whose influence Mr. Lamar came so inti- 
mately at the plastic age of twenty-two. While there were many points 



40 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

of dissimilaiity between the two men, it cannot be doubted that the 
mental and moral qualities of the father-in-law, for whom he had al- 
ways the highest respect and love, contributed largely to the establish- 
ment of his own character. In 1859 Mr. Lamar wrote to him thus: "I 
am indebted to yoii for ennobling intiuences from my boyhood u]^ to 
middle age. I have doubtless often pained you, but for many years I 
have loved you as few sons love a father. And many a time in mo- 
ments of temptation your influence, the desire of your love and appro- 
bation, have served me when my virtue might have failed. No applause 
of the public delights me so much as your declaration that I am un- 
speakably dear to you." 

Mrs. Frances Eliza Longstreet, daughter of Emsley Parke and Mary 
Hawkins, was born in Eandolph County, N. C, on the 5th of March, 
1799. By the will of her grandfather, followed by the death of her 
only brother, she became possessed of an estate quite considerable, 
considering the times and the locality. She was educated at Warren- 
ton, Ga., and was married to Mr. Longstreet on the 2d of March, 1817. 
This couple lived together in mutual esteem and tenderest love for 
fifty-one years. 

She was of a delicate constitution, and suffered much; but the crown- 
ing sorrow of her weakness was the frailty of her children, of whom 
she lost all in their infancy except two daughters. She herself died 
on the 13th of November, 1808. 

Mrs. Longstreet was a typical Southern lady. Her life and her home 
were illustrated by every charm, and they were powers in the commu- 
nities in which she lived. The following exquisite pictures — the one 
by Dr. Wightman, of "Washington City, the other by Justice Lamar 
himself — contributed to the "Life of Judge Longstreet" by Bishop 
Fitzgerald — are reproduced here because of their tender and truthful 
portrayal of this lovely woman. 

Dr. Wightman says: 

Between President Longstreet and his lovely wife there was a striking contrast. 
He was tall, bent, scarred — an oak among men; she was small, graceful, with a sweet 
face — a flower. She had intwined herself into all his labors, and it would be a ques- 
tion which influeneed the college boys more, the President or his charming lady. 
Her power was not seen, but felt. Her husband could not have attained the s:ime 
greatness had he not jiossessed a better Eve, cajiable of guiding his house and of in- 
fluencing his profound thoughts. He was keenly alive to passing influences, and his 
nature was suscejitible of vivid impressions. On that nature she impressed the con- 
victions of her own mind. His large and dependent heart gladly respondeil to the 
thoughts so pure and lovely, and made him share with her the responsibilities of his 
lugh position. She nobly accepted the loving charge and linked herself in sympathy 
to her husband's loftiest aspirations for a higher life ami breathed into them the in- 
spiration that comes only from a pious heart. 

There was a cliarm about the house. The table smiled. The quiet atmosphere 



ins LIFK, TIMES, AND Sl'KECUES. 41 

•was redolent of love. The liuly was a queen in manners. Nothing was coniinanded, 
yet every one owned the supremacy of a subtle power. Tlie servants caught tlie 
spirit. Even the President was ijlad to acknowledge himself the loyal subject of an 
accomplished wife, who dutifully studied every resi)onsibility of his life. 

There flowed in her conversation a rhythm of delight. She was Ainuliar with the 
English classics; Milton, Shakespeare, Longfellow, and Keats were her companions. 
She put them in her memory, and the sublime passages of these masters of poetry 
rolled from her bewitching tongue in colloquial eloquence. She played on a better 
than a Syrian harp. The President drank from these wells of pure English, and sweet- 
ened the tone of his literature from the poetic lips of his wife. 

It was a Christian home — no wine nor noisy show, no hollow flattery nor nodding 
plumes hiding the worm that was gnawing at the heart, no gilded vanity and smooth 
and facile courtesy and sarcastic epigram; but a home of real joy and substantial love, 
lit uj) with hope, where a Christian wife inspired her husband with the noblest sen- 
timents of conjugal fidelity. 

Somehow there crept out from that little woman a commanding, motherly power 
that held three hundred young men loyal to the college. The President sat at her 
feet; and the boys, at his. This home was a shelter from the storm, and far above the 
darkness he saw one star that shed a soft and heavenly light on his troubled si)irit. 
Nor was this a house of idleness. Those delicious biscuits and smoking rolls and the 
aromatic cofl'ee told the story of a dutiful housewife. The table was hospitable, and 
from that board went food into the mouths of the poor, and at the footway of that 
mansion stooil one whose hands had become the unweary instruments of dispensing 
to the needy. 

Her charity was large, her faith was simple. She was a Methodist woman. Her 
Bible was marked with devotion; and could the walls of her cliandjer repeat the bur- 
den of her prayers, they would become witnesses of her fidelity to God. Here was 
the secret of her power. She lived with God; she loved him; all was his. 

Justice Lamar said: 

Mrs. Longstreet was the mother of my wife; and she was in love, tenderness, and 
goodness my mother. It is, therefore, hardly possible for me either to think or speak 
of her as if in the perspective. She was a true type of a true Southern woman ; and 
when I say that I mean that she embodied that indescribable charm, that spirit of lo\-e, 
that subtle effluence of refinement, that piety and culture of character, which rarely 
failed to be wrouglit into the nature of a woman reared under a Southern roof, with 
its sacred environments and clustering joys. 

To an eye not accustomed to analyze the indications of female character she might 
appear too reserved, and even retiring, to possess those qualities that make up a her- 
oine in the conflicts of life. But her modesty, which, like a sensitive plant, shrank 
from rude familiarities, was sustained by a courage that never shrank from hardship, 
trial, and self-denial. The war diil not subdue her spirit. She came from its desola- 
tions undismayed by the poverty which it entailed upon herself and the dear ones of 
her own family. She visited the homes of the poor and turned her own into a hos- 
pital, and did not hesitate to bathe her gentle hand in blood that she might bind the 
wounds of the dying. 

The gentleness of her manners, the grace of her motion, the reserve of her dignity, 
only served the lietter to set off the brightness that shone in her conversation and to 
disclose an intelligence that threw a charm over the modesty of her nature. Full of 
warmth and tenderness and depth of feeling, confiding, trustworthy, a lover of home, 
a true wife and mother, her hand touched and beautified and sanctified all domestic 
relations. 

She was nurtured amid an elegar.t hospitality and made familiar with all the dn- 



42 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

ties and delicate relations of social life, which strengthened her character and uncon- 
sciously prepared her to glide into the higher powers of mistress over a numerous 
body of domestics and dependents, and to govern a Southern patriarchal home. The 
profound and long-abiding attachment between the mistress and her old servants, in- 
cluding the descendants of the old negro nurse who rocked her in the cradle and the 
dusky maids with whom she played " house " in childhood, was not shaken by the 
war; Init it lingers even to this day, and illustrates the substantial and lasting influ- 
ences of the old home life. 

Both Mrs. Lamar and lier elder sister, Mrs. Dr. Branliam, were such 
ladies as such a home aud such parents would be expected to produce. 
They were much alike in general appearance, rather above medium 
height, witli slender, though not thin, figures; quite small heads, very 
small and delicately cut and i)leasiug features (Mrs. Branham's beiug 
more like those of their father in outline), with remarkably fair com- 
plexions, black hair, and blue-gray eyes. In them were gathered all of 
those attractive qualities, both of mind and soul, which Justice Lamar 
so tenderly portrays as possessed by their mother. Both had been 
finely edncatf^d and accomplished. Notable housewives, they had all 
of the arts which go to make home delightful and to crown the lives of 
their families with a perfect hajjpiuess. Each had iuiieriled a large 
measure of the special graces and powers of their parents, yet with a 
difference. Mrs. Branham had her father's wit, bright, sparkling, and 
Xjungeut, but tempered by the kindliest feeling; while Mrs. Lamar had 
her father's abounding and i^erennial humor, with his rare powers of 
mimicry, to which she occasionally gave rein in the retirement of her 
own home, to the great amusement of her friends. 

Both had the cheerful disposition of their father. Mrs. Lamar, even 
while engaged in her household duties, effervesced and exhilarated like 
champagne. Her lively chatting from room to room with the various 
members of the family or with the servants, her audible little solilo- 
quies, the mild hectoring in which the diligent but gentle and vivacious 
housewife indulged, were inspiriting and often most amusing; and the 
whole was shot with snatches of song, now gay and again devout. Mrs. 
Branham's cheerfulness, on the other hand, was of a more tranquil 
character, being modified by somewhat of the gentle peiisiveness of 
their mother; and .she was much more given to serious and introspective 
musing than was her sister. Both had the courage and endurance of 
their parents. In all of his checkered life, when her husband was often 
in serious peril, either in person or in political fortunes, Mrs. Lamar 
was never harassed by anxieties about possible ills. She rested secure 
in the confidence that "Lucius," as she called her husband, would come 
through unscathed and triumphant. Nor was this a want of sensibility, 
for she possessed that quality in a high degree, and to all the varying 
fortunes of the family she immediately adjusted herself with a ready 



HIS IJFE. TIMES, AND SPF.ECIIES. 43 

aud a cheerful acquiesceiici'. Her lieart was simply an unfailing spring 
of bright waters, aud her brave eyes refused to fall before the glare of 
troubles, but gave dull care on all occasions and everywhere the cut di- 
rect. Mrs. Branham had a si)berer and more apprehensive temper. 
The trials which her .sister ignored she anticipiated, recognized, brooded 
over, aud either endured or conquered. 

The sisters were inseparable companions; in fact, were never during 
their lives separatetl, except for brief periods. They and their parents, 
their husbands and children, aiforded a beautiful example of family 
unity and harmony. They all lived together much as one family, fre- 
quently in the same residence for long periods, and their children grew 
up calling each other '"brother" and "sister." 

So it was that Mr. Lamar during nearly the whole of his life, ;ind 
during all of the critical jjart of it, had the singular good fintune that 
he could draw without stint upon two so royally gifted, womanly, aud 
Christian souls. Their iuflneuce thrilled through his life like a strain 
of ex([uisite song in which each singer carries a ilifterent part, yet there 
is perfect accord and perfect unison, with a constant recurrence to one 
elevating and insi)iriting motif. 

So complex and wayward are the influences which control the mi ods 
of men that into the life of every man of genius aud deep feeling, no 
matter how strong he may be or how fortunate aud successful, come 
hours like anchorets, arrayed in somber garb and set from others 
apart; hours in which a troubled heart and a faltering spirit cry out 
for the healing and strengthening touch of another's sympathy and 
love. At such periods — indeed, at all periods, but especially then — 
there is no blessing so great as a wife such as was Mrs. Lamar. And 
how greatly is that blessing increased when the wife, so rarely endowed, 
carries also into her husband's life the added boon of a sister, her equal 
and perfect complement in social, mental, aud spiritual graces, aud dif- 
fering in love only as the devotion of a sister differs from that of a 
wife! Frequently aud freely did Mr. Lamar profit by that sisterly af- 
fection. He was infinitely tender toward his wife and thoughtful of 
her happiness. Her bright spirit was a sustaining power to his own 
soul, and he had the wisdom to know its value. Often when somber 
moods would come upon him, with a perfect assurance of his wife's 
ability and anxious readiness to leave the sunny skies of her own spir- 
itual flight and share the darkness of his groping, he still would shrink, 
because of his own loving unwillingne.ss, from placing that Inirden upon 
her; or, again, in different humor, he would find solace and relief not only 
in her quick sympathies and loving faith, but also in a wider commun- 
ion. In any eveut and whatever his state of feeling, besides the tender 
wife, there was nearly always the resource of a .solemn and encouraging 
talk with "Sister Fannie," from which he would often come forth both 



44 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAK. 

with reuewed strength for life's hard combats, with renewed zest for 
brighter waliis, and without any remorseful thought that he had laid 
upon either ministering spirit the weight of a melancholy beyond its 
strength to bear. 

This sounds like a sketch of romance, but it is the simple statement 
of a tn;th, a feeble description of the personal relations for nearly forty 
years of three loving, noble, and loyal souls. Mr. Lamar himself recog- 
nized these influences without doubt. In a pocket note-book kept by 
him while Secretary of the Interior, which contains a qiieer jumble of 
sentimental, legal, political, social, and business notes, is to be found 
this passage, which no one who knew him well can read without a con- 
fident assurance that he penned it with his thoughts fixed upon the 
women who had been the good genii to him: 

It is to the influence of woman that all man's greatness or his viciousness may "be 
traced. No man (or history is felse), no man has ever won the world's applause for 
noble deetls, for self-sacrificing efforts, around whose infant brow a mother's hands 
have not placed the chaplet of virtue and honor, or upon whose heart her love or the 
affections of a sister or the attachment of a wife have not impressed the indelible lin- 
eaments of true greatness. The influence of woman — it can hush the harth and dis- 
cordant notes of passion; in the cause of aflection or duty it has a charm that can 
arrest the murderer's hand and stay the tide of vengeance. And that influence is 
working in our midst. There is not a heart that has not been molded or that will 
not Ije directed by the same potent spell. As irresistibly as the beautiful moon sways 
tlie ocean tides, bidcling them to ebb and flow, so does the light of woman's smile 
compel the currents of man's heart to flow on until they cover the l;)arren rocks of 
selfishness, the desert spots of crime, making the glad soil rejoice and blossom. And 
so also can the cloud of woman's frown drive back the genial tide until that heart 
will be once more as sterile as the rocks of Petra or as Sahara's arid sands. 

It is no shame to us men that we are the subjects of so gentle a scepter. As well 
might the cold earth complain that the genial influences of the springtime or the 
blessings of tlie rain or the dew compel it to bring forth the blooming flower or the 
fruitful vine; for neither spring nor rain nor dew ever brought a greater blessing 
upon earth than the sweet influence which man's fair companion has bestowed upon 
his sterner mnlii. 

Nor was this recognition of women as a potent factor in the shaping 
of men and their lives a mere theory or sentiment with him. It is re- 
membered that while he was Confederate Commissioner to Kussia, a cele- 
brated French lady, prominent at the court of the Emperor Napoleon, 
remarked of him that he was apparently the only diplomatist at that 
court who fully recognized, and endeavored to utilize, the jjower of the 
women there. 



CHAPTER lY. 

Removal to Oxford, Miss.— Aflmitted to the Mississippi Bar— Elected to an Adjunct 
•Professorsliip in tlie ITijiversity of Mississippi— I>/?w( as a Tolitical Speaker— The 
Comi:>romise Measures of 1,S.")0— Debate with Footc over tlie Compromise. 

WHEN Judge Longstreet went to Mississippi, in September, 1849, 
to take charge of the State University, he addressed to Mr. La- 
mar, then living in Covington, Ga., a letter which induced him also 
to remove to Oxford, Miss., for the purpose of practicing law. Tliat 
village was the county site of a large and prosperous -county in the 
northern part of the State, in a region, embracing about two-fifths of 
the State's entire area, which had been ceded by the Indians to the 
whites only about fifteen to eighteen years before; and it, therefore, was 
a new country. There was a great and rapid immigration. Mr. La- 
mar's trip was made overland in a rockaway and two wagons, carrying 
his wife, infant daughter, and servants. The travelers reached Oxford 
about the middle of November, the Branhams following in the next year. 

Under date of May 14, 1850, Mr. Lamar wrote as follows to Mr. Chap- 
pell: 

Dear Sir : I received a few weeks since your letter accompanying the commission 
from the Governor of Georgia, wliich you were Ivind enouKli to obtain for me. 1 post- 
poned my reply until I could get qualified. Inclosed you have the certificate of the 
judse, which you will oblige me by sending to the Governor. I thank you, my dear 
sir, for the sentiments of friendship and regard which you express for me; my heart 
responds to it all. The knowletlge that I possess your esteem will always incite me 
to deserve it; and should I live to realize your flattering liopes of me, my chief pleas- 
ure will be in the belief that it gratifies such friends as you and my aunt, at the bare- 
mention of wliose name my heart beats with a sacred impulse. And I hope I shall 
be pardoned for repeating licre what upon every fit occasion I delight to say to your- 
selves and others, that after my own immediate family there is no being on earth for 
whom I entertain an afi'ection so devoted and abiding as that which I chensli for no- 
Aunt Loretto. The year I lived with you was fraught with benefits to my character 
of incalculable value, and from you in particular I have received impressions which 
I shall carrv with me to my grave. I can never reciprocate these kindnesses, but 
should the thne unfortunatelv ever come when your children may need a friend (and 
what may not happen in this whirligig world?), they will have one in me, firm and 

true. , , , fi N- i 

This is a magnificent countrv for planters. There are men here who left Newton 
County poor and in debt eight and ten years ago, who now have a good plantation and 
fifteen to twenty hands, and are buying more every year. ... 

There will be, a month or two hence, an election of two additional tutors for this 
university; and as the duties of one of them will not be so onerous as to draw my 
attention from mv profession, I shall apply for it. My motive for tliis step is to pro- 
vide myself with" read V monev until I get a practice, but more particularly to extri- 
cate my mother from some pecuniary embarrassments in which she baa become in- 
^ (45) 



46 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

volved, rather by untoward circumstances than by her own mismanagement. ... It 
is my duty, and it will be my pleasure, to avail myself of this opportunity to relieve 
a mother whose whole widowhood has been a history of self-sacrifices for her chil- 
dren. 

On the 1st of June, 1850, Mr. Lamar was licensed, on examination, by 
the Hon. Hugh E. Miller, to practice "as an attorney and counselor at 
law and solicitor in chancery in all the courts of law and equity" in 
the State. In July of the same year he was elected adjimct professor 
of mathematics in the university, the princiiial jirofessorship being 
held by Dr. Albert T. Bledsoe, later distinguished as an author and as 
the editor of the Southern Revieir. Mr. Lamar at once endeavored to 
qualify himself to manage his department most advantageously, and, 
amongst otlie*' preparations, corresponded with the teacher of mathe- 
matics at Emory College in respect to his methods and experiences. 

In the latter p&vt of this year, also, he began to make political 
speeches, and they were favorably received. Indeed, they seem to have 
made him a local reputation somewhat unusual for a neophyte. It was 
in the autumn of 1851, however, that he was first pitted against a formi- 
dable foe, and won his spurs. In order that this incident may be under- 
stood, it will be necessary to make a brief historical digression. 

In the year 1851 there was intense excitement and profound agitation 
in the slaveholding States of this Union. Nowhere was that excite- 
ment more intense or the agitation more profound than in Mississippi. 
The direct cause of it was certain legislation which had been indulged 
in by the preceding Congress, which bore upon the question of slavery, 
but especially the admission of the State of California with an anti- 
slavery constitution and, it was claimed, in a grossly irregular manner. 

From the formation of the Federal Union there existed between the 
North and the South a jealousy of political power, which was pregnant 
with immense issues and dire resitlts. That jealousy was the life of the 
subsequent great struggle over slavery as a domestic institution. Ex- 
cept as a xjolitical force, it is more than doubtful whether that particular 
struggle would ever have been. The possession of slaves was not only 
a unifying agency for the South, but it was also understood to be a source 
of political power to each State, iuasmiich as under the constitution the 
representation of each State in Congress was fixed at the sum of its white 
citizens and of three-fifths of all its slaves; and that j^rovision was gen- 
erally, although erroneously, understood to have been adoj^jted as a repre- 
sentation of property. In the North, therefore, the political and the 
moral questions conspired to produce an intense opposition to any in- 
crease of the slave States; while in the South the political question, and 
the anxiety to secure a vested property interest, conspired to produce a 
desire equally intense to make such an increase. 

The first great contest over this issue was on the admission of Mis- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 47 

souri. lu that region were already many slaves, and in 1819 the terri- 
tory applied for admission under a constitution which recognized slav- 
ery. The application failed by a disagreement between the two houses 
of Congress; the House refusing assent unless a clause abolishing slav- 
ery should be inserted in the constitution, while the Senate held that 
such a requirement would be violative of the Constitution of the United 
States. In 1820 the application of Missouri was renewed. After a pro- 
tracted and bitter controversy a compromise, known to history as the 
" Missouri Compromise," was agreed on, the substance of which was that 
the State should be admitted with a proslavery constitution, but with a 
prohibition in the act of admission against slavery in all of the territo- 
ry north and west of Missouri, down to the parallel of thirty-six degrees 
and thirty minutes. 

Then came, in time, the annexation of Texas, the Mexican "War, and 
the acquisition from Mexico of vast territories reaching to the Pacific 
Ocean. This straightway opened a new question. The autislavery 
party began to declare that, notwithstanding the Missouri Compromise, 
slavery should not be introduced into any newly acquired territory — 
not even below the line of thirty-six thirty— that the compromise was 
limited to such territory as was embraced in the old province of Louis- 
iana. In August, 1846, when the President requested an appropriation 
to enable him to negotiate a treaty of peace with Mexico, based on a ces- 
sion of territory, a Democratic member from Pennsylvania offered a 
proviso to the appropriation bill, called after him the " Wilmot Provi- 
so," to the effect that as an express and indispensable condition to the 
acquisition, slavery should never be allowed therein. This proviso was 
passed by the House, but was rejected by the Senate. The territory 
subsecjuently ceded by Mexico was acquired free from its operation. 
But its introduction, its advocacy, and its almost success, were regarded 
by the State rights party as a practical repudiation of the Missouri 
Compromise, and accordingly were deeply resented and bitterly de- 
nounced. 

In February, 1847, Mr. Calhoun presented in the Senate a set of res- 
olutions to the effect that, inasmuch as the territories were the common 
property of all the States, Congress had no constitutional power what- 
ever to exclude from them slaves, the legal property of so many of the 
citizens of the States of the Union; and in the South the opinion rapid- 
ly crystallized that the only just or constitutional course for Congress to 
adopt was one of absolute nonintervention. The Soutii demanded 
"simply not to be denied equal rights iu settling and colonizing the 
common public domain;" and that when territories should be formed 
into States their people " might be permitted to act as they pleased upon 
the subject of the status of the negro race amongst them, as upon all other 
subjects of internal policy, when they came to form their constitutions." 



48 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

lu April, lS-i9, Gen. Bennett Kiley was, by the United States Govern- 
ment, appointed military governor of the newly acquired province of 
California; and in June, by the initiative of President Taylor, who had 
been elected by the Whig party, he called a convention to meet at Mon- 
terey for the purpose of forming a State constitution. This convention 
adopted such a constitution, antislavery in character, on the 13th of 
October, which was ratified by a vote of the people. In December a 
Governor was elected under this constitution, and application was made 
to Congress for admission. A proposition was made to continue the 
line of the Missouri Compromise through the newly acquired territories 
to the Pacific. This measure was defeated in the Senate by a vote of 
thirty-two nays to twenty-four yeas. All of the affirmative votes were 
cast by Southern Senators; and all of the negative votes, except two from 
Missouri and Kentucky, by Northern Senators, Delaware being then 
counted as a Northern State. The pacification effected by the Missouri 
Compromise, and which had endured for thirty years, was now ended. 
There was a furious struggle between the two sections. It was, 
in fact, a struggle for the control of Congress. The North had con- 
trolled the House from the foundation of the government, at first by 
the exclusion of two-fifths of the negro population in the count for ap- 
portionment of representation, and later by its superiority in popula- 
tion; but the attitude of the Senate was different. There a system of 
admitting States practically in pairs, a Northern and a Southern State 
together, had long been established; so that when the question of the 
admission of California arose the North and the South were equal in 
strength in the Senate, and the admission of California with an anti- 
slavery constitution meant that the North should control both Houses. 
The opposition urged that the organization of California into a State 
without any enabling act of Congress was illegal and revolutionary; that 
the refusal to extend the compromise line to the Pacific, whereby two 
States might in time be formed, one of each class, as theretofore, pro- 
ceeded from a purpose to admit California as a State, rightly or wrong- 
ly, with an antislavery constitution, in denial of the constitutional and 
equitable rights of the South tc3 have equal practical benefit with the 
North in the territories acquiied by their common expenditure of treas- 
ure, suffering, heroism, and blood. They did not deny the abstract 
proposition that each new State should determine for itself what form 
of constitution it would adopt; but they charged that the requisite pop- 
ulation did not yet exist in California, such as it had being mainly com- 
posed of Mexicans, South Americans, and adventurers, drawn thither 
temporarily by the " gold fever," and that the pretended vote on which 
the constitution was based was cast by persons not enfranchised by any 
competent authority, while the region itself was largely under the con- 
trol of military organizations from New York, sent thither during the 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AXD SI'EECHES. 49 

Mexican War, aud disbanded in California on tho restoration of peace; 
that tlie powers of the Federal Government were in fact unfairly aud 
nnconstitntionally nsed to trammel and defeat the popular will if it was 
favorable to slavery, and they denied that the proposed new State was 
practically allowed to determine the matter for itself. 

This conflict led to the adoption of the celebrated "Compromise 
Measures of 1850," which, in effect, were as follows: California was ad- 
mitted with her free constitution; the remainder of the Mexican cession 
was organized into territories without any provisions as to slavery, thus 
leaving its establishment therein, or exclusion therefrom, to the choice 
of the settlers; certain territory claimed by Texas was purchased from 
her and annexed to New Mexico; the domestic slave trade in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia was abolished, but a pledge giveu not to interfere else- 
where with slavery or the internal slave trade; and the South was con- 
ceded a fugitive slave law more efficient than the one passed in 1793. 
The last item of the compromise was advanced as the real compensation 
to the South for the other unacceptable measures. Under the act of 
1793 it was the duty of the Federal Government to return fugitive slaves 
to their owners whenever they had escaped into States other than those 
in which they were held. The Legislatures of thirteen of the nonslave- 
holding States, however, had passed statutes which forbade the State of- 
ficials to cooperate in such cases (such cooperation being a part of the 
scheme of the act of 1793), and in many instances riots and bloodshed 
had followed upon attempts of slaveowners to recover their property. 
The act of 1850, therefore, provided for a prompter and more effective 
execution by the Federal Government of its obligation in this respect. 
Most of the Southern people, however, believed not in the efficacy of the 
act of 1850. They regarded it as a snare. They had no faith that in 
the communities whose sentiment was such as to produce the results in- 
dicated above the Federal officers would carry out, or would be per- 
mitted to carry out, the new act of Congress any more than had been 
done under the previous act of Congress. They felt that they were of- 
fered the shadow for the substance. 

However, notwithstanding these objections and recalcitrations, the act 
admitting California aud the Fugitive Slave Law were passed, Califor- 
nia being admitted in September, 1850. 

It will readily be conceived that pending these controversies the South 
was not dormant. In October, 1849, a convention was h(>ld in Jackson 
by which resolutions were adopted asserting the equal right of the Soiith 
in and to the free use and enjoyment of the new territories, and by which 
also a convention of delegates from the Southern States was called to 
meet at Nashville in Jane, 1850, for the purpose of concerting measures 
for the securing of those rights, and others similar in nature. 

On the 21st of January, 1850, Senators Davis and Foote, and the four 
4 



50 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

Eepreseutatives from Mississippi, addressed a letter to Gov. Quitman, 
in which they notified him, and through him their common constituents, 
that California would be admitted; that their individual opinions had 
undergone no change; that they regarded such action, tinder all the cir- 
cumstances of her application, as an attempt to pass the AVilmot Provi- 
so in another form. They said, further, that they desired, through the 
Governor, to submit to the people and the Legislature the single fact that 
California would most likely be admitted with an antislavery constitu- 
tion, and that they should be greatly pleased to have such expression of 
opinion by the Legislature, the Governor, and, if practicable, by the peo- 
ple, as should clearly indicate the course which Mississippi would deem 
it her duty to pursue "in this new emergency." 

This letter was by the Governor submitted to the Legislature, and 
that body on the 5th of March adopted a series of resolutions upon the 
subject, setting forth its view of the situation and particularly that the 
policy theretofore pursued by the government in refusing to provide a 
territorial government for California had been and was eminently cal- 
culated to promote, and was about to effect indirectly, the cherished ob- 
ject of the abolitionists, which could not be accomplished by direct 
legislation without a palpalile violation of the Constitution; that the 
admission of California under the circumstances would be an act of 
fraud and oppression on the rights of the slaveholding States, and that 
it was the sense of the Legislature that the Senators and Representa- 
tives should to the extent of their ability resist it by all honorable and 
constitutional means. 

Notwithstanding these resolutions, based on the letter calling for 
them, Mr. Foote finally voted for the admission of California, being in- 
duced to do so by the compromise measures detailed above. There- 
upon, at an extra session of the Legislature convened in November, a 
resolution was adopted which set forth the above letter and the above 
resolutions and indorsed the action of Mr. Davis and of the Eepresent- 
atives, but disapproved the action of Senator Foote and declared that 
"this Legislature does not consider the interests of the State of Missis- 
sippi committed to his charge safe in his keeping." 

The same Legislature passed an act providing for a convention of the 
people, to be held in Jackson in November, 1851, to express their will 
upon the legislation in Congress of the session under consideration and 
especially "to devise and carry into effect the best means of redress for 
the ijast and obtain certain security for the future, and to adopt such 
measures for vimlicating the sovereignty of the State and the protec- 
tion of its institutions as shall appear to them to be demanded." 

Of course these stirring events ci-eated a great commotion in the 
State. There was much difference of opinion upon the efficiency and 
propriety of the compromise measures, but that difference did not pro- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, A .\D SPEECHES. 51 

ceed upon the old pai-ty lines. The old parties were disrupted and new 
combiuations were formed. Senator Foote did not resign, but showed 
fight. His supporters, calling themselves the "Union party," were com- 
jjosed in large measure of the old AVhigs, reenforced by ;i considerable 
coutiugeut of Democrats, and they placed him in nomination for Gov- 
ernor. He was opposed by e.\-Gov. Quitman as the standard bearer of 
the State Rights jjarty. Each party had its candidates for delegates 
to the convention and for members of the Legislature. The canvass 
was very bitter and exciting. The election for delegates came off in 
September, and the Union party was triumphant by a majority of about 
seven thousand. This disastrous result caused Gov. Quitman to relin- 
quish his candidacy, and his party then called upon Mr. Davis to as- 
sume his place as candidate for Governor. This Mr. Davis consented 
to do, resigning his seat in the Senate for that jjurpose. The condition 
of his health was such, however, as to prevent his participating in the 
canvass to a great extent, and he was defeated at the November electi(m 
by a majority of less than one thousand. 

The convention met in November, and after being in session a week 
or ten days adjourned sine die, after declaring its unalterable fealty to 
the Union. 

It was in this canvass that Prof. Lamar encountered Mr. Foote. The 
Senator, Hushed with the triumph of the September election, was ap- 
pointed to speak at Oxford. The State Eights party were without a 
champion. They appealed to Lamar to represent them. Notwithstand- 
ing the fact that the call was unexpected and on only a few hours' no- 
tice, he consented. It was a great compliment to him, a young man of 
only twenty-six, but it was also a fierce ordeal. He had had no practice 
in polemical discussions, and was without experience in practical poli- 
tics. His antagonist was an exijerienced and trained politician of the 
highest official position, who had been driven to bay and was now ex- 
ulting in victory, whose adroitness and pugnacity were unmatched in 
the State, whose hot temper and personal courage were proverbial, and 
whose tongue was untiring and vitriolic. 

Of Prof. Lamar's speech on that occasion nothing now remains, ap- 
parently, except a few pages of his own manuscript, containing a num- 
ber of hurried and fragmentary notes. So far as they go, his line of 
argument was as follows: 

He felt keenly his own incompetency to encounter one wlio was so greatly his own 
superior in age, position, abilities, and experience; one who was practiced as a de- 
bater on every field from the hu.stings to the Senate chamber; one who, Iiear of him 
where you will at home, is speaking; and who, hear of him when you will, is demol- 
ishing every one who meets him on the stump; and who is said to have spoken on a 
single clause of a bill seventeen times from seventeen different seats, showing him- 
self as expert on the wing as at rest. The gentleman came not only equipped with 
his own great abilities, native and acquired, but also panoplied in the armor furnished 



52 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

to liim by his Northern alhes in the battle again&t the South recently fought at the 
capital and now renewed belore his constituents. Even so, however, the discussion 
would not be so unequal as it is if only the gentleman drew his facts from sources ac- 
cessible to both ; but he will tell you of his expectations, founded uj)on reports picked 
up during his pilgrimages to the North or gathered from his nuineious correspond- 
ents, of whom the speaker never heard and of whom you know he has many, whose 
disclosures he publishes or keeps to himself, as shall best serve his purposes. 

But the speaker did not conr^ider himself at liberty to consult his own reputation 
or interests. The State was entitled to all that he was, be it little or much ; and have 
it she should, whether her summons is to the lecture room, the hustings, the field, or 
the gibbet, if it be treason to obey her call against the Senator's particular friends. 
Clay, Cass, and Webster — par nohile fralrum. 

The gentleman appears before you in a singular attitude. He presents himself as 
the ijrosecutor of his constituents. He has discovered many egregious sins in the 
late action of the Legislature of his State, and has visited upon them a punishment 
which, in his estimation, doubtless is equal to their transgression: the weight of his 
senatorial condemnation. The S[ieaker did think that the case of the State vs. Foote 
stood upon the docket before that of Foole vs. the Slate. There were grave charges 
against the gentleman which he must clear up before he could animadvert upon his 
constituency. We protest against his discussing any other questions until he shall 
have ]ilaced liimself rectus in curi:'i, until he shall have answered the charges against 
himself. He is charged, and the speaker pledges himself to prove those charges to 
be true, with knowingly and willfully misrepresenting the sentiments of the people of 
his State as made known to him through her only constitutional organ of communi- 
cation; with doing wliat he knew that his State Legislature did not wish him to do 
— nay, with doing what it positively forbade him to do — nay, with doing what he re- 
quested it to instruct him not to do — and at the same time with abandoning the cher- 
ished principles and friemls of the South, leaguing with her enemies on matters vital 
to the South's prosjierity and honor, exerting his acknowledged abilities against the 
recognition of her most earnest and righteous demands, committing in the meantime 
every variety of gross inconsistency. 

The gentleman's motives are not impugned. He says that they were good, and 
says, furthermore, that his etforts have been beneficial to his section. He has cer- 
tainly been performing before the country some very remarkable evolutions, begin- 
ning with his displays at the opening of the last Congress. His political friends and 
foes alike have been dazzled and confounded by his gyrations. He began the session 
by indulging in fiery ultraism, which shocked his conservative free-soil friends at the 
North and caused them to hold up their pious bands in holy horror at Ins savage 
talk. But he finished by assisting to fasten ujjon us the very wrongs which he de- 
nounced, and declaring that there is no aggression upon the South and that she has 
nothing to complain of. It has been said that when the English were in China one 
of the stratagems to which they resorted to frighten the poor Celestials out of their 
wits was to tie skyrockets to their heels at niglit and turn somersaults in full view of 
the enemy's camp. The result is said to have been amazingly successful, and it may 
be that the gentleman has attempted to steal their thunder. At all events he has ex- 
hibited some very remarkable specimens of ground and lofty tundjling at Washing- 
ton. But alas! instead of frightening the enemy, he ha« turned a somersault into 
their camp, and now attempts to speak Ids old friends into the delusion that he has 
taken the whole force prisoners of war. The Soutli, says he, gets everything; the 
North, those wily old politicians, Cass, Webster, Fillmore, have all been hoodwinked. 
We have met the enemy, and they are ours! So much for his first fight. Having 
whipped the North, he now begins to whip the South. The speaker, for one, will not 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AXD SPEECHES. 53 

decline the fight, hoping from his heart tluvt tlie Si>ii;itor will gain over him just such 
a victory as he gained over the North. 

Witli his usual anil characteristic positiveness the Senator asserts that the only is- 
sue before you is union or disunion. We are prepared to meet that issue when it 
comes from the proper authority, and at the proper time; hut it is not before you on 
this occasion, nor has the gentleman the right to force it belbre you. He promised at 
Washington to present to the people a very diS'erent issue, and the only one he is 
competent to discuiss before them— viz., do they, or do they not, approve of the mis- 
called compromise measures. Listen to his own language in the .Senate chamber 
(reading from Mr. Foote's speech). These words were hardly cold before he received 
from his constituents, in terms of direct censure, their reprobation of these measures 
and of his agency in the adoption of them, through the resolutions of the Legislature, 
for the passage of which he is responsible. Instead of resigning his jilace upon this 
intimation, with no precedent for his conduct but that set by Tijomas H. Benton 
(whom he has himself denounced), he holds on to his post, and appeals to the peo- 
ple of his State to sustain him in liis course. Now what do the people say? Let us 
see what the organ of the Union party (the gentleman's own organ) says (reading): 
. . . Now has the gentleman redeemed his pledge to resign if all he has said be not 
approved? No; but he appears before you, and in order to divert your minds from 
the grave offenses with wliicli he is charged he proclaims, with an authority which 
seems to admit of no denial, that the only issue is union or disunion. 

Whatever dilferences may exist among the people with regard to the remedies for 
the injuries of which we complain, whether they shall deem it best to correct these 
evils by means of the ballot box, or by means of disunion, one thing is certain, or else 
the speaker has mistaken the high-hearted freemen of Mississippi — they will never 
again listen to the counsels of one who assisted their enemies in fastening such meas- 
ures upon them ; they will brook no dictation from such a quarter. Even the Union 
men of this State shall be convinced that Mr. Foote is not the man whose leadership 
even they should acknowledge; and that, for the plain reason that his being a LTnion 
man to-day is no guaranty that he will not be a fire eater tomorrow, what he advises 
and promises to-day he will repudiate to-morrow, what he espouses to-day he will de- 
nounce to-morrow, whom he hails as friends to-day he will count as enemies to-mor- 
row, whom he attacks as enemies to-day he will colleague with to-mori-ow. That this 
is true the speaker now proceeds to prove. 

A few things must be premised. It is unnecessary to point out the clauses of the 
Constitution which protect slavery. It needs not to tell you that but for those clauses 
the Southern States would never have come into tlie Confederacy. All this you know. 
The Northern States ratified that instrument with a full knowledge of its terms, and 
thereby incurred the most solemn obligation that can be imposed upon a nation hon- 
estly and faithiully to maintain it in all its stipulations. How has that obligation 
been fulfilled? Hear Mr. Foote's answer to that question, given in company with 
many Southern men whom he has since deserted: "It has been fulfilled by hostile 
acts on the part of the Northern States intended to render it of noneffect, and with 
so much success," etc. (See address of the Soutliern Congressmen.) So spoke the gen- 
tleman in tlie days of his Southernism. What has changed his tone? "Why at that 
time the fugitive slave bill was not passed." But a slave bill had then been passed 
under which a hundred negroes have been reclaimed for one that has been reclaimed 
under the late bill. What have we gained by this bill? The gentleman's complaint 
was of hostile enactments. Have they lieen repealed? The complaint was that those 
enactments rendered the Constitution inoperative; can a statute disarm them of a 
power which overcame the Constitution? Those infamous enactments all stand unre- 
pealed ; and nine hundred ami forty abolition clubs are still working out, with a more 
terrific enginery, their infernal schemes. Every one knows tluit a Southern man 



54 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

cannot go into the North fur the purpose of recovering his slave without encounter- 
ing resistance, from hostile legislation, from otticers of the law, and from mobs of 
both colors. The efficacy of the late bill has been tried in a few cases, and those who 
went, under its panoply, to recover their property, were insulted, prosecuted, imiiris- 
oned, and subjected to every kind of pecuniary loss. You hear of no claims made un- 
der it in these days, and I doubt whether you will ever hear of another in Massachu- 
setts, (ir ten mure in all the free States put together. The old law, according to Mr. 
Webster, was less favorable to the fugitive tlian the present one. Under its operation 
we did save a few slaves, and it was never resisted by an armed mob in open court. 
Claims under both have ceased as worthless. The gentleman, who was so rampant at 
the disrespect shown to the first, is so well satisfied witli the last that he is willing to 
be kicked out of California, abandon 36: 30, and carve out of Texas a very resi>ectable 
State for the free-soilers, simply for the pure gratification which it afibids him. Un- 
der its comforting securities, he visits the North, partakes of her festivities, speaks of 
course— and what did he say? Did lie brand them to their fiices as recivants, lost to 
honor until tliey should blot out from their statute books their unconstitutional laws? 
No; but he glorified the Union. 

But let us look seriously at the gentleman's explanation. It is this : that all of these 
objections were to the admission of Calilbrnia as a sepaniie measure, and that he was 
always willing that she should come in under a general scheme of compromise. Now, 
fellow-citizens, he said that that admission of California was the Wilmot Proviso in 
another form— nay, worse than the Wilmot Proviso. I put the question to you, and 
I wish you to think well upon it, could any scheme of compromise justify your Sena- 
tor in fastening the Wilmot Proviso upon you? How, then, can such a scheme justi- 
fy him in fastening upon you a measure worse than that proviso? 

Unfortunately for tlie gentleman, the only time that he spoke of the admission of 
Califciniia as part of a compromise scheme he specified what that compromise sliould 
be. Here is his language: "If all other questions connected with the subject of slav- 
ery can be satisfactorily adjusted, I see no objection to admitting all California above 
the line of 30:30 into the Union, provided another new slave State can be laid off 
within the present limits of Texas, so as to keep up the present equiponderance be- 
tween the slave and the free States of the Union ; and provided, further, that all this is 
done by way of compromise, and in order to save the Union— as dear to me as to any 
man living." Here the gentleman lays down that general scheme of compromise 
which alone would reconcile him to the admission of California— namely, that her 
southern boundary should be 36: 30, and that another slave State should be admitted 
with 36: 30 as her boundary, and tliis to be considered only as an extreme concession, 
made in order to save the Union. 

In passing it will not be improper to show what different and opposite reasons the 
gentleman gives for his conduct at different times. While he acted with the Southern 
party he gave as a reason for not offering this scheme of compromise that the aggres- 
sive spirit of the North determined him to offer no more compromises. But when he 
left his old Southern associates, so anxious is he to throw odium upon them that he 
relieves the North of all the blame of his withholding the plan just mentioned, and 
throws it upon Mr. Calhoun and the Southern Senators. 

Here the notes stop abruptly. It is to be regretted that they are so 
meager, and deal almost exclusively with the more personal portions of 
the speech; for this debate with Mr. Foote is understood to have been 
the foundation of Mr. Lamar's subsequent political advancement. It 
was the flood which led on to fame, albeit not to fortune. His success 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SI'EECUKS. 55 

was considered phenomenal. The college students, especially, were wild 
witli excitement and pride, and bore liim away from the hustings upon 
their shoulders. Judge C. P. Smith, then upon the bench of the High 
Court of Errors and Appeals, was present, and he enthusiastically re- 
lated in Jackson, to auditors somewhat incredulous, the powers of the 
young orator who had appeared in Lafayette County. 

It is a striking and curious thing to find Mr. Lamar in tliis debate 
pressing Mr. Foote about his disregard of the legislative instructions. 
The latter was then in the zejiithof his fame and power in Mississippi; 
the former, at his dawning. It is believed to be the only time they ever 
met in joint discussion. It was at the crisis of Mr. Foote's career. 
Thirty years later the same question, as shall be seen, confronted Mr. 
Lamar in the very crisis of his fate and in the fullness of his political 
career— of which, however, in its proper place. 



CHAPTER V. 

Religious Impressions — Hon. Jacob Thompson — Prof. Albert T. Bledsoe^Retm-n to 
Covington, Ga.— In the Georgia Legislature — Moves to Macon, Ga. — Candidate for 
Congress from Third District— Returns to Mississippi — "Solitude" — Practices Law 
— C. H. Jlott — James L. Autrey — Congrefsman or Professor? 

ALTHOUGH Mr. Lamar was busy about the duties of his professor- 
ship and his law practice, and although he made occasional excur- 
sions into the field of polities, those toijics did not engross his attention. 
At this period his thoughts hovered much over the subject of religion. 
The impressions on that subject received at Emory College continued. 
His correspondence with his sister, Mrs. AViggins, dealt with them; and 
in it he expressed the most orthodox views, declaring himself to be " a 
firm and unwavering believer in the truths of the Bible." She, how- 
ever, admonished him that to be such a believer his opinions must in- 
fluence his conduct and govern his life. Dr. John N. Waddel, then a 
professor in the university (afterwards Chancellor), in his "Academic 
Memorials," says: 

I remember a casual conversation I held with him during his first years in Oxford, 
in which, as we spoke of his future, he remarked that he would not be surprised if 
he should end his life work in the ministry of the Methodist Church. My reply was: 
"No, sir; you will surely pass your life in the world of polities." My own impression 
is that Mr. Lamar had from his earlier manhood kept steadily in view the career of 
statesmanship. 

He had not united himself with any church, bait had it in serious 
contemplation. 

This life continued for two years. In the summer of 1852 he re- 
signed his connection with the university and returned to Covington, 
Ga., in order to engage in the practice of law in partnership with Mr. 
Eobert G. Harpei-, the man of whom he said in the address at Emory 
College in 1870, quoted in a previous chapter: "To whom my own soul 
was knit as was David to Jonathan." Mr. Harper had been corre- 
sponding with Prof. Lamar with a view to this partnership for more 
than a year; and his letters bear the strongest evidence of intense per- 
sonal devotion to Mr. Lamar, of high aspirations in his j^rofession, and 
of an inflexible determination to achieve its best possibilities. 

Two things which have not yet been touched on shoidd be noted in 
connection with Mr. Lamar's stay at the University of Mississipi^i. It 
was there and then that he met the Hon. Jacob Thompson, for whom 
he entertained always the highest regard, and whose kindness to him- 
self and encouraging attentions he ever held in grateful remembrance. 
(56) 



LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 57 

Mr. Thompson was then a member of Congress, and also a tiustee of 
the university. Years afterwards, on the occasion of Mr. Thompson's 
death, Mr. Lamar wrote to a niece a letter of sympathy, saying, among 
other things: 

He was one of the few men whose presence in this world invested my own life 
with much of its own interest. I first met him in 1849. I was tlien a youtli only 
twenty-four years of age, while he was near the zenith of his high honors and intel- 
lectual jiowers. I huJ then, as I am now anare, many faults of high temper and im- 
patient aspirations; but he was on all occasions kind, considerate, and sympathetic to 
me, when on some he might well have been austere and reserved. My first nomina- 
tion to Congress was due largely to llr. Thompson's influence, openly exertetl in my 
behalf against very distinguished ami powerful men in the district. From that time 
to the day of his death our friendship, jicri^onal and political, has been unbroken. 

The second fact to be observed, as remarked above, was the effect of 
Mr. Lamar's association for two years with Dr. Albert T. Bledsoe, his 
professor in chief. The relations between the two men were most cor- 
dial. The Doctor was gifted with a massive and vigorous intellect, 
trained to the most acute and logical processes of reasoning. He was 
not a mathematician merely, but a philosopher also, and was deeply 
learned in both political and theological science. In after years he was 
fond of saying that he "taught Lucius how to think." It is remem- 
bered that on one occasion after Mr. Lamar went into the Senate this 
remark was repeated to him. He smiled a little, pondered awhile, and 
then remarked: " Well, there is a good deal in it." His bearing and 
comment were such as to indicate that while he thought the Doctor's 
claim rather too sweeping, yet he acknowledged a debt to him for great 
service in mental training. He certaiidy held the Doctor in the highest 
esteem during the remainder of his life. 

Mr. Lamar prospered in Covington. In the autumn of 18-53, notwith- 
standing the facts that he was a Democrat and that in Newton County 
the Whigs were in an immense majority, he was elected to the Legisla- 
ture. He had not been in the House more than a mouth before he 
came to the front as a leader. 

During the session there were so many motions to suspend the rules to take up 
business out of its order that a resolution was adopted requiring a two-thirds vote to 
suspend the rules. In a day or two thereafter a resolution was ofl'ered to suspend the 
rules to bring on some important election, probably that of a Senator, and fixing a 
day for it. The Democrats, havinsr a majority, would be able to elect their candidate. 
The Whig3 opposed the motion to suspend the rules, and Mr. Thomas Hardeman, the 
member from Bibb, led in the opposition. He made a speech against it, and on a 
vote being taken, the Democrats, only having some twelve or fifteen majority, fiiiled 
to carry it by a two-thirds vote, upon which there was consternation on the Democratic 
side aiid rejoicim: on the Whig side. The Democrats felt that they were caught in 
the trap, and many were the anxious faces on the part of the majority. The next 
day, on a motion to reconsider, Mr. Lamar made his first speech. He was then 



58 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

young, not more than twenty-seven, with a handsome face, a full head of dark hair, 
brilliant eyes, in figure ratlier below the medium height, handsomely dressed, with 
fine, musical voice. He at once attracted the attention of the House. In a short 
speech of not more than thirty miimtes he captured the whole assembly. I remem- 
ber how he scathed the motives of those who would thus seek to defeat an election 
that under the law and constitution had been devolved upon the General Assembly. 

Such an excitement as was produced by his speech I never saw in that body. 
"When he finished no one sought to reply. A vote was taken, and a laige majority 
reconsidered the action of the House of the preceding day, and the resolution passed 
with almost a unanimous vote. 

His speech was a remarkable exhibition of the power of the orator and logician, 
and his appeal to his opponents to step manfnlly and patriotically forward to dis- 
charge their duty was so overwhelming that all party spirit was subdued, even in the 
breast of the most bitter partisan, and none even ventured a reply.* 

lu the summer of 1854, the health of Mr. Harper having failed, and de- 
siring a larger field, Mr. Lamar moved to the town of Macon, offering 
there for <i practice. He soon had a respectable business, albeit a small 
one, placed into his hands. In the aiitumn of that year, however, a corre- 
spondence began between himself and Jndge Longstreet, the immediate 
result of which was that he carried his negroes out to Mississipjji to 
work a farm jointly with the Judge, and under his general supervision; 
but which later contributed to more important results. On the 7th of 
March, 1S55, he writes from Macon to Judge Longstreet thus: 

Judge Stark said to me that I must make up my mind to run for Congress this 
year: that I am the unanimous choice of my district — of the Democrac}'. Col. Chap- 
pell says that I must not think of anvthing else hut going. It is thought by my 
friends that I can get one hundred votes in Biljb over any one else. I have been 
spoken to from all (juarters about it, and the public sentiment of my own party seems 
pretty well fixed on me as the next nominee. If I let my name go before the con- 
vention, I shall certainly be nominated, unless the convention is packed so as to nom- 
inate some other aspirant, which it is very easy to do under the district system. Now 
what do you think? Stick to my profession and try to make something, or go to 
Congress if I can and be in the fight against the free-soilers? The next Congress will 
be an exciting one, you know. 

At this period Macon was in the Third Congressional District, the rep- 
resentative of which in Congress was the Hon. David J. Bailey. The 
Whig party had been disorganized by the death of Henry Clay, and in 
the year previous (1854) the Know-nothing party had come to the front, 
sweeping several Northern States, including New York. In Georgia 
the Know-nothings were in the majority in the towns and cities, and 
the Third District was favorable to them. It was doubted whether Mr. 
Bailey would make the race in the election then approaching, and Mr. 
Lamar's name was brought prominently forward as the Democratic 
candidate. Later, however, it was ascertained that Mr. Bailey would 
run for the office, whereupon Mr. Lamar, in order to preserve the har- 

* From article by W. B. Hill, Esq., in The Green Sag ot April, 1898. 



HTS LIFE, TIMJCS, AND SPEECHES. 59 

mony of the party, published an o])('n letter desiring that his claims 
should not be urged before the approaching convention. 

The friends of Mr. Lamar, however, refused to recognize his with- 
drawal. When the nominating convention met at Forsyth on the '22d 
of May, the delegation from Bibb, led by Edward D. Traeey, made a 
most gallant tight for his nomination. The two-thirds rule was adopted, 
but without specifying whether the vote to elect should be two-thirds 
of those voting or of those entitled to vote. After a severe struggle, 
amidst great confusion (for the Bailey men seem to have been disposed 
to unruliness, even to the point of thi-eatening to bolt), the eleventh 
ballot was taken, several of tbe friends of Col. Bailey refusing to vote. 
Lamar received eighteen votes to Bailey's nine, and his friends claimed 
that he was nominated — as, indeed, he was, by well-settled rules of par- 
liamentary law; but the Chair refused to so hold, and referred the ques- 
tion to the convention, which decided by a majority vote that there had 
been no nomination. This decision produced more excitement, result- 
ing in a deadlock. The upshot of it all was that James M. Smith, Esq., 
was finally put before the convention, and was nominated on the next 
following ballot. 

However, this disappointment may not have made much real differ- 
ence. The Democratic ticket was defeated in the following election; 
and whether the belief of his friends that Mr. Lamar could have carried 
the election would have been justified by the event had he been nomi- 
nated, there is, of course, no way to determine. He took an active i)art 
in the campaign, making speeches against the Know-nothing party. 

In October, 1855, Mr. Lamar returned to Mississippi, and this time, 
as the event proved, finally. Possibly disappointment about his Con- 
gressional aspirations and chagrin over the ascendency of Know-noth- 
ingism in his vicinity, may have been contributing causes to this step, 
although the correspondence of the family discloses nothing of such 
sentiments. There were other reasons, of themselves sufficient. His 
professional income from his practice in Macon was not satisfactory. 
He and his wife owned a number of slaves whose services coxild not be 
by him made profitable in Georgia, and who hail, therefore, as has been 
stated, been sent out to Mississippi to be employed under the direction 
of Judge Longstreet; it was desirable that the Judge should be relieved 
of that burden to some extent. Then there was constant apprehension 
as to the healthfulness of Macon. Moreover (and in all likelihood the 
most powerful motive of all), there was the longing to reunite the broken 
family circle. 

Of this move, one of Mr. Lamar's correspondents wrote from Coving- 
ton: "Your friends seem to regret much your resolution again to leave 
the State, and some of them express this feeling and their sui-prise in 
language more forcible than elegant." 



60 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

Mr. Lamai", upon returning to Mississippi, did not take a residence 
in Oxford as before. He purchased a plantation, which he called " Sol- 
itude." It embraced about eleven hundred acres, and lay one mile east 
of the railroad (now the Illinois Central), then just building, on the 
southeru bank of the Tallaliatchee River, which curved jsartly around 
it. The ijlace was well timbered with cypress and several varieties of 
oak. There was an excellent dwelling with four rooms, and there were 
quite a number of cabins for the negroes, with all the usual outhouses. 
Here he lived during the year 1856 and part of 1857. The Branhams 
were with him during most of the time, the Doctor being interested 
with him in the cultivation of the farm. The crops were good, and the 
lands enhanced in value. 

The family have many traditions about the stay at "Solitude." It 
was the life of the Southern farmer of the highest type. Surrounded 
by his slaves, to whom he was at once master, guardian, and friend, 
loved and petted by his women folk and his children, visited by culti- 
vated and attractive friends for days and even weeks, anil visiting them 
in turn; the summers were devoted to the growing of cotton and corn, 
while the winters were occuined in killing hogs, curing bacon sides and 
delicious hams, making sausages, and trying out snowy lard. Over 
these latter functions his wife, as was customary with even the most re- 
fined Southei-n ladies, jiresided. An ice house, which was a great curi- 
osity in that neighborhood, and the stored treasures of which were a 
singular luxury at that period of slow transportation, had also to be 
filled. 

Of the life of the Southern planter Mr. Lamar spoke eloquently thir- 
ty-two years later in his great oi-ation on Mr. Calhoun. In that fine 
passage he manifestly spoke n(jt only from his observation, but also from 
j^ersoual experience. He said: 

Would that I had the power to portray a Southern planter's home! The sweet 
and noble assoi'iations; the pnre, refining, and elevating atmosphere of a household 
presided over by a Southern matron; the tranquil yet active otrupations of a large 
land owner, full of interest and liigh moral responsibilities'; the alliance between 
man's intellect and nature's laws of production ; the liospitality, heartfelt, simple, .Tud 
generous. The Southern planter was far from being the self-indulgent, indolent, 
coarse, and overbearing person that he has sometimes been pictured. He was, in 
general, careful, patient, provident, industrious, forbearing, and yet tirni and deter- 
mined. These were the qualities which enabled him to take a race of untamed sav- 
ages, with habits that could only inspire disgust, with no arts, no single tradition of 
civilization, and out of sucli a people to make the finest body of agricultural and do- 
mestic laborers that the world has ever seen; and, indeed, to elevate them in the 
scale of rational existence to such a height as to cause them to be deemed fit for ail- 
mission into the charmed circle of American freedom, and to be clothed with the 
rights and duties of American citizenship. 

In the communion with himself, in the opportunities for continued study, and in 
the daily and yearly provision for a numerous body of dependents, for all of whom 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 61 

he felt himself responsible, about whom his anxieties were ever alive, wliose tasks 
he apportioned, and whose labors he directed, lie was educated in those faculties and 
pereonal qualities which enabled him to emerge from his solitude and preside in the 
County Court or become a member of his State Ive>;islature, to discharge the duties of 
local magistracy or to take his place in the national councils. 

The solution of the enigma of the so-called slave power may be sought here. Its 
basis lay in that cool, vigorous judgment and unerring sense applicable to the onli- 
nary affeirs and intercourse of men which the Southern mode of life engendered and 
fostered. The habits of industry, firmness of purpose, fidelity to dependents, self- 
reliance, and the sentiment of justice in all the various relations of life which were 
necessary to the management of a well-ordered plantation fitted men to guide Legis- 
latures and command armies. 

But the duties of the plantation did not cliiefly engage Mr. Lamar's 
attention or enlist his interest. Those eighteen months were mainly 
devoted to study. There was a small oiEce, remote from the house and 
withdrawn from the noises and little daily excitements of the family, in 
which he passed most of his time at work with his books of law, poli- 
tics, and philosophy — in the summer, under a mosquito bar spread like 
a tent in the middle of tlie room. He used to say that the hardest and 
most profitable study of his life was done at "Solitude." 

It was at this time, also, and while he lived at "Solitude," that he 
formed a partnership for the practice of law with Christopher H. Mott 
and James L. Autrey. The firm of Lamar, Mott & Autrey kept their of- 
fice in Holly Springs, and it endured until dissolved by the Civil War, 
albeit each member of the firm was occasionally absent for long periods 
on other piirsuits. 

Here we must pause to consider the lives and characters of tlie two 
gentlemen with whom Mr. Lamar came into so intimate a relation. Of 
the two, his favorite and more intimate friend was Mr. Mott — a man to 
whose memory he was devoted during the whole of his after life. We 
have seen that he declared that his attachment in his earlier manhood, 
and in Georgia, to Hon. Eobert G. Harper was that of David to Jona- 
than. In Mr. Mott we find the friend of a later period for whom his 
love was of equal strength and from whose admiration and support he 
derived as great benefit and drew as much of encouragement in his mo. 
ments of despondency. 

Christopher Haynes Mott was born in Livingston County, Ky., on 
the '22d of June, 1826. At a very early age he was brouglit by his i)ar- 
ents to Mississipxii, where they settled in the beautiful and polished lit- 
tle city of Holly Springs. His early education was received at St. 
Thomas' Hall, a school founded by the celebrated Episcopalian divine, 
Dr. Francis L. Hawkes; and he completed his studies at the Ti-ansyl- 
vania University, in Lexington, Ky. He studied law under the gifted 
Roger Barton. Hardly had he been called to the bar when the Mexican 
war broke out. Burning with tlie martial ardor of a born soldier, he 
entered service as a lieutenant in the Marshall Guards, a company of 



62 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

the celebrated First Mississippi Regiment, then commanded by CoL 
Jeflfersou Davis. At the battles of Monterey and Buena Vista he won 
distinction for general good conduct and for gallantry. The war over, 
he returned to the practice of law; was sent by the county to the State 
Legislature; later was elevated to the position of Probate Judge. While 
occui>ying tliis position he was appointed by the United States Govern- 
ment oil a special xuission to California to inquire into certain alleged 
abuses in the service in that region, which duty he discharged in the 
most thorough, intelligent, and satisfactory maimer. When the Civil 
War began he was among the earliest in the Held. The Secession 
Convention made him a brigadier general of the army of the State, but 
he resigned that post in order to accept employment in the regular 
army, when he was made Colonel of the Nineteenth Mississippi Eegi- 
ment, raised by his own exertions, and the first Mississippi regiment 
organized for service during the whole period of the war. 

Col. Mott was a man after Mr. Lamar's own heart; a faithful and dil- 
igent lawyer, an upright and sympathetic judge, a gallant and intrepid 
soldier, a chivalric and generous gentleman; mc)dest but hrm, charita- 
ble, tender of heart yet quick to perceive a slight and prumpt to punish 
an injury, a friend to love and a foe to fear; through all his eventful 
and sparkling life there yet ran a vein of sadness, the result of a tem- 
perament somewhat melancholy acting upon a l)ody not wholly strong. 
Besides the attraction of their mutual sympathies there was another tie 
between the two men: that of friendship and love existing between 
their wives, inherited from a former generation of Longstreets and 
Govans. 

James L. Autrey was born in 1830, it is thought in Jackson, Tenn. 
His father was one of the immortal band of heroes who ofi'ered their 
lives at the Alamo in the cause of Texan independence. His widowed 
mother removed to Holly Springs, and there he was educated at St. 
Thomas' Hall. In early youth he gave promise of superior talents, 
unusual readiness in repartee, and a sparkling wit, wliieli made him a 
most interesting child. He soon manifested both taste and capacity 
for politics. At the age of twenty-two he was sent to the State Legis- 
lature, and served in that body continuously for a number of terms. In 
the session of 1858-59 he was elected Speaker of the House, and was 
notable as the youngest man ever honored with that laosition. He was 
a Democrat of the strictest and a politician of the best type. He was 
ambitious, but generous and true — in every respect a noble man. Upon 
the outbreak of the war he also was among the first to throw himself 
into the front, and was soon elevated to the rank of lieutenant colonel. 

Mott and Autrey both sealed with their blood their devotion to the 
cause which they espoused. The former fell at Williamsburg, the lat- 
ter at Murfreesboro; and the sign of Lamar, Mott & Autrey, torn from 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AXD SPEECHES. 63 

its fastenings in the peaceful interior village by invading hosts, was 
afterwards picked up in the Mississippi River, a derelict on its way to 
the gulf. 

But this is both a digression and an anticipation. We shall retura 
to Mr. Lamar at " Solitude." 

Judge Lougstreet, who, it may be remembered, had resigned the 
presidency of the State University in 1856, was living in the village of 
Abbeville, only two miles away. This agreeable life was ended in the 
latter part of the year 1857 by the election of the Judge to the presi- 
dency of the South Carolina College, and by the election of Mr. Lamar 
to Congress. 

Lafayette County was in the First Congressional District, which at 
that time embraced the northern tiftii of the State. On the 3d of 
March, 1857, the term of the Hon. Uauie) B. Wright, the representa- 
tive in Congress for that district, expired, and of course it became nec- 
essary to elect his successor. On the lOth of that month a communi- 
cation appeared in the Mcntphis Appeal, then the most i)opular and 
influential newspaper taken in that section of the country, proposing 
Mr. Lamar as the Democratic candidatt- for Congress. He himself Jiad 
in some way obtained information that such a communication had been 
sent to the paper, and wrote to the editor to withhold it from publica- 
tion, since it might place him in an uniileasant attitude toward other 
aspirants. To that letter the editor, Mr. B. F. Dill, replied that he was 
one day too late; that the communication could do him no harm, and 
that Mr. Lamar could command his services. Throughout the whole 
of his public career this paper was Mr. Lamar's stanch and unfalter- 
ing friend. 

Another movement was in progress at the same time in respect to Mr. 
Lamar. In May he was approached through William F. Stearns, Esq., 
the Professor of Law, anent his acceptance of the chair of Metaphysics 
in the university. Prof. Stearns wrote, presenting strongly the desira- 
ble features of the proposed arrangement, its offering a comfortable 
support, its adaptation to his own cast of mind and habit of thought, 
the anxiety of the Faculty to include him amongst their number, and 
urging that he, "without question, would be happier here than at the 
bar." This proposition was seriously entertained, and would doubtless 
have been finally accepted but for the action of the congressional nom- 
inating convention. 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Kansas-Nebraska Bill— Tlie Straggle for Kansas— The Nicaragua Affair- Elected 
to Congress from First District— Corre>^pon(lence on Questions of the Day — First 
Speech in Congress — Eozell Letter — Tlie Keitt-Grow Fight— The Vallandigham- 
Campbell Contest — A Professorship Contemplated — Dr. Barnard's Letter — Speech 
at Jackson on Douglas — Eulogy on Harris — Speech on the Tariff. 

WE have now reached that period in the life of Mr. Lamar when he 
entered the arena of national politics as an actor in its conflicts, 
its defeats, aud its victories. The stage of jsreparatiou is past; that of 
vigorous work begins. He commenced his public career at a most in- 
teresting and dramatic era — when the struggle over slavery was drawing 
to its crisis; when the rising of a new political supremacy was kindling 
the horizon into a lurid dawn which foreboded a terrible tempest. 

The intense opposition of Mr. Lamar and of those with whom he was 
in sympathy to the comj^romise measures of 1850 has been narrated in 
a previous chapter; but the appeals to the people by the elections of 
1851 showed that a majority of the Southern jjeople favored those meas- 
ures, and settled that question. Acquiescence in the compromise, and 
in its fulfillment, became the settled political jjolicy. So entirely was 
this true that, in their national conventions of 1852, both the Whigs and 
the Democrats expressly indorsed the compromise and pledged them- 
selves to maintain it. Notwithstanding this, however, great opposition 
was manifested North to the practical enforcement of the new fugitive 
slave law, which was one of its featui'es; and the Southern people com- 
plained bitterly that its oiJeratiou was defeated, aud the law itself in 
effect nullified. 

At the session of Congress of 1843^4 a bill was introduced for the 
organization of Nebraska Territory. The Committee on Territories, of 
which Mr. Douglas, of Illinois, was chairman, reported favorably. The 
bill provided that " the said Territory, or any portion of the same, shall 
be received into the Union -with or withoiit slavery, as their constitution 
may prescribe at the time of their admission," which terms were cojjied 
literally from the Utah and New Mexican liills of 1850. The commit- 
tee's report referred to the compromise measures of 1850, and justified 
that provision by those measures. It said that 

In the judgment of your committee those measures were intended to have a far 
more comprehensive and enduring effect than the mere adjustment of tlie difficulties 
arising out of the recent acquisition of Mexican territory. They were designed to es- 
tablish certain great principles which would not only furnish adequate remedies for 
existifig evils, hut, in all time to come, avoid the perils of a similar agitation by with- 
(64) 



LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 65 

drawiiigthequestionof slavery from the halls of Congress and the political arena, and 
committing it to the arbitrament of those who were immediately interested in it, and 
alone responsible for its consequences. 

Here again arose a great, ami bitter controversy. The opponents of 
the bill declared that the compromise of 1850 had no relation to any 
territory except that acquired from Mexico, and that the effort to extend 
it to the Louisiana purchase was a violation of the Missouri Compro- 
mise, and was a broach of faith on the part of the proslavery party; 
while the supporters of the measure declared that the compromise of 
1850 was intended to cover all controversies, merged all previous disputes, 
and had itself already repealed the restrictive provisions of the jMissouri 
Compromise by necessary implication. The bill passed. The test vote 
in the Senate showed, by States, twenty-one for it, seven against it, and 
three divided. Amongst those States voting yea were New Hampshire, 
Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Iowa, Delaware, and Califor- 
nia. The divided votes were those of Connecticut, Tennessee, and Tex- 
as. But passed as the bill was, and although not on a sectional vote, it 
aroused an immense opposition; and again hot blood and hot words be- 
came the order of the day. 

Before the bill was passed it was so amended as to provide for the or- 
ganization of Kansas Territory also, thereby becoming designated as the 
"Kansas-Nebraska bill." So soon as it became a law a strenuous 
struggle began between some of the advocates of slavery extension and 
some of its opponents for the possession of the Territory, whereby its 
status as a free or a slave Territory should be determined according to 
the provisions of the organizing act. There was a rush across the border 
from Missouri of proslavery settlers, and a few weeks later, under the 
auspices of emigrant aid societies in Massachusetts, of antislavery set- 
tlers from New England. Then ensued a great turmoil, which was 
finally pushed to the extreme of midnight butchery and civil war. Each 
side charged the other with beginning the career of violence; each 
charged the other with fraudulent voting at the first general election. 
A census taken in February, 1855, showed 1,070 registered voters from 
Southern States, 1,018 from the North, and 217 from other countries; 
but at the election in March over six thousand votes were cast, the ex- 
cessive poll being caused, to a considerable extent at least, by a large 
fraudulent vote from Missouri. The proslavery party carried the day 
and organized the first territorial government, the Legislature consist- 
ing of twenty-eight proslavery and eleven antislavery members. This 
Legislature was recognized by the Federal Government, and entered 
upon its work. It adopted a strong slavery code. The antislavery peo- 
ple in Kansas, however, repudiated the territorial government, and 
carried their opposition to it to the very verge of war against it as such. 
They denounced it as an illegal, usurping, and bogus concern; they im- 
5 



66 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

ported supplies of Sharpe's rifles and organized companies, avowing their 
determination, if need be, to put down the lawful government by force; 
they held conveutions, by one of which a general couveutiou was called 
to meet at Topeka in October, 1855, for the purpose of forming a State 
constitution and applying for admission into the Union. The delegates 
to this general convention received in the aggregate 2,710 votes, but the 
supporters of the territorial government looked upon the whole proceed- 
ing as a farce, and did not vote. The Topeka convention, so called, adopt- 
ed an antislavery constitution, with a feature excluding negroes from the 
State; and this constitution was ratified by a vote of 1,731 to -16 — the sup- 
Ijorters of the territorial government again refusing to take any part. 
A State government was elected, consisting of a Governor and other 
officers, and members of the Legislature; but this government, while 
approaching the very extreme of a revolutionary one, stopped short of 
actual interference with the territorial government recognized by the 
Federal administration. The Topeka Constitution was presented to 
Congress, where it formed the subject of heated discussions, but neither 
it nor the government formed under it was recognized. The j)roslavery 
government, formed as it was according to law, maintained the control. 
Civil war raged. Large companies of armed men were introduced into 
the Territory by both sides, by far the larger part coming from the 
North. A reign of terror was established. 

The presidential election of 1856, resulting in the choice of Mr. 
Buchanan, led to a change of Federal policy in regard to Kausan affairs. 
In May, 1857, Piobert J. Walker, a prominent statesman from Missis- 
sippi (a Pennsylvanian by birth), was appointed Governor of the Terri- 
tory, and it seems was authorized to make some concessidus to the anti- 
slavery party. Meanwhile the territorial Legislature had, in turn, called 
a constitutional convention; and a census, preliminary to the election 
therefor, was taken. It was a very defective census, for which fact the 
antislavery party, as is now admitted even by its ajaologists, was partly 
responsible. The election passed off quietly, less than one-fourth of the 
registered voters taking ])art in it. The antislavery party permitted it 
to go by default, not appearing at the polls. 

Meanwhile Gov. Walker made certain speeches, in which be spoke of 
the climate of Kansas and its want of adaptation to slave labor; also he 
declared that if the coming constitutional convention should decline to 
submit the proposed new constitution to the people for ratification he 
would oppose its acceptance by Congress, and expressed confidence that 
the President would do likewise. These speeches were deeply resented 
in the South: first, and mainly, because they were regarded as a viola- 
tion of the principle of nonintervention by the Federal Government ; and 
secondly, and more particularly in Mississippi, because they came from 
Mr. Walker, whose politi<'al lionors had been derived from that State, 



II IS LIFE, TIMES, AXIJ SPEECHES. 67 

the political interests and rights of which — iu commou with those of 
her sister Houtheru States — he was charged with thereby betraying. 

The constitutional convention met at Lecompton; and iu Movember, 
1857, adopted a constitution which provided for the establishment 
of slavery. The convention determined not to submit it to a popular 
vote for ratification as a whole, but to submit only the article on slavery 
— ballots might be cast for "constitution with slavery," or "coustitution 
without slavery." This submission was made on the 21st of December, 
resulting in an almost unanimous vote for the "constitution with slav- 
ery " — the antislavery people again staying away from the polls. 

Meanwhile, in the elections of October, the antislavery party had cap- 
tured the Legislature; aud this Legislature, assembling at Lecompton 
on December 7, ordered a further and unreserved submission of the 
constitution to the people on the 4th of January, 1858, providing for a 
ballot " against the constitution formed at Lecompton." At this election 
over ten thousand adverse votes were cast, with less than two hundred 
favorable. 

On the 8th of December, 1857, the President submitted by liis an- 
nual message the Kansas affairs to the attention of Congress; and on 
the 2d of February following, by a special message, he transmitted the 
Lecompton constitution to that body, recommending that Kansas be 
speedily admitted to the Union, although the instrument had not Ijeen 
fully submitted to the people, aud declaring the antislavery party to be 
iu rebellion against the government. The debate upon these messages 
was. immensely protracted (it fills more than nine hundred pages of the 
Congressional Globe), and resulted in a reference of the constitution 
back to the people, where it was ultimately rejected. It is not uncom- 
mon for writers on these excitiug subjects to denounce the eftbrt to pass 
the Lecompton constitution as a monstrous fraud, or in similar terms; 
but there are certain considerations which may cause a dispassionate 
reader to take a more moderate view. Prof. Spring, whose sympathies 
are all against the instrument, yet makes this admission: 

For tlic constitution tliere was a single tenable line of defense : that it was the 
work of a legitimate convention which had observed all indispensable formalities. 
The constitution dates back to the lirst territorial Legislature which submitted to the 
people the question of calling a constitutional convention. Fifteen months afterwards 
—an ample period for mature consideration— they respond favorably at the iiolls. 
After a lapse of three months the question reaches the second territorial Legislature, 
which "bows to the will of the people and provides for the election of delegates." 
Then between the legislative sanction and the election of delegates four months inter- 
vene. Before the delegates meet and enter upon their duties a further delay of three 
months occurs. Thev submit a single but vital article of the constitution to the peo- 
ple for acceptance or rejection December 21, and they ratify it almost unanimoasly. * 

Nor is that all. What opposition there w as to the coustitution was 

*Kans,i,s (American Coniiiinnw eiimisl, p. 23». 



68 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

not expressed at the polls, the only forum iu our system for the deter- 
mination of such questions. Persistently, systematically, and with arms 
in hands, the antislavery people had refused to recognize the legal gov- 
ernment, had set up an illegal organization in ox^positiou, bai-ely stop- 
ping short of revolution, and had refused to vote. Could such recusan- 
cy be wisely or lawfully taken to overweigh the will of the people as ex- 
pressed through the ballot cast? To ask the question is to answer it. 
Still again: the constitution was in fact submitted on the only point of 
serious controversy, which was the question of slavery; and had it not 
been submitted on any point whatever, the step would have been no 
novelty in American constitution making.* 

Finally, had the constitution as presented not in fact truly represented 
the wislies of the people, it could at any time have been altered by the 
people, and in very short order. Such a thing as a constitution unalter- 
able is unknown to our system. 

During this contest a serious breach occurred within the ranks of the 
Democratic party. The Kansas-Nebraska bill declared it to be the 
"true intent and meaning" of the act "not to legislate slavery into any 
Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the peojjle 
thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions 
in their own way, subject only to the Coustitution of the United States." 
This declaration that "the people thereof" should be "perfectly free to 
form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way " con- 
tained an ambiguity which jjroved fatal to the iinity of the party. In 

*. Jameson, in his book " The Constitntiouai Couvention," enumerates one hundred and eigliteen 
conventions, and says : " Of these, seventy-eiglit have submitted the fruit of their labors to the peo- 
ple, and forty liave not." Jameson's work, however, is not reliable on this point. Amonsst the 
seventy-eight submissions enumerated by him are the following: Ohio, 1803; Missouri, 1820; Missis- 
sippi, 1S17; Mississippi, 1832; Tennessee, 1"%; Alabama, 1810; Arkansas, 1836; Illinois, 1818; Indiana, 
1816; Kentucky, 1792; Louisiana, 1812. During the discussion of these questions, apropos of the Kan- 
sas constitution, newspapers of that day asserted that none of those constitutions had Ijeen referred to 
tlie people. It is quite certain that the following were not: Missouri. 1S20; Mississippi, 1817; Missis- 
sippi, 1832; Alabama, 1819; Keutuokr, 1792. And Poore, in the coniiiilation of "Constitutions and 
Chiirters " (a government publication), says that those of Oliio, 1S02, and Tennessee, 1791!, were not. 
On the other hand, Poore is not reliable on that point, eitlier; for he says that the Mlssissi]ipi con- 
stitutions of 1817 and 1832 were so referred, while it is certain that they were not. Poore and 
Jameson contradict e.ach other in sever.al jjiirticulars.— In denouncing the Southern constitutions 
of 1865 with a view to a justification of the reconstruction laws of Congress adopted in 1867 Mr. 
Blaine, in liis work " Twenty Tears of Congress" (Vol. II., p. 87), says: They diil not even stop to 
submit these ch;ingcs to the popular vote, but assumed tor their own assemblage of oligarclis tlie full 
power to motlify the organic laws of their States — an assumption irifhon/ precedcuf and icillioiU 
repetition in the Jiisfort/ of State co-nstititfioiif; in tliis ennntri/. antf utterly anbeersive of the fnnfla- 
mental idea of repuliliean tiovernment." In Ibis dogmatical statement Mr. P.laine .'■hows himself 
to be uninformed about the history of American constitutions. Not oidy had many of the States 
been admitted into the Union, prior to 1865, on constitutions not submitted, but also " the power to 
modify the oi-ganic laws " without reference to the people had been exercised in several instances 
—without considering the ten "secession " constitutions of 1861— in South C'arolin.a, 1777 and 1790: in 
Penn.sylvania, 1789; in Delaware, 1792 and IS31; in Georgia,1795 and 1798; in Kentucky, 1799: in New 
York, 18(11; in Mississippi, 1832— one of these instances being in Mr. Blaine's native State.^In Mis- 
sissijipi, in fact, there have been six constitutions and revisions; those of 1817, 1832, 1.861, 186.'.. 1.869, 
an'l ISito. Only one of them Avas ever sulnnirted to the people for ratification, which was tliatof 
1869, the Reconstruction Constitution dictated by Congress, ami the submission of which was a 
mocUerv. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 69 

connection with it Mr. Douglas, who was the loailer of the Northern 
Democrats, and whose course theretofore in connection with the shivery 
controversy had placed him high in the good graces of the Southern 
wing of that party, enunciated his doctrine of "squatter sovereignty," 
whicli was, in effect, that such persons as should live in a territory 
could, by their territorial Legislature, and before organization as a 
State, regulate the question of slavery ; and, if they saw proper, exclude 
it altogether. But this the Southern ])arty denied. They held that the 
right of any citizen to carry his slave property into the territories of 
the United States was secured to him by the Federal Constitution; that 
even Congress could not deny that right; that the territorial Legisla- 
tures were only instrumentalities or agents of Congress for the provi- 
sional government of the Territories; and that, since an agent's power 
cannot exceed that of the principal, tiie territorial Legislature might 
not do what Congress could not— in short, that not until the territory 
was clothed with the sovereignty of a State could any citizen's right to 
hold slave property within its limits be denied. This difference of view 
caused Mr. Douglas and tlK)se whom he led to refuse to cooperate with 
the remainder of the party in their effort to admit Kansas at once into 
the Union on the Lecompton Constitution; and because of that refusal, 
although the Democrats were in the majority in both Houses, that 
effort failed. By many of the Southern Democrats this course of Mr. 
Douglas was regarded as a betrayal of the party in the interest of his 
presidential aspirations, and he was denounced as worse than a " black 
Eepublican." It all led to the rupture of 18G0 in the party, and the 
consequent election of Mr. Lincoln. 

Another, and a different, episode needs attenticm here. In the year 
1855, one William Walker, a Tennesseean, recently resident in California, 
left that State at the head of a band of adventurers for Nicaragua, 
which he entered in the character of ally to one of the factions habitu- 
ally disputing the mastery of that country. So long as he acted under 
color of the authority of the chiefs of the faction which he supported 
he was generally successful. He captured the city of Grenada, which 
was deemed the stronghold of the adverse faction, and then assumed 
the title of General. Later he took upon himself the title of President 
of Nicaragua (or was chosen to that office, as he claimed), and pro- 
mulgated a decree reestablishing slavery in that country. He aroused 
the jealousy of the natives and weakened himself by various impru- 
dences. Yet he maintained an unequal contest for about two years, suc- 
cumbing at last to a coalition of the Central American States, and sur- 
rendering at Rivas. He returned to this country (or, as he claimed, 
was broiTght thither against his will), and immediately commenced at 
New Orleans the fitting out of a new military expedition to Nicaragua. 



70 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

He was arrested and compelled to give bond to desist from unlawful 
enterprises; but he very soon left New Orleans ou a steamboat freighted 
with armed men and military stores, ostensibly for Mobile, but in fact 
for Nicaragua, where he and his followers lauded at Puuta Arenas on 
November 25, 1857. Here Commodore Paulding, of our navy, com- 
Ijelled him to surrender with some of his followers, bringing him to 
New York as a prisoner. The President, by a special message to Con- 
gress, January 7, 1858, condemned Walker's expedition, but also con- 
demned the Commodore for violating the sovereignty of a foreign coun- 
try in assuming to make any arrests within it, and declined to hold 
Walker as a prisoner.* This message produced a discussion in Con- 
gress, this expedition and others like it being viewed with great dislike 
in the North as of proslavery tendency. 

We are now prepared to resume the consideration of the attitude of 
Mr. Lamar toward these stirring questions. 

Of course his candidacy for Congress was not free from opposition 
within the party. The objection most strongly urged against him was 
his connection by marriage with Hon. Howell Cobb, a memlier of Mr. 
Buchanan's cabinet, who was known to have great influence with the 
President. It was remembered that this gentleman, as Speaker of the 
House, had advocated and had materially assisted in the adoption of 
the comjjromise measures of 1850; and that, when assailed at home 
because of his course, he had afterwards canvassed the State of Georgia 
as a candidate for Governor on the Union ticket, and had been trium- 
phantly elected. Resenting the course of Gov. Walker in Kansas, 
as the State Plights party did, and understanding that the President 
was committed to support him in that course, there was an attitude of 
growing hostility to the administration, albeit a Democratic administra- 
tion. It was thought, or at all events urged, that the kinship of Mr. 
Lamar to Secretary Cobb, and their long friendship, would bring the 
former under the influence of the latter to such an extent as to impair 
bis efi'ectiveness as the champion of tlie party. 

But this objection, and all others, failed to defeat the movement in 
Mr. Lamar's favor. In the month of June, 1857, there was a meeting 
in Oxford of Democratic citizens of Lafayette County, at which Mr. 
Lamar was present. He submitted resolutions condemnatory of Gov. 
Walker's course, and made a strong speech in their support. The res- 
olutions were adopted, and Mr. Lamar was nominated for the Lower 
House of the State Legislature. 

The Democratic congressional nominating convention met in Holly 
Springs early in July. Before that body were placed the names of Mr. 

* The "American Conflict; " Greeley, V^ol. I., p. 270. Files of Weekly Mismsippian lor .Tannary, 1S58. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 71 

Clapp, of Marshall; Mr. Cushman, of Lafayette; aiul Mr. Jackson, of 
Tippah. This brought about a deadlock. All candidates were filially 
dropped, and Mr. Wright, of Tijjpah, and Mr. Lamar were placed before 
the convention. After the sixtieth ballot of the meeting Mr. Lamar 
was nominated by acclamation. 

The fact that the convention met in Holly Springs was fortunate for 
him. Long afterwards (in 1879) he said in a speech made there: 

The first political speech I ever made which attracted general public attention in 
Mississippi I made here. Near twenty years ago I was nominated as a candidate for 
Congress by a convention assembled here, and I attribute that result largely to the 
manifestation of local attachment by the peo|)le here. What I said upon that occa- 
sion has long finee passed from my memory, but the kindness and sui)]iort which I 
then received and have ever since received from you I nevei' can forjiet. I know 
that public professions are easily made and are counted cheap, but iis circumstances 
have prevented me from addressing you of late years you must permit me to depart 
froui my usual reserve and to say tliat there is no community in Mississippi or in the 
country to vvliich I am more attached than to this. I not only esteem and respect it 
for the intelligence, refinement, and puljlic spirit of its citizens; for the enteiprise of 
its business men; for the devoted piety and eloquence of its ministers of the gospel-; 
for the ability and honor of its bar, which I consider second to none in the State — 
but I also love this community for many personal reasons. Your city is in my affec- 
tions consecrated by thron^'iuir memories, in which joys and sorrows are strangely 
interminijled. Some of the best and most cherished friendshijis of my mature man- 
hood were formed here. I have in some way conceived the idea that I am better un- 
derstood and more generously regarded here tlian anywhere else. I hope it is not 
vanity in me to feel and say this, for it has been and will ever be a consolation to me 
in many a dark hour of depression and gloom. 

Upon Mr. Lamar's nomination he immediately made arrangements 
for a thorough canvass of the district. It was announced that Col. 
James L. Alcorn, of Coahoma County, would enter the lists as the can- 
didate of the opposition, composed of AVhigs and Know-nothings, and 
arrangements were made for a joint canvass. This canvass excited very 
general interest throughout the State. Mr. Thomas Walton, writing 
from Jackson under date of September 25, said to him: 

Xow that I have got at it I must write you what I have heard at Jackson. I only 
heard what convinced me that you have much to do to sustain your reputation. 
Every man was asking about you, every man remarking that Mr. Alcorn, it was ^aid, 
would be most egregiously disapi5oint( d if he expected an easy passage through this 
campaign, for that you were going to prove a more unmanageable character than any 
other he could have found in the State. However, they do not set you against Mr. 
Alcorn. They all talk of what you are going to do for the credit of the State when 
you reach Washington. I tell you what, my friend, you have, in plantation parlance, 
a hard mw to weed. As German Le«ter said to me last evening, you have more rep- 
utation than any other man in the State, considering that you have never been here 
and that it is all built on hearsay. 

The following extract is from a letter written to Mr. Lamar by his 
brother Tliompson, of date August 17, and will help to illustrate the 
temper and views of the Southern people at this time: 



72 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

I am afraid that if you are elected this time you will not be able to hold your seat 
— that is, if Jell' writes that which is correct. He says that you will probably assuuje 
an attitude of hostility to the administration on account of Gov. Walker's position. I 
shall be sorry if it proves to be the ease. Opposition to tlie administiation will nec- 
essarily drive you into a sectional party. The Northern Demociats will sustain it 
and will act with those at the Soiitli who do. You will be defeated whenever you 
have a national Democrat for a competitor. Although I disapprove of INIr. Walker's 
threats, I must say that I think the convention ought, under the circumstances, to 
submit the constitution it may foi'm to a vote of ratification. Whom tlie administra- 
tion tliinks should be entitled to vote on the adoption of the constitution will apjiear 
from the inclosed slip, cut from the Wusiiington Union. No fair man, I think, should 
object to the views there set forth. It is idle to say that IMr. Walker can eifect any- 
thing either for or against the establishment of slavery in Kansas. That question 
was settled against us long before Mr. Walker went to that Territory — not by the 
action of any government official, but by the immense influx of Northern immi- 
grants. All reliable accounts agree in stating that the jiroslavery jiarty aie vastly in 
the minority in Kansas. I would prefer that her people .should at once adopt a free- 
.state constitution, rather than that the free-soilers should stand aloof and perndt a 
constitution recognizing slavery to be formed and then in a few years almlish it. I 
consider it a foregone conclusion that a vast majority in Kansas are against us, and 
can settle the matter when they choose to act in conformitj' to law. !My confidence 
in the Northern Democracy and Mr. Buchanan continues unaliated. The entire 
unanimity with which the former have approved and defended the decision of the 
Sui>reme Court in the Dred Scott case, with their avowals of willingness to admit 
other slave States into the Union, seems to me sufficient to satisfy the most exacting. 
There is one view of tiie case which alone would prevent me from denouncing IMr. 
Buchanan for not removing Walker. Tlie latter proposed that all the inhabitants of 
Kansas should vote upon the adoption of the constitution under which they are to be 
governed. I myself think the convention should provide for that, since not more 
than a third of the voters are represented by delegates. But Walker goes farther: he 
threatens a rejection by Congress of the application for admission as a State, and his 
own individual opposition if his views are not adopted. The latter I consider his 
offense. Not the course he dictates, but the dictation. Now, if he were removed 
from office, it would be almost impossil>le to get the Northern mind to perceive the 
distinction. Tiie opponents of Democracy would urge, with a good deal of plausibil- 
ity, that Mr. Walker was removed for advocating the claims of each and all of tlie 
citizens of Kansas to take part in forming the government under whicli they were to 
live, for endeavoring to carry out in good faith the jirinciple of the Kansas-Nebraska 
bill. Their denunciation of the South for a breach of faith in this case would liave a 
far greater effect than when hurled at her for violating the Missouri Compromise. 
My convictions are fixed and unwavering that if Mr. Walker be removed and Kansas 
be admitted as a slave State, without submitting the constitution to a vote of the 
people, in 1801 a black Republican President and Congress will be installed in office. 
For the foregoing reasons I can see cause why the President can retain Walker in 
office without being a " traitor to the South." But enough of politics. 

Mr. Lamar was elected, and rejiaired to Washington about the 1st of 
December, 1857, to take liis seat iu the Thirty-fifth Congress. On his 
arrival he found, of course, that the Nicaragnan expedition and the 
Kansas question were creating great excitement and discussion. Hav- 
ing been admitted to his seat, he made his first sjieech in Congress ou 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 73 

the 13tli of January, 1858. la it lie dealt with both of the questious of 
the day, aud the speech is yiveii iu full in the "Appeudix" as No. 1. It 
will be observed that he touched but lightly ou the Nicaraguau ques- 
tion. Iu his opinion it seems to have been of small importance. 

Mr. Lamar's speech was most enthusiastically received, both in the 
Congress and at tlie South. It gave him at once prominence in the 
House, and secured even from those opposed to him a recognition for 
eloquence, " impetuous, scholarly, aud defiant." It gave him great pres- 
tige in Mississippi. 

About this time Mr. B. S. Eozell, a jirominent citizen of his district, 
addressed to Mr. Lamar a letter in which, amongst other things, he 
urged the necessity for taking immediate action for the protection of 
Southern interests in case the Congress should refuse to accept the Le- 
compton constitution. The following is Mr. Lamar's reply: 

Washington, D. C, March 8, 1858. 

My Dear Sir: Your letter of the 20th ult. came duly to haiul. It sets forth in an 
exceedingly able manner views which every trne Southern man should be jiroud to 
entertain. 

With regard to my own course I can readily make it clear to you, as I would have 
done to all the voters of your locality could I have had an opportunity of addressing 
them last autumn. 

I have never been one of those who run ahead of the issue, who create evils in or- 
der that they may destroy them. I have preferred always a peaceable s^ettlement of 
political questions. But I hold to the old motto: " In peace prepare for war." I can 
see too plainly the clouds that are hanging over us. I can hear and interpret too well 
the niutterings of an approaching storm. I have measured the extent of that danger 
which we must, sooner or later, look resistently in the face. 

I l)elieve with you, and with w^hat I trust will soon be the unanimous South, that 
the refusal of Congress to admit any Territory into this Union merely because tliat 
Territory should present a proslavery constitution would be at once and forever an ab- 
rogation of political equality. Should that time come, I may deprecate, but would not 
prevent, the fearful consequences. Dissolution cannot take place quietly ; the vast and 
complicated machinery of this government cannot be divided without general tumult 
and, it inav be, ruin. When the sun of the Union sets it will go down in blood. 
Should we not, tlien, have our camp prepared, our leaders chosen, our ranks marshaled, 
and our sentinels at their posts ? 

If I act with caution in this matter, it is because I am in earnest. If I am slow in 
deliberation, it is because I shall be rapid in action. 

I believe and hope, however, that we will pass the Lecompton constitution. The 
administration is acting in good faith; and, unless the Southern Know-nothings in 
Congress should take the responsibility of deserting their section, we may be able to 
avert the threatened evil for the i)resent. 

To tlie ambition of New England we may trace the rise of this whole abolition move- 
ment. She was the great manufacturing agent of the country ; she saw in the South the 
great producing agent. She sought to reverse the law of nature, and make produce the 
slave of manufactures. In the " alien and sedition laws," and the spirit of the Hartford 
Convention, we see the first declaration of inequality between jiersons and classes. 
From this position the step was easy to an ineciuality between communities and States. 



74 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

Should the Soutli ever submit to one invasion of her rights, the white line might be 
distinctly drawn iironnd her, and a servile government constituted to rule, not protect, 
her. Such was the dream of Puritanism — New England the nation, the other States 
her colonies. 

What has she left undone in pursuance of this scheme? She has scattered gold 
like %vater. Her abolitionists have gone into the churches, creating feuds and schisms 
in the hearts of pious men, and upon the altar of the most high God they have poured 
forth their blasphemies against the South. They have laid their filthy hands upon 
poetry and romance, and their literature comes to us teenung with insult and infec- 
tion. Is it not time to whip into submission these wolves that have banded together 
for the destruction of nobler things? 

The Keitt-Grow fight, which caused a great deal of comment and 
some ill feeling, occurred at this session, on the uight of February 5-6, 
about one o'clock. 

The House of Eepresentatives was in a furious struggle as to whether 
the President's message on the Lecompton constitution should be re- 
ferred to the Democratic Committee on Territories or to a select commit- 
tee of fifteen. It was an all-night session. Congressmen lay asleep on 
sofas while a few prolonged the debate. Sometime before two o'clock 
in the morning Mr. Grow, a Rei)ublican member from Pennsylvania, 
whom Mr. Cox characterizes as "saucy in bravado toward his oppo- 
nents" * had gone over to the desk of Mr. Cox, on tlie Democratic side. 
While there, Mr. Quitman, of Mississippi, requested permission nf the 
House to make some explanation. Mr. Grow objected. This angered 
Mr. Keitt, of South Carolina, whom also Mr. Cox describes as addicted 
to " swaggering bravado," and he asked Mr. Grow why he didn't go 
over to his own side of the house if he wanted to object. Of what fol- 
lowed a cofrespoudent of the New Orleans Fkaijune gave this rather 
amusing account: 

Mr. (irow replied that it was a free hall, and that he would object from any point 
in it which he pleased. The parties exchanged angry words— Keitt calling Grow a 
black Republican puppy, and the latter retorting that he would not allow any nigger 
driver to crack whips around his ears. 

This is the substance of the phrases as related by parlies who were near. Mr. 
Keitt caught Grow by the throat, Init they were separated by Mr. Reuben Davis, of 
Jlississippi, who had followed Keitt for the purpose of restraining him and keeping 
the peace. Immediately afterwards, however, he broke loose and again seized Mr. 
Grow, when the latter (as he himself says) struck him a severe blow, which felled him 
to the floor. Mr. Keitt denied tliat he fell from the effects of a blow, but asserts that 
he stumbled. By this time quite a number ot gentlemen (among whom were Barks- 
dale of Mississippi, Craig of North Carolina, and others) rushed forward, some 
probably for the purpose of getting a better sight of " the ring," and others to sejiarate 
the contestants. This all occurred on the Democratic side of the chamber; but when 
the Republicans saw so many rushing toward Cirow they thought he was to be badly 
hanilled, ami quick as thought starteil en masse for the scene of conflict. Potter, of 
Wisconsin, a stout fellow with a fist like an ox, was foremost, and bounded into the 



* " Three Decades of Federal Legislation," S. S. Cox, pp. Ti-76. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 75 

fray like a maddened tiger. Just then Barksdale had hold of Grow, with a view of 
leading liim out of the vicUe. Potter, mistaking his purpose, planted a " sockdola- 
ger " between Barksdale's eyes, which only had the ell'ect of rousing hiH grit. Looking 
around, the first man he saw was Elihu Washburne, of Illinois. .Supposing it was he 
who struck him, Barksdale si'rani; gallantly at him, and tliey exchangi'd a handsome 
little match in less than no time. Potter meantime was striking right and left at 
Barksdale or anybody else. Cadwalader Washburn al.so aime to the rescue of his 
brother and attacked Barksdale, who defended himself with coolness, vigor, and skilly 
saving his face from bruise or scratch. 

It was a jolly row, and no bones broken. The Speaker cried in vain for order. 
The Sergeantat Arms made arrests, but the fight was over, and the choler exploded in a 
broad guffaw in a very short time as soon as the ludicrous jioints in the affair presented 
themselves. It was evident that noltody, unless Keitt, intended to fight in the begin- 
ning ; but even Lamar, of Mississippi, and Parson Owen Lovejoy had a little set-to in the 
course of the passing gust. [" They probably fought for ten minutes," says another cor- 
respondent, " neither gaining any particular advantage, and both getting pretty well 
pounded."] Bocock, of Virginia, was threatened with a knockdown by Montgomery, 
of Pennsylvania, whom he proposed to restrain from tixking part in the row. .John 
Covode seized a gigantic spittoon of stoneware with which to brain somebody, but 
fortunately happened to see no one at the instant who seemed to deserve braining, 
and so a homicide was doubtless avoided. McQueen, of South Carolina, was some- 
where in the ring, for he looked not a little troubled when the affair was over; and 
Barksdale — than whom no man had a bigger or better share of the fun — came out 
right side up, but with his wig wrong side front. It was ]ileasant to witness the good 
nature of all parties after the fight was over. Nobody was hurt much, and they liail 
nothing to do but apologize. Gentlemen who got acquainted for the first time in the 
midst of the "sliindy " shook hands over the mutual assurance that they went into 
the fight only to prevent a fight, and in half an hour the house was quieter than ever. 

Mr. Cox, however, seems to have regarded this " shindy " with a more 
serious eye than did the correspondent of the Picayune. He says of it: 

The passions of the time are incarnate in that Congress and at that hour. See the 
fierce clutch and glaring eye, and the struggle between those heady champions ! Now, 
after nearly thiee decades, the author sees trooping down the aisle of memory, as then 
there came trooping down the aisle of the house, the belligerent members, with Wash- 
burne, of Illinois, and Potter, of Wisconsin, leading the one extreme, and Barksdale 
and Lamar, of Mississippi, leading the other; then comes the tni'Ue—ihn struggle, the 
pale face of the Speaker calling to order, the Sergeant at Arms rushing into the area 
before the clerk's desk, with the mace as his symbol of authority. Its silver eagle 
moves up and down on the wave of passion and conflict. Then fheie is a dead hush 
of tlie hot heart, an.l the glare of defiance across tlie hall ! As this scene is revivified, 
looking at it through the red storm of the war, there is epitomized all that has made 
that war bloody and desperate. 

The reader who shall remember thnt this scene is an almost exact re- 
production of a similar occurrence in the British House of Commons 
only two or three years ago may comfort himself with the hope that, 
after all, the passions which brought it about were not so violent or im- 
placable as they seemed to Mr. Cox, and that the P/c« //««('' .^designation 
of it as a " shindy " was nearer to the truth. 

It must not be imagined that because Mr. Lamar took part in this 
combat he was one of the bullies of the House, or was so regarded. 



76 LVCIVS Q. a LAMAR: 

It may be noted that the correspondent says "even Lamar" had a set-to. 
The suggestion of that expression is carried out by a notice iu the 
North. Aiiicricaii, of Philadelphia, of date January 25, 1893, in which Mr. 
Lamar's humor and bearing as a member of Congress at that period 
were described: 

As a member of the House prior to the Civil War lie won considerable notice as a 
conservative Southern man, eloquent in debate, and a power when fully aroused. But 
his indolence gave him the appearance of sluggishness to a casual looker-on. He was 
not sluggish, however. He was always on the alert and fully cognizant of the stirring 
scenes almost daily enacted in the House. Much of the wrangling disgusted him as 
puerile and without object. He was a peacemaker oftener than a peacebreaker. As 
jealous of the rights and claims of the South as other and more boisterous members, 
his methods were free from much that rendered the more fiery representatives of the 
oligarchy ofiensive both as respected manners and language. 

Mr. Lamar took a prominent part in the Vallandigham-Campbell con- 
test over the seat in the House as member from the Third District of Ohio. 
The question turned mainly upon the recejition of negro votes. Mr. 
Vallandigham unseated Mr. Campbell after a long contest. Mr. La- 
mar was a member of the Committee on Elections, and strongly ad- 
vocated the claim of the contestant. His speech, made May 22, was a 
very effective one; but being upon questions local and now wholly ob- 
solete and almost pirrely legal in character, it is not given. He wrote 
to his wife that " the papers from Ohio come loaded with complimen- 
tary notices of my speech." 

Mr. Lamar was not particularly pleased with life in Washington. 
Under date of May 4, he writes his mother-in-law, Mrs. Longstreet: 

Washington is now a most beautiful place, and the Capitol Hill is the most splen- 
did and picturesque scene my eye ever rested upon. But I am ready and willing to 
leave the city forever. The center of all my enjoyments is the home wherein are my 
wife and children, and I have no wish to wander out from that home in pursuit of 
any pleasures that the world picsents. 

To his wife, at the same time, he wi-ote: 

I have not yet made up my wind what to do aliout running a second time. Your 
pa's views will have great weight with me, but he is mistaken about the importance 
of men of talent here from the South. They can do liut little good for their section 
in Congress. 

So deeply was he impressed with the ideas expressed in those ex- 
tracts that he was in active correspondence with the authorities of the 
University of Mississippi for appointment to the chair of Mental and 
Moral Philosophy. He had obtained indorsements from Mr. Cos, Hon. 
Jacob Thompson, Senator A. G. Brown, and others, all of which were of 
the most flattering nature. The movement, however, was energetically 
protested against by many influential friends, on the ground that his 



i/W LIFE, TIMES, AXD SPEECHES. 77 

work was more importaul iu the tiold of politics. The followiug extract 
from a letter from Dr. ¥. A. P. Baruanl, theu Chaucellor of the uni- 
versity, shows the liue of argument used ou this point, as well as other 
matter of interest: 

Univebsity of MississU'pi, March 25, 1858. 

My Dear Friend: Your letter of the 15th, received yesterday, atl'orded ine iin- 
mingled gratification. I had been led, by outgivings of your friends, to lielieve that 
you would not persevere in your clioice to leave the more conspicuous position in winch 
j'ou are placed for our dull oljscurity ; and while I felt that the change of your jirevi- 
ously understood purpose would be, to myself personally, a severe misfortune, and to 
the University of Mississippi no slight calamity, yet I could not find it in my con- 
science to disapprove the determination to which, as I understood the matter, you 
were likely to come. I have said to you before, and I say to you again, that I believe 
the country has need of such men as you in precisely such positions as that which 
you hold, and those to which, in the course of time, I should expect to see you ad- 
vanced. In saying this I do not mean to allude to any sectional questions between the 
North an<l the South ; nor do I mean to say merely that )'ou are needed as a cham- 
pion of Southern i-ights. As Mr. Seward says, the battle is substantially over — or, if it 
is not over as a fight, it is over as a struggle for mastery. The strength is in the hands 
of our opponents. What becomes of the Kansas question is really a matter of little 
moment. It would be of little moment, even if the question were not incumbered 
with complications which must render its decision either way meaningless. It would 
be of little moment if presented in the simplest form possible, for it could not pre- 
vent that numerical preponderance of the North', wliich is now incontestal)le, and 
which will leave it entirely in the power of Northern men to say how Southern rights 
shall be regarded. Suppose, then, that by the use of all those aiipliances by whidi [lower 
and party tactics often control a doubtful decision in a nearly balanced House, sup- 
pose that in this way the victory in this exciting contest should be secured to the 
South, what would it be, and what cmild it be, but a barren victory? The result 
would be either a just exponent of the views and intentions of the Northern ma- 
jority, or it would not be. If it would not be, what benefit are we to reap from it? 
If it would be, why is it only to be won by such desperate expedients? 

Mr. Seward is right. There lias been of late years a disposition in our Federal Gov- 
ernment to favor the equality of the South, under the constitution, with her restless 
sister of the North. It bus not been successful. Its last remnant of conservative 
power in reference to this matter is, at this moment, undergoing the process for which 
Mr. Gushing invented the felicitous expression, " to be crushed out." Henceforth, the 
constitution is only to be a constitution if the North so please. 

Therefore (to bring this digression to a conclusion), I do not mean to say that the 
South has special need of you in Washington to fight for the South. I do not know 
that thcie will be, for many years longer, a common Washington for the South and 
North. The future is all dark before me, and the spirit of prophecy fails. But the 
thing wliich I do know is that, whatever becomes of our present political organiza- 
tion, whatever fate may befall a Union which has been from my earliest consciousness 
so dear to me that I could not feel that a country would remain to me without it, it is 
a social necessity that we should have a government; and it is a matter of the deep- 
est interest to us all that our government should lie in able and honest hands. Now, 
sincerity, singleness, and honesty of purpose, patriotism unqualified liy selfishness, 
and integrity superior to all temptation, are qualities not so abundant among men in 
political life as to reduce them to the grade of common and everyday virtues. What 
if it is true that every man. politician or not, but epecially every politician, should be 
sincere and honest and patriotic and ineorruptible? How- many are there, after all, 



78 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

in any walk of life in this world, who are what they ought to be; who are not guilty 
of doing many things which they ought not to have done, and leaving many things 
undone which they ought to have done? And how often must the two or three right- 
minded men in the National Legislature (if there be so many there) have felt disposed, 
in the midst of the intrigue and the corruption and the misrepresentation and distortion 
of the truth constantly going on around them, to follow up the confession, and say: 
"There is no health in us! " Now while I believe that, among the admirers of j'our 
genius and Intellectual strength, no one of all your friends can take precedence of me, 
it is not so much that the country might pioflt by your talents, as that it might reap 
the benefit of your inflexible rectitude of purpose, that I should delight to see you 
permanently devoted to public life. Yet, at the same time, I nmst confess that with- 
out the talents the honesty would be of comparatively little avail; since it is of small 
moment to the world that a humble individual is virtuous in a quiet corner by him- 
self; and if he would make his virtue of public value, he must have power (and what 
power like that of intellect?) to compel others to be virtuous also. I confess again 
that there are hard cases enough, in Congress and out, whom no compulsion could 
make virtuous — hard-shelled sinners, through whose impervious exteiior no moral 
hydraulic press could be found of power enough to force the feeblest infusion of 
righteousness— but even such can be obliged to pay to moral princijde the ordinary, 
though reluctant, homage of hypocrisy, ami to "assume a virtue if they have it not." 

In short, it is my ojiinion that what the country wants at present, most of all, is men 
of genuine, unselfish patriotism, of spotless probity and unbending integrity of prin- 
ciple; and one such man, at least, I have believed that she has found in you. Your 
entrance into public life, therefore, I viewed with great gratification; and your retire- 
ment from it 1 cannot observe without some emotions of regret. Do not, however, for 
one moment believe that I do not, for my own sake and that of the university, most 
heartily i-ejoice that a decision to which I did not feel it right urgently to press you has 
been arrived at by yourself, in the exercise of your own indeiH-iident judgment. Since 
you want to come, you cannot but know that all of us here want to have you; and 
chiefest of all, myself I hjok forward with delight to the jileasant hours of social 
and intellectual enjoyment which I am sure are before us; and I hail with the highest 
satisfaction the accession of strength which your election will bring us, in the effort to 
build this university up into the great university of the Southwest. 

In regard to the event, you perceive that I speak of it as a thing settled. Testimo- 
nials were not in the least needed in your case. 'I could count on my fingers the votes 
that would elect you the day it should only lie known that you were a candidate for 
election. The men whom I count are men who have, in my eyes, the double merit of 
being sure to vole for you if here, and of being sure to be here to vote for you. Three 
of these votes will be given with an ill grace, because they will be given by your con- 
stituents. 

The project di.scussed in Dr. Barnard's letter came to nothing for the 
time being. Mr. Lamar remained in political life. The press of the 
State was very complimentary to him. On the 3d of November, noti- 
cing his presence in Jackson, the Wrel-hj ^[ianixiiippi State Gazette said 
that " the whole State has witnessed with ]n-ide the successful Congres- 
sional debut of this rising young statesman, and a general desire is ex- 
pressed to hear his views upon the important topics of the day." This 
notice followed upon an invitation by the Legislature, "irrespective of 
party," that he should address them; and this he did on the evening of 
the 3d. He was introduced to a large and brilliant audience by Chief 



7//,s LIFE, TIMES, A.\D SPEECHES. 79 

Justice C. P. Smith. The Gazette reported his speech, in short, with the 
following notice: 

We have given but a hurried and imperfect synopsis of his speech, which, in all its 
parts, we have never heard excelled in earnestness of eloquence, richness of diction, 
brilliant antithesis, and all the elements which make up a powerful productiou, from 
a mind "rich with the spoils of time." Well may the First District, "the nughty 
North," feel proud of her gallant young representative. 

The address, as reported, will be found iu the Appendix.* 

At the short session of the Thirty-fifth Congress, on the 17th of Janu- 
ary, 1859, Mr. Lamar delivered an address iu memory of Hon. T. 
L. Harris, member from the Sixth Congressional District of Illinois, 
lately deceased. This address, also, was i-eceived with the most flatter- 
ing commendations. It was spoken of commonly as "tlic speech of the 
day," " universally pronounced one of the finest obituary addresses ever 
delivered on the floor." 

Following closely upon this address was his tariff speech, of Febru- 
ary "21, in opposition to a proposition made by Mr. Stanton, of Ohio, to 
meet a threatened deficit in the treasury by so changing the existing 
tariff law as to impose specific duties (as distinguished from (nI ralureni 
duties) "with discriminations for the protection of certain classes of 
American industries." 

These speeches are not presented to the reader, for the reason that 
the lapse of time and the changes of condition have deprived that on 
the tariff of the interest and importance which it then possessed, while 
the eidogy is surpassed in beauty and interest by later productions; 
and because, further, the space is needed for other discourses of wider 
and more permanent importance. The curious reader may easily find 
them iu the Congressional Globe of the proper date. 



*See .-Viiijendix, No. '1. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Tliirty-sixth Congress; Reelected— Speech at Jackson — Speech on Election of Speaker 
— Letter to Barnard — Speech on Southern Slavery — Charleston Convention — Letter 
to Mott — Baltimore Convention — Accepts Professorshii) in University — Speech at 
Columbus. 

IN June, 1859, Mr. Lamar was unanimously renominated as the I)em- 
ocratic candidate for Congress, and, after an active canvass of the 
district, was reelected in October, without any opposition candidate ap- 
pearing in the field. 

On the 11th of November following he delivered, at the request of 
the Legislature, then in session, an elaborate address before that body 
on the subject of the State's federal relations. Of this address, the 
Vicksbur<i Wliifj, a paper devoted to the interests of the opposing party, 
and one of the ablest in the State, said this: 

For two hours he held his audience, if not spell-bound, at least most agreeably en- 
tertained. Col. Lamar has many of the external graces and qualities that characterize 
the orator; but besides and beyond these he possesses a rich fountain of thouglit. rea<ly 
at his will to be poured out in a stream of choicest words, adorned with the happiest 
figures. . . . The ablest speech, as we have heard stateil on all hands, delivered in 
that hall for years, in defense of Democratic men and Democratic principles. . . . 
Mr. Lamar believed in the manifest destiny of this republic. Territorial expansion 
is, with him, proof of a prosperous nation ; he favored the acquisition of Mexico, Cen- 
tral America, and the Antilles. He is, however, nota tilibuster; all that is wrong. He 
sustains the nenfiality laws, and demands their enforcement. He pointed out our 
condition in th.e Union as pitiful enough. Powerless, Ojipressed, trampled on, threat- 
ened, doomed, no hope around, no hope ahead. But Col. Lamar is not a disunioni.«t 
per se. . . . 

When Congress convened there was a protracted and bitter struggle 
over the election of the Speaker. The Kepublicaus had placed in nom- 
ination Mr. Sherman, of Ohio, and this nomination precipitated the de- 
bate. 

One Helper, of Missouri, had ]iublished a book called "The Impend- 
ing Crisis," which was very notorious in its daj', and was a great (jffense 
to the Southern people and their sympathizers. It dealt with the slav- 
ery question, and, amongst other things, advised the slaves to rise and 
obtain their freedom by forcible means, if they could not do so ] >eaceably. 
A circular had been issued, recommending the book; and that circular 
had been signed by sixty-five members of the Congress, amongst others 
by Mr. Slierman. His nomination for the speakership was, therefore, a 
firebrand thrown into the House. 

On the 6th of December Mr. Sliermnn made a speech to the effect 
that, although liis name was signed to the circular, he did not remember 
(80)' 



LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 81 

tliat he had signed it; that bo certainly iiad never read the hook; that 
be did not iuteud to come in coullict with auy rights of JSoutberu citi- 
zens, etc. 

Many speeches were made; amongst them one by Mr. Lamar, on the 
7th, which was delivered on the impulse of the moment and without 
any preparation, but also " with electrical effect." * 

Especial attention is called to that portion of his speech in which he 
speaks of his attitude toward the ([uestion of secession, saying: "for 
one, I am no disunionist per se. I am devoted to the constitution of 
this Union, and as long as this republic is a great tolerant rejiublic, 
throwing its loving arms around both sections of the country, I, for one, 
will bestow every talent which God has given me for its promotion and 
its glory." It was at this time, too, that he wrote to Dr. Barnard thus: 

The sectional war rages with unabated violence. No one started out with more of 
honest indignation than I felt. But I begin to hope that there exists a mutual misunder- 
standing between the two sections, brought about by ultra party leaders and deluded 
fanatics. I think I can see, through all the rancor and madness of this struggle, the 
slow evolution of right principles. What is now the greatest need is some one man, 
one true man, who will present tlie whole controversy in its true light — who, rising 
above the passions and prejudices of the times, will speak to lioth sections in a spirit 
at once tolerant, just, generous, humane, and national. No one has sliown himself to 
be that man yet. I think 1 know one (a friend of yours and mine) who might do it. 
I think he has clear perceptions of his duty, high and noble sentiment, and a heart big 
with pure and holy afl'ection for his whole country; but his love for repose, shrinking 
from the uproar and confusion of party strife, will, I fear, cause him to be, what he has 
always been, wanting in the energy and courage to execute what his reason designs, 
his conscience approves, or his duty dictates. 

On the 21st of February, 1860, the House being in committee of the 
whole on the state of the Union, and having under consideration the 
President's annual message, Mr. Lamar delivered his reply to Mr. Fer- 
ry, of Connecticut, who had spoken on the never-ending subject of 
Southern slavery.f Mr. Lamar's speech treated slavery per se, in its 
divine and sociological aspects; Southern slavery specifically, from the 
legal, social, and humanitarian points of view; and the Southern planter 
and Southern nonslaveholders as men and as classes. It was warmly 
received at the South, and greatly added to his reputation and popular- 
ity in that region; nor did it go without a flattering and apparently ap- 
preciative recognition in the North. 

Under date of March 1.5 he writes to Judge Longstreet, then Presi- 
dent of South Carolina College, thus: 

My jiosition here is a far higher one tlian I ever expected to attain. The praises 
which I receive are so extravagant that 1 sometimes fear it is flattery. The President 
has sent for me two or three times to consult with me upon his message which he 
contemplates sending in. He told me not to mention it, as there are men who would 
resent his not consulting with them. 



*See Appenilix, Xo. 3. t^i'c Apiniilix. No. 4. 



82 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR. 

I do assure you, though, that iiour opinion of my speech, and your gratification at 
nay success, is the ricliest and dearest reward of my public life. You never have 
known how dceijly your approval of anything I do sinks into my heart and sweetens 
my life. 1 have hardly a hope or a fear that does not connect itself with you. No son 
ever loved a father more, and no one (except your wife) ever lo\ed, honored, and 
tried to obey you more faithfully. 

We have uow reached that fateful ijeriod when the passions which 
had been gathering and intensifying for so long a time disrupted all 
previous affiliations — when, especially, the Democratic jjarty, which fur 
sixty years had borne on the nation to a height of prosperity and gloi-y 
not dreamed of by its founders, was rent in twain, and, through its ruin, 
the nation was hurled into the incarnadine sea of a civil war. 

Tlie Democratic convention assembled in Charleston, S. C, on the 
23d of April, 1860, for the purpose of nominating the party candidates 
for the Presidency and Vice Presidency. It was the first occasion on 
which the Northern and the Southern wings of the party had met in con- 
vention since the celebrated "defection" of Mr. Douglas on the Kansas 
controversy. No great political sagacity was needed to see that the 
convention, notwithstanding that many Southern Democrats still be- 
lieved in Mr. Douglas as a stanch party man, would be divided into 
two great f Motions: those who favored the presidential candidacy of Mr. 
Douglas, and those who opposed it. Accordingly, upon the oi'ganization 
of that body a resolution was introduced for the purpose of declaring 
the most important item, or " plank," of the proposed platform, relating 
to slavery in the Territories. It was as follows: 

That the government of a Territory organized by an act of Congress is provisional 
and temporary ; and during its existence all citizens of the United States have an 
equal right to settle w-ith all their property in the Territory without their rights, 
either of person or property, being destroyed or impaired by Congressional or territo- 
rial le(jis!alio'ii. 

The only particular in which this resolution substantially diifered 
from the platfom of 18-56 consisted in the introduction of the conclud- 
ing words, "or territorial legislation." The object of this addition was 
manifestly to exclude the " squatter sovereignty " doctrine of Mr. Doug- 
las, and to conform the platform expressly to the views of those who 
held that only sovereign States could prohibit the introduction of slaves 
within their limits. Of course an eager and rancorous contest followed. 
The resolution was rejected; whereupon quite a number of the dele- 
gates withdrew from the convention, and, after organizing themselves 
into a separate body, called another convention to meet at Richmond, 
Va., on the second Monday of June. The remaining delegates of the 
Charleston Convention then, withoirt transacting any further business, 
adjourned to meet again on the 18th of June, in the city of Baltimore, 
requesting the several States to supply the vacancies caused by the 
withdrawal of their delegates. 



ins LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 83 

It may readily be imagined that these proceedings caused a great ex- 
citement in all the Htates. Throughout those States, ijarticularly, whose 
delegates iiad withdrawn, in whole or in part, tliere was agitation for 
meetings of the " National Old Line Democrats," favorable to the contin- 
uance of the "Union Democracy," in order to send delegates to the 
Baltimore Convention. In Mississippi, immediately after the ru^jture, 
Mr. Davis (who was regarded as a Presidential possibility) and others 
issued an Address to the Public, advising that the bolting delegates 
return to the Baltimore Convention. 

Mr. Lamar was a member of the Charleston Convention, and made a 
speech there, which was commonly pronounced one of the ])est of the 
occasion. Although more conservative in his views than the extremists, 
he still withdrew with them. The following letter, written to C. H. Mott, 
Esq. (his partner), under the date of May 29, 1860, will cast a light upon 
his own motives and position, and on the general situation as he then 
regarded it : 

You will have seen ere this that I signed with Jeff Davis the address which advises 
the return of the dele-ates to Baltimori'. Davis had signed it, and 1 was determined 
that his name should not go unsupported by any of the delegation. It was in obedi- 
ence to his wish that I went to Charleston. He wrote to Barry,* telling him that I 
was fully possessed of his views. He did not wish the Southern delegates to secede 
on the platform, because he knew that we could achieve a more solid and enduring 
triumph by remaining in and delealing Douglas. I urged his views to the delegates, 
and insisted that if they could get a living, i)ractical representative of our principle it 
would be better than to go out upon a mere verbal symbol. But there was no hold- 
ing back such men as Gen. Clark, Thompson, Mathews, and .Judge Gholson. They 
forced Alab:una to stand to their instructions, and then stood by her. 

Their position (whatever may have been the policy of it) is certainly based upon 
high grounds, and was prompted by the purest devotion to the rights of the South. 
It deserves the indorsement and approval of the people of IMississiijpi. I have hnked 
my future with it, for weal or for woe. I do not know that their course was not even 
the best jjolicy. To divide the South is a most deplorable result just at this time, but 
the Northern men give us no other alternative. 

That Northern wing is rife with the elements of bitter sectionalism ; and if we yield 
to their mandate, all is lost. If the South would only unite, she could secure all her 
rights; but there is so little of unity— so much of discord, jealousies, and distrust- 
between the most patriotic of our men, that I am opiiressed with emotions of the 
profoundest and most hopeless sadness. I endured, in beholding it,s exhibition at 
Charleston (and that, too, in the face of a compact and hostile sectional organization), 
a mental torture that allowed me no relief exceiit the thought that it could not be 
otherwise. O, will the nolile spirits of the South become ever a band of brothers, 
before the chain of the oppressors unites them? 

Mr. Lamar, notwithstanding the tone of his letter to Mott, was not, 
apparently, without serious misgivings as to the policy of the action of 
the Southern delegates at the Charleston Convention. The following 



*Hon WilUani S. Barry, a member of tlie convention, formerly a memlier of Congress and 
Spealjevof the House in the Mississippi Legi-slature, afterwards President of the Secession Con- 
vention, etc. 



84 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

extract is fi'om a letter of Mr. Justice John A. Campbell, of date June 
12, iu reply to a letter of Mr. Lamar's ou this subject : 

I received your penitential letter of the 7th inst. yesterday. If I had the powers of 
a Turkish cadi, I should condemn all the Southern actors in that scene to wear veils 
for four years. Their faces should not be seen among Democrats. I am not sure but 
what my sentence would comprise certain bastinadoes for all those fi-om whom some- 
thing better should have come. In that case, you and your friends. Cable and Jack- 
son, would have cariied sore feet for a Ions time. 

The convention which had been called to meet in Richmond was post- 
poned, and appointed to meet iu Baltimore at the same time with the 
retjular organization. Ujjon the assembling of the two conventions, an- 
other withdrawal took place from the regular organization, led by Mr. 
Caleb Gushing and Mr. Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts ; and 
these members joined the new organization. The rupture of the party 
was complete. Each convention made its noiniuatious-^one declaring 
for Mr. Douglas, and the other for John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky. 
It would seem a singular coincidence that the candidate of the new con- 
vention should be taken from the great State whose motto was: " United 
we stand, divided we fall." Did any think of it, and read in it a warning? 

While all this was going on Mr. Lamar was preparing to abandon 
practical politics altogether. It has been shown that he had always a 
longing for the quiet of a domestic life, and that he deemed the times 
unfavorable for any good results to the South by continuing in Congress. 
So it was that when the trustees of the LTniversity of Mississippi, in the 
latter part of June, offered him the chair of Ethics and Metaphysics, he 
accepted it. The election was announced in the Oxford lutelUijcncer in 
these terms : 

Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar, of this county, who takes the chair of Ethics and Metaphys- 
ics, is too well and widely and favorably known, abroad as well as at home, to ju-tify 
us in pronouncing upon him the eulogium he deserves. It is agreed on all hands that 
he possesses a peculiar fitness for his chair. . . . Prof. Lamar will serve out Ids full term 
as a member of Congress, but this will involve his absence from the university only 
for the period of three months during the next session. 

The Vickshurcj Whig, the leading opposition paper in the State, said 
editorially : 

We see it stated that Col. Lamar intends resigning his seat in Congress, to accept a 
position in the University of Mississipiii. We sincerely trust that this report is not true. 
... In our judgment Mr. Lamar is the ablest man in either branch of Congress from this 
State, and far ahead of the generality of Congressmen from the Southwest. There is 
hardly a question of governmental policy on which we do not ditt'er materially with 
liim ; but, if his side is to have the Congressmen, we at least feel a sort of state pride 
that such a man as Tj. Q. C. Lamar is made the recipient of tlie honors of his party. 

But, although "Prof." Lamar had decided to retire to the academic 
shades, it was not his intention to abandon the ship during the gale. 
He took an active part in the Presidential campaign, speaking with 
great eifect at numerous places. Col. Young, of Waverly, one of the 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 85 

typical Southern gentlemen of the old school, who embodied all of their 
charms without any of the blemishes sometimes found in them, wrote 
to Judge Longstreet October 26 : 

We luive just had the largest mass meeting in Columbus ever known in this State. 
Davis spoke in the forenoon. Pettus was to follow in the afternoon, but the country- 
people were so importunate for Lamar that he was forced up immediately after din- 
ner. . . . The universal opinion wa.s that it was the most statesmanlike speech 
which had been heard. 

Pettus spoke at night; then Barksdale, of Jackson. And yet, when so late, the cry 
burst forth for Lamar; and for one hour and thirty minutes he transported his audi- 
ence, and covered himself all over with glory. The Bell men followed and serenaded 
him. His appeal to them subdued all hearts, and made patriots of partisans. . . . 
Saturday we take him to Aberdeen, to speak there. They sent up for him to go to 
Mobile. . . . Lamar is carried away with Columbus, where he was feasted and 
lionized not a little. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Election of Lincoln— Conference of Congressmen— Speech at Brandon— Legislature 
of 1800— Resigns Seat in Congress— Liddell Letter — Member of Secession Con- 
vention—Passage of Ordinance — Lamar's Views on Secession — Blaine on Lamar 
and Secession. 

THE election of Mr. Lincoln brought the South face to face with a 
most tremeutlous question. For the first time in the history of 
the nation the executive and the legislative branches of the government 
(with the consequent ijower to organize the judiciary) had both fallen 
into the hands of a party established on a sectional issue, sustained by 
a purely sectional vote, and inflexibly bent on the enforcement of a sec- 
tionally hostile policy. What was to be done about it— submission and 
union, or resistance and disunion? That was the question. The world 
knows the fateful decision. 

Tliat decision, however, was by no means unanimous. When the 
sound of marching squadrons came from the North all sprang to arms 
with a unanimity and ardor never surpassed, and rarely equaled, and 
proved themselves "confederate" to the heart's core; but in the ante- 
cedent deliberations there were many minds. Some were for immediate 
and unconditional secession, others for secession upon conditions, oth- 
ers for union still ; and yet others were lost in a wilderness of doubts 
and fears. 

On the 13th of November, 1860, Mr. Lamar wrote to Judge Long- 
street : 

The election of Lincoln has diffused a general feeling of dissatisfaction throughout 
the State. Some are anxious and dejectei.l ( myself among them), others confident and 
hopeful of resistance, a large mass for awaiting the overt act, a few bad men rejoiced 
at the overthrow of tlie Democracy by any means, and ready to hang and quai-ter the 
secessionists. 

If South Carolina will only have the courage to go out, all will be well. AVe will 
have a Southern Republic, or an amended Federal Constitution that will place our in- 
stitutions beyond all attack in the future. 

Immediately upon the ascertainment of the result of the election, 
Gov. Pettus, by proclamation, called upon the Legislature to meet at 
Jackson, on tiie 26th of November, to consider what steps should be 
taken to meet the emergency; and on the 12th he issued an invitation 
to the members of Congress from this State, including the Senators, to 
convene at the same place, on the 22d, in order to take counsel among 
themselves and with the State Government on the same subject, and es- 
pecially with regard to the matter of his message to the Legislature. 
This meeting was held accordingly, all being present except Mr. McKae. 
(8(5) 




MISSISSIPPI SENATORS AND CONGRESSMEN AT THE TIME OF SECESSION 



LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 87 

There was an auimated and protracted discussion over the questions, iu 
substance: Sliould Mississippi, "as soon as her convention can meet, 
pass an ordinance o£ secession, tlius placing herself by the side of South 
Carolina, regardless of the action of other States? or shall she endeavor 
to hold South Carolina in check, and delay action herself, until other 
States can get ready, through their conventions, to unite with them ; 
and then, on a given day, and at a given hour, by concert of action, all 
the States willing to do so secede in a body? " 

Upon one side it was argued that South Carolina could not be induced to delay ac- 
tion a single moment beyond the meeting of her convention, and that our fate should 
be hers, and to delay action would be to have lier crushed by tlie Federal Government; 
whereas by the earliest action possible we might be able to avert this calamity. On 
the other side it was contended that delay might bring tlie Federal Government to 
consider the emergency of the case, and perhaps a compromise could be effected; but 
if not, then the proposed concert of action would at least give dignity to tlie move- 
ment, and present an undivided Southern front.* 

These questions weve raised by a resolution offered by Congressman 
Keuben Davis, to the effect that " the Governor insert in his message to 
the Legislature a recommendation that they call a convention for the 
purpose of seceding the State of Mississippi by separate State action." 

A vote was taken upon the resolution under consideration, Singleton, Barlcsdale, 
and R., Davis voting for, and Jefl' Davis, Brown, and Lamar against it. Gov. Pettus 
gave the casting vote in favor of tlie resolution, and it was adojjted, the vote being 
made unanimous. I thought then, as I believe now, that the only point of difference 
was one of expediency, not of principle. I am sure that so far as principles were 
concerned we were all fully united. . . . After the adoption of the resolution above 
referred to, Gov. Pettus read to the committee a telegram which lie liad received the 
day before from the Governor of South Carolina, asking his advice whether the South 
Carolina ordinance of secession should be made to take eft'ect instantly, or ujion the 
4th of March. A resolution was then introduced Viy R. Davis, to the effect that Gov. 
Pettus should advise the Governor of South Carolina to cause the ordinance to take 
eSect from and after its passage. This resolution was oppoi^ed by Jelf Davis, Brown, 
and Lamar, and supported by Singleton, Barksiiale, and R. Davis, Gov. Pettus again 
giving the casting vote in favor of the resolution ; in accordance with which a reply 
was next day sent to the Governor of South Carolina.f 

On the next day after this meeting Mr. Lamar delivered a public ad- 
dress, in the town of Brandon, which is thus reported in the newspapers 
of the day : • 

His speech was an earnest, dispassionate appeal to the people of the South to arouse 
from their lethargy, and arm for resisting Black Republican domination. He jiictured 
in vivid colors the aggressions of the North upon the South since the enactraentof the 
Compromise measures of 18.50. Those measures were adopted by both sections as a 
final settlement of the slavery question, each agreeing that they would be carried out 
in good faith. Yet we to-day see upon the statute books of fourteen Northern States 
enactments nullifying the Futritive Slave Law, which law was the only advantage or 
concession that the South gained in the Compromise measures. 

*0. K. SinRletoa, in Davis' " Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government," Vol. t., p. 58. 
+ Reuben Davis, in the Weekly Clarion^ June 5, 1878. 



88 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

He was unwilling to enter into any more comi^romises, or accept guaranties from 
a i)eople who had so flagrantly violated former agreements of that kind. 

After giving at length the design of the Black Republican party, through Mr. Lin- 
coln, upon the institution of slavery, he declared that secession was the only remedy 
now left for the Southern jieople to save tliemselves from a doom similar to that of 
the former white people of San Domingo. 

He submitted a plan by which the people of the Southern States, or so many of 
them as maj' choose to do so, might secede from the Union in a few days' time, and 
resume all the functions of government. The plan was, in sul>tance, for the people of 
the South to meet together in convention, at their several State capitals, and appnint 
commissioners to another convention of all these States ; that convention to pass ordi- 
nances, declaring the State absolved from all further allegiance to the Government of 
the United States of North America; adojit the old constitution, without the crossing 
of a i or the dotting of an i; adopt the present Federal laws; elect new Electors, to 
choose a President and Vice President ; and, in short, to readopt fc )r the United States 
South all the laws, rules, and regulations now prevailing for the United States. This 
could all be done in a very few days, and there would be no anarchy, no bloodshed, 
or anything extraordinary to disturb the peace and quiet of the people. 

The Legislature assembled on the 2Gth, as called ; and to that body 
Gov. Pettus addressed au annual message, from which the following 
extract is taken : 

Can the lives, liberty, and property of the people of Mississippi be safely intrusted 
to the keeping of that sectional majority which must hereafter administer the Federal 
Government? 

I think tliey cannot, for the following reasons: 

They iiave exhibited a low selfishness in seizing all the Territories, which are the 
common property of all the States. They have deliberately attempted to, and have 
succeeded in educating a generaticjn to hate the South. They have sworn to support 
the Federal constitution, and deliberately passed laws with the palpable intent to vi- 
olate one of the plainest provisions of that comi:iact. They have sent large sums of 
money to Congress, for the purpose of bribing the members of that body to pass laws 
to advance their private interests. They have attempted to degrade us in the estima- 
tion of other nations, by denouncing us as barbarians, pirates, and robbers— unfit as- 
sociates for Christian or civilized men. They have excited our slaves to insurrection, 
advised them to liurn our property and murder our people, and have furnished them 
with arms and ammunition to aid them in their bloody work. They have nnirdered 
Southern men in the lawful pursuit of their fugitive slaves, and failed to punish their 
citizens for these flagrant violations of the laws of God and man. They have furnished 
money and arms for the invasion of a slaveholding State, and when the punishment 
awarded to treason and murder by all civilized nations overtook the invaders, they 
threatened the dastardly revenge of midnight incendiaries, tolled bells in honor of 
traitors and murderers, and rewarded the family of the chief traitor as never was re- 
warded that of any soldier who fell in defense of the country, and held him up as an 
example of heroic devotion to a just and glorious cause. Their press, pulpit, lecture 
room, and forum teem daily and nightly with exhortations to their people to jiress 
forward this war on our institutions, even to the drenching of Southern fields with 
the blood of her citizens. In view of all this long catalogue of insults and injuries, in 
view of the fact that this hostile section must continue to increase in power, I feel that 
I am warranted in saying that the Northern jieople have forfeited the confidence of 
the people of Mississippi; and that the lives, liberty, and property of ourselves — and 
our children after us — ought not to be intrusted to rulers elected by such a people. 



ms LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 89 

To this message the LegisLiture responded by calling a convention, to 
meet on the 7th of January following, and by a resolution " that seces- 
sion by the aggrieved States, for their grievances, is the remedy." 

When the Thirty-sixth Congress convened in its second session, on 
the 3d of December, Mr. Lamar was present, as were all of the members 
from Mississippi, including the Senators. Early in the session meas- 
ures were proposed, looking to a compromise and settlement of the dif- 
ferences between the parties; but they were delayed, and it became 
manifest to the Southern members that nothing would come of them. 
Mr. Lamar resigned his seat, and left Washington on the 12th of De- 
cember, for the purpose of canvassing the State for the coming Seces- 
sion Convention. On the day preceding he wrote to Judge Longstreet: 
We are living in eventful times, and the only pleasure I have among the tremen- 
dous responsibilities upon me is tlie thouiiht of those I love. ... I send you a 
letter of mine by to-day's mail. You will doubtless deem it too subdued in tone. 
What I know will happen in the next yeai- has taken all the " highfaluting" out of me. 
God bless you, my darling old father. 

The letter alluded to in the foregoing epistle was that of date Decem- 
ber 10, addressed to Hon. P. F. Liddell, of Carrollton, Miss.* This let- 
ter will be found to give a full exposition of Mr. Lamar's views as to the 
proper steps needed most certainly and most easily to form the South- 
ern Eepublic. Of it the Vickshnrg Whhj, the leading paper of that par- 
ty in the State, said: " Mr. Lamar advances a plan for the formation of 
a Southern Confederacy. It is the first which has yet been promulgated 
having the least spark of ]H-acticability about it." 

Before leaving Washington he witnessed a scene in the Senate cham- 
ber which made the profoundest impression upon him. In after years 
he often described it in his speeches before the people. It seemed to 
recur in various and frequent connections, like the haunting of a vivid 
dream. 

It is given below, in his own words, as depicted in his speech of Jan- 
ury 24, 1878, in the United States Senate: 

I remember hearing on this floor the then distinguished Senator from New York 
(Mr. Seward) declare that the power had departed from the South ; that the scepter 
was now taken from her hand; and that henceforth the great North, stronger in pop- 
ulation and in the roll of sovereign States, would grasp the power of government and 
become responsible for its administration. I am aware that I listened to him with 
impatience, and, perhaps, with prejudice. For it seemed to me that he spoke in a 
spirit of exultation that scarcely realized the magnitude of the task about to devolve 
upon him and his associates. It struck me that he spoke in a spirit far removed 
from that sadness and solemnity which I think always weighs upon the mind and 
heart of a trulv great man in the presence of a grave crisis of national life. 

I rememljer the answer that was made to him by a South Carolina Senator, Gov. 
Hammond. . . . He was surrounded by a circle of Southern statesmen whom no fu- 
ture generation will see surpassed in ability or purity, be the glory of our growth, as I 

"See Appendix, No. 5. 



90 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

triis^t it will be, unrivaled in the history of nations. There was James M. Mason, the 
square and ma-ssive simplicity of whose character and purity stands monumental in 
our annals. There was his accomplished colleague, Robert M. T. Hunter, whose clear 
and broad statesmanship found fitting expression in a scholarly eloquence that drew 
friends and opponents into the same circle of admiring affection. There was Slidell, 
with his shrewd and practical wisdom ; and near him J. P. Benjamin, whose astute- 
ness an<l skill and eloquence and learning have since rebuilt his fame and his fortune 
in that Olymphic field of mental conflict, the great courts of \Vestminister. There 
was Ivdbert Toombs, who never spoke without striking at the heart of big thoughts 
and kindling the ideas of all who listened to him. There was Clement C. Clay, the 
cultured student whose heart was the sanctuary of lofty feeling and stern principle. 
There was Albert G. Brown, from my own State, who never had an aspiration not in 
sympathy with the wants and feelings of his own people; who yet was never over- 
awed by their [irejudices or swerved from his convictions by their passions. There 
was anotlier — Jefferson Davis — one who has been the vicarious sufferer for his people, 
the solitude of whose punishment should lift him above the jibe and the jeer of pop- 
ular passion, but whose words will stand forever upon the record of history; not in 
defiance, not in triumph, but as the sad and grand memoranda of the earnest spirit, 
the lofty motives of the mighty struggle, which, however mistaken in its ends and dis- 
astrous in its results, was iuaugurated by those who believed it to be in the interest 
of representative liberty aud constitutional government. 

Among these, and surrounded by others like them, the Senator from South Caro- 
lina, with that noble presence which lives in the memory of all who ever saw him, 
addressed to liis Northern associates on this floor the words which I have never seen 
in print from that day to this, but which I can never forget; and which, if the Senate 
will i>errait me, I will here repeat: " Sir, wdiat the Senatorsays is true. The power has 
passed from our hands into yours; but do not forget it, it cannot be forgotten, it ia 
written upon the brightest page of history, that we, the slaveholders of the South, 
took our country in her infancy, and, after ruling her for near si.xty out of the seventy 
years of her existence, we return her to you without a spot upon her honor, matchless 
in her splendor, incalculable in her power, the pride and admiration of the world. 
Time will show what you will do with her, but no time can dim our glory or diminish 
your responsibility.'' 

Mr. Lamar, on his return to Mississippi, was elected as oue of the 
two delegates from Lafayettf County to the convention. Before that 
body convened it was well known that the efforts making at Washing- 
ton in the way of a compromise and adjustment of the differences be- 
tween the sections were futile. On the 17th of December, Mr. Keuben 
Davis, one of ilr. Lamar's colleagues in the House, who had been 
placed as the representative of Mississippi upon the House Committee 
of Thirty-three, on grievances and the state of the country, wrote to Mr. 
Lamar: 

I withdrew to-day from the Committee of Thirty-three. The Northern members, 
with H. Winter Davis, by vote forced upon us the consideration of a modification of 
the fugitive slave law, with the statement that they would hereafter let us know 
whether they woidd grant any concessions. All the members from the North, pretty 
much, have said in speeches that they had fought the recent battle upon the principle 
that property could not exist in a slave — nonexteiision of slavery, no admission of, 
another slave State, etc. — and tliat they would not surrender the principle. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 91 

Ou the 31st of December tbe Senate Committee of Thirteen, ou the 
same matters, reported, that they could arrive at no satisfactory conclu- 
sion. 

The Mississippi Convention met at Jackson ou the 7tii uf Jauuarj', 
1861, in accordance with the act of tbe Legislature. It was composed 
of two parties: the unconditional secessionists, who numbered two- 
thirds of the V)ody; and the coOperatiouists, or those who favored seces- 
sion only upon condition that the Southern border States should coop- 
erate in the movement. 

Hon. William S. Barry, of Lowndes County, was elected Pre.sident. 
Immediately after the organization Mr. Lamar offered a resolution, 
which was passed, that a committee of fifteen be appointed by the Presi- 
dent to prepare and report, as speedily as possible, an ordinance for the 
withdrawal of the State from the Federal Union, with a view to the es- 
tablishment of a new Confederacy, to be composed of the seceding 
States. The committee was accordingly appointed, and consisted of 
the mover as Chairman, and fourteen others. 

On the 9th Mi\ Lamar, for the committee, reported the ordinance, 
which had been drafted by himself, and was as follows: 
An ordinance to dissolve tlie union between the State of Mississippi and other States 

united witli Iier under the compact entitled "The Constitution of the United States 

of America." 

The jieople of Mississippi, in convention assembled, do ordain and declare, and it 
is hereby ordained and declared, as fellows, to wit: 

Sectiiin 1. That all the law's and ordinances by which the said State of Mississippi 
became a member of the Federal Union of the United States of America be, and the 
same are hereby, lepealed, and that all obligations on the part of said State, or the 
people thereof, be withdrawn, and that the said State doth hereby resume all the 
rights, functions, and powers which, by any of said laws and ordinances, were con- 
veyed to tlie Government of the said United States, and is absolved from all the obli- 
gations, restraints, and duties incnrred to the said Federal Union, and shall hence- 
forth be a free, sovereign, and imlependent State. 

Sec. 2. That so much of the first section of the Seventh Article of the Constitntion 
of this State as requires members of the Legislature and all officers, both legislative 
and judicial, to take an oath to sujiport the Constitution of the United States be, and 
the same is hereby abrogated and annulled. 

Sect. 3. That all rights accjuired and vested under the Constitution of the United 
States, or under any act of Congress pa-ssed in pursuance thereof, or under any law of 
this State, and not incompatible with this ordinance, shall remain in force and have 
the same efl'ect as if the ordinance liad not been passed. 

Sec. 4. That the people nf the State of Mississippi hereby consent to form a Federal 
Union with such of the States as have seceded or may secede from the Union of the 
United States of America, upon the ba'^is of the present Constitution of the United 
States, exce]>t such parts tliereof as etnbra'-e other portions than such seceding States. 

On the 9th, also, in the afternoon, the ordinance was called up on the 
question of its final passage. The galleries and the floor of the Hall 
were crowded with spectators of the solemn scene. The yeas and nays 
were ordered. The Secretary called the roll slowly. As each member 



92 LVCIVS Q. a LAMAR: 

responded iu tones vibrant with intense feeling suppressed, the murmur 
of conversation and the rustle of movement ceased, and a stillness as 
of death held the great assembly. As the roll call made it manifest 
that the result would be largely in favor of the adoption of the ordi- 
nance, tears gathered into the eyes of nearly every actor and spectator. 
When the call was completed, and the President, rising, announced the 
result — ayes, eighty-four; noes, fifteen — a profound silence for some time 
prevailed. Then a silent wave of the President's hand, and the Rev. 
Whitfield Harrington stood by bis side. Members and spectators arose, 
and with bowed heads united iu the prayer of the eloquent divine for 
God's blessing on- the momentous steii just taken. All, by a subtle 
communiim of thought, felt that they were leaving the old home which 
they had long loved well; that they were turning their backs upon the 
house every stone of which was baptized by the blood of their fathers 
and by their mothers' tears; that the old flag which their fathers and 
themselves had borne from glory to glory was from henceforth to be 
alien and possibly hostile. For these people loved the Union. They, 
however, believed in their principles and their methods. If they were 
mistaken iu the one and wrong in the other (questions not necessary to 
discuss here), none the less did they feel compelled to go; but even 
amongst those who so felt tiiere were very few who went without many 
a longing and lingering backward look. 

Tiien there was a booming of cannon and a ringing of rejoicing bells, 
unwittingly ringing out the institution which had kept the nation in a 
turmoil for thirty years, and presaging the method of its destruction — 
the dread decision of battle. A fire bell, from an engine house in the 
caiiitol yard, first announced the tidings. Within three years the t(U-ches 
of Grant's and Sherman's armies had so laid the city in aslies that it be- 
came known, partly iu derision and partly in wrath, as " Chimney ville." 

Mr. Lamar's views upon the political philosophy of secession — its 
character as a general movement of the Southern people— are fully set 
forth in a letter written by him to Mr. West, in 1883, introduced in an- 
other connection." As he said therein, it was not a conspiracy of indi- 
viduals. " On the contrary, it was the culmination of a great dynastieal 
struggle, an 'irrepressible conflict' between two antagonistic societies, 
a culmination which had been foreseen and predicted by the wisest 
statesmen of the nation. . . . This culmination was a result of the opera- 
tion of political forces which it was not witliin the power of any individ- 
ual man or set of men to prevent or postpone." As to Mr. Lamar's per- 
sonal sentiments upon the matter, it is well to say a few words. Mr. 
Blaine has seen proper, in his work, "Twenty Years in Congress," to 
say of him that 

See Chap. XXVIII. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 93 

I[is reason, his faitli, his hope, all led liim to believe in the necessity of preserving 
the union of the States; but he persuaded himself that tidelitj' to a constituency which 
had honored him, personal ties with friends from whom lie could not part, the main- 
tenance of an institution which he was pledged to defend, called upon him to stand 
with the secession leadere in the revolt of 1S61. He was thus ensnared in the toils of 
his own reasoning. His very strength became his weakness. He could not escape 
from his self-imposed thralldom, and he ended by following a cause whose success 
could bring no peace, instead of maintaining a cause whose righteousness was the as- 
surance of victory. 

This passage is purely imaginative. There is no warrant for it in fact. 
Mr. Lamar was never in any such condition of thralldom to sentiment 
as opposed to his reason and faith ; nor was he dragged reluctantly along 
by his sense of fidelity to his constituency. He was possessed, in a high 
degree, of the sentiments attributed to him. No man felt them more 
deeply, or more seriously esteemed their demands. But they were not 
his captors in that great emergency. He also entertained a great ven- 
eration for the Union, and love of it. When secession seemed to him 
necessary, it was a necessity most painful. Could any securities have 
been obtained which would fairly have promised to obviate that neces- 
sity, he would have welcomed them most joyfully. In this he was by no 
means alone; it was the prevailing feeling. But, also, Mr. Lamar most 
firml_v believed that, in the condition into which affairs had fallen, it was 
impossible any longer to preserve the dignity, sovereignty, and institu- 
tional self-governnieut which the States had sedulously reserved in the 
formation of the Union, and the reservation of which all Southern and 
many Northern statesmen believed to have been indisputably a conditio 
sine qua non to the acceptance of that bond. He, therefore, logically 
believed, also, th;it there were but two courses open. One was to sub- 
mit ignominiously to a denial, within the Union, of the rights guar- 
anteed by the constitution (rights regarded as sacred, and as the very 
consideration for the formation of the federative compact ) ; tamely to 
continue within a Union whose constitittion should be, as Dr. Barnard 
expressed it in his letter, a constitution only if the North so pleased. 
The other was to preserve the rights and dignity of the Southern States 
by a peaceable withdrawal from a broken compact. The conclusion of 
his mind was a reluctant one, but it was the conclusion of his own rea- 
son and of his political faith. Nor did he regard the South as respon- 
sible for the existence of the momentous dilemma. 

Mr. Blaine, himself, does Mr. Lamar better justice when he says, in 
that other paragraph of his work, that 

He stood flruily by his State, in accordance with the political creed in which he 
had been reared; but looked back with tender regret to the Union whose destiny he 
had wished to share, and under the protection of whose broader nationality he had 
hoped to live and die. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Appointed to Confederate Congress — Lieutenant Colonel of Nineteenth Mississippi 
Regiment— Speecli in Richmond — Military Service — Battleof Williamsburg — Hon- 
orable Mention — Ollicial Report — Illness — Resignation — Death of Jefl'erson M. 
Lamar. 

ON the 26th of Januai'y the Secession Couveution passed resolutions 
providiog for the representation of the State in the Congress of 
a Southern Confederacy. Senators Davis and Browu were appointed to 
the Senate; and Messrs. Eeuben Davis, Lamar, Singleton, Barksdale, 
and McRae to the Lower House — thus returning the representation 
which had existed in the Congress of the United States. But this plan 
was never eJBfectuated. On February 4 a conveniion of States met at 
Montgomery, to which the Mississippi Convention had appointed seven 
delegates; and this convention, after electing Mr. Davis as Provisional 
President, and adopting a constitution, resolved itself into a Provisional 
Congress. It was this body which first legislated for the Confederacy. 

The Secession Convention also took measures to organize the army of 
the State, in case it should be needed. Mr. Davis was made major 
general, and four brigadiers were appointed: Earl VauDorn, Charles 
Clark, J. L. Alcorn, and C. H. Mott. 

It soon became appai-ent, however, that there was to be an army of 
the Confederate States. Gen. Mott then resigned his State command, 
and undertook, by a special authority from the Confederate Govern- 
ment, to raise a regiment for service "during the war." Mr. Lamar, 
who had been considering the question of taking a staff appointment, 
abandoned that idea, and cooperated witli Gen. Mott in this work. Of- 
fers of companies poured in from all quarters; and the regiment, so far 
as its roster was concerned, was completed by the middle of May, al- 
though not sufficiently supplied with either tents or arms. Mott was 
elected colonel, and Lamar lieutenant colonel. Lieut. Col. Lamar then 
resigned his i)rofessorship in the university, and was on the 14th of May 
in Montgomery, offering his regiment to the Confederate "War Depart- 
ment. This regiment was the first from its State raised for service 
"during the war," and it was numbered the Nineteenth of Mississippi. 

From Montgomery Mr. Lamar seems not to have returned to Missis- 
sippi, but to have gone on with his regiment to Eichmoud. To that 
city the Provisional Confederate Congress, by its resolution of May 21, 
had removed tlie seat of government. Col. Lamar was with Mr. Davis, 
in Eichmond, on the 1st of June, at the Spottswood Hotel. Mr. Davis 
was there serenaded by the citizens of the citv, and made an address 
(94) 



LIFE, TLVES, AXD SPEECHES. 95 

from the balcony of the hotel. Gov. Wise, of Virginia, was then called 
oil, and spoke; aud then Mr. Lamar was called out, aud made the clos- 
ing address of the occasion, from which the following extracts are taken: 

Gentlemen: It aifords me pleasure to respond to your CiiU. But I feel ronsoious of 
my inability to address you in a strain worthy of the interest inspired Ijy tlie great 
events now so rapidly hurrying to their consummation. Indeed, it would be almost 
impossible to give adequate expression to the feelings with which all patriotic minds 
are now agitsited. Fortunately, however, the time has come when tlie people need 
the aid neither of argument nor of exciting appeal. The time has arrived when they 
are satisfied that the deliverence of this fair State depends not upon argument, not 
upon eloquence, not upon statesmanship ; but upon the fighting manhood of the people 
of this country [cheers], upon the courage which dares to sti'ike a braver blow for the 
right than the enemy dare strike for the wrong. 

The [leople of these Confederate Stiites have, by a solemn appeal to tlir ballot box, 
after exhausting every eflbrt to live at peace with their neighl)ors, jiroclaimed thcirde- 
termination to take their place and maintain it among the nationalities of the earth; 
and the charter of their new nationality, which was written with the pen of our rev- 
olutionary fathers, and adopted at Montgomery, shall, if a sacrament be needed, be 
subscribed with the blood of patriotism. 

Fellow-citizens, if this continent is to be the theater of internecine strife, history 
will acquit these Confederate States of all responsibility for its calamities. The very 
first act of the Confederate Government was to send cummissioneis to Washington to 
make terms of peace, and to estiiblish relations of amity betw'een the two sections. 
. . . If that people had not been blinded by passion, maddened l)y fanaticism, and 
excited liy the loss of power; had they consented to a peaceful separation of these 
two sections into two repulilics, each pursuing its destiny in accordance with its own 
choice, it would have afforded the strongest evidence of the capacity of man for self- 
government ever presented to the world. But they did not do it. They proclaimed 
war and subjugation. They have called upon you to abandon your right of self-gov- 
ernment, to surrender your civil liberty. 

Right here Virginia steps forward, and, among all the rich materials she has hith- 
erto contributed to the history of the country, there are none so rich as those contrib- 
uted in this ontest; for, in the moujent the Federal Government raised an arm 
against her Southern sisters Virginia sprang forward to catch the blow. Grand, glo- 
rious old commonwealth! Proud, free empress! Mother of States, themselves free, 
standing here in robes of steel, raising a majestic arm to press back the foe that dare 
attempt to force her daughters into an unnatural and unwilling union! And now 
war is denounced against her! an infuriate mob is upon her borders! But the senti- 
ment of Virginia is the sentiment of the South. Eather let the pillars of the new re- 
public crumble to their foundations; rather let its lofty liattlements he overwhelmed 
with the last hope of liberty than that its people should quail in this hour of trial, or 
refuse to tread with her the bloodiest path that may be mai'ked out for her to follow. 
The sentiment of the entire South is with her; men from every rank and class of so- 
ciety are rushing to arms, begging the government to put any kind of weapons into 
their hands, and to allow them to march to the battlefields of Virginia. I tell you, in 
our State, the little State of Mississippi, the number of men who are ready to fight, I 
fully believe, is above our voting population. Even the walls of onr universities stand 
to-day mute and deserted, while our young students have marched upon the soil of 
Virginia, to mingle the dash of patriotic youth with the courage of disciplined man- 
hood, and teach the vainglorious foe the invincibility of Southern arms and the invi- 
olability of Virginia soil. Fellow-citizens, I shall not detain you longer. [Cries of 
" Go on."] 



96 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAU: 

We may not know what will be the nature or result of this contest. It may be that 
much sutliering is before us. It may 1)6 that our towns and cities will be sacked. It 
may be that our fields will be desolated. It may be — f(jr it is well to look at the 
worst attitude of affairs — that our South shall yet emerge from the contest exlinusted, 
pallid, her garments dripping with blood [loud cries of" No! No!"]; but for all that, 
she will survive, and her glorious constitution, fresh witli vigor, will be instinct with 
imuiortal life. 

This very night I look forward to the day when this beloved country of ours — for, 
tliank God! we have a country at last — will be a country to live for, to pray for, to 
fight for, and if necessary, to die for. [A voice: " Yes, I am willing to die for it a hun- 
dred times over."] 

Cheers, amid which the wimlows were closed, and the crowd slowly dispersed. 

From Richmond Col. Lamar went immediately into camp with his 
regiment. Soldiering was not congenial to him. The camjj life, with 
its isolation from intellectual circles, with its daily drill, its hourly de- 
mand of small details of police, equipment, and organization, was ex- 
ceedingly irksome. Removed at once from all those i)ursuits which had 
tilled his life, transplanted into a condition wholly strange, the compen- 
sations which partly consoled many others whose lives were equally rev- 
olutionized did not appeal to him. Whether he would have succeeded 
as a military officer cannot now be told. His great personal courage, 
his invincible coolness in times of danger, his fixed resolution to achieve 
his objects if achievement were possible, his urbanity coupled with an 
inflexible firmness, were all on his side; while his inaV)ility to under- 
stand tactics, which he declared to be "the puzzle of his life," was 
against him. The course of events growing out of failing health, as will 
be seen, prevented the supreme and final test. 

Before the regiment left Richmond Col. Lamar had the first attack of 
a physical infirmity, which pursued him during thewhole of his afterlife, 
which hung over him always, a veritable sword of Damocles. It was a 
violent vertigo, something like an apoplexj', accompanied by unconscious- 
ness more or less prolonged, and followed by more or less of paralysis 
of one side. Sometimes even his si^eech w^as afl'ected. 

This attack, which was about the 1st of July, prevented his going to 
the front with the regiment, although not so severe as some others of 
later date. It caused his friends great alarm, and his wife was tele- 
graphed for from Mississippi. 

On the 11th of July Col. Mott, who seems not then to have understood 
fully the serious nature of his illness, wrote to him from the front: 

Our regiment seems to be ready and eager for the conflict, but I trust it will not be 
forced upon us till we can have your assistance. We may need that soi-t of tim and 
projxlling power which you possess in a greater degree than any man I ever saw, and 
which the Major and I are very deficient in. 

Improving somewhat, tlie Colonel was sent home to Oxford, Miss., 
about the middle of July. There he remained, hoping for recovery. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 97 

longiug to rejoin his command and participate in their dangers and glo- 
rious exploits, cousiimiug his heart with rebellion and impatience, 
raging against the enemy who waged "a war so cruel and iniquitous." 
Frequent " slight rushes of blood to the head " continued, and caused 
the physician to abound in serious warning. 

About the 1st of November he returned to E-ichmond, dragging a 
lame left leg, but unable to resist the impulse to get again to work. On 
the 9th Col. Mott writes to him from the camp near Centerville: 

Inquire at the clothing department in Richmond with a view to procuring over- 
coats for the men. It is almost indispensable that tliey sliould be supplied with 
overcoats for the winter. . . . Our tents are made of such jioor material that the 
winds and weather will soon render them worthless, and we must begin to look after 
the health and comfort of the men before the winter is upon us. In my anxiety to 
preserve your tent, I have not had it used for a long time, sending it to Manassas with 
our extra baggage; and now it is said to be entirely rotted. My tent still holds to- 
gether, and is large enough for both of us. Our regiment has sufl'ered severely from 
sickness; had improved greatly until out on picket in bad weather without tents or 
fires, the nundjer of sick increased again. There have been three deaths within the 
last thirty-si.K hours. 

On the 22d of November he wrote his wife, from Richmond: 

I shall probably start next Monday for General Johnston's headquarters, and will 
keep you pretty well posted about army matters. There is some ill feeling between 
the Potomac generals and the President. I fear that cousin James Longstreet is taking 
sides against the administration. He will certainly commit a grave error if he does. 
I hope to be able to disabuse his mind, as well as that of Gen. Johnston, of some 
wrong impressions. ... I hope I am nearly cured of my sickness. I can manage 
to get along with a stick, though my leg is quite weak and uncertain in its move- 
ments. My vertigo comes upon me very rarely, and then in a very modified form. 
. . . The President seems more attached to me than ever. Everybody says that it is 
well known that he loves me. If we ever have peace, I expect I shall be sent as Minis- 
ter to Spain or Sardinia. ... If I were well enough ofl', I should give up public life 
and devote myself to social duties; but as it is not possible to do that yet, I will do all 
I can to improve the condition of my family. I have now no other earthly object in 
life. 

During this winter, whilst the army was in winter quarters around 
Centerville, Gen. Johnston offered to Lieut. Col. Lamar to recommend 
him for promotion to the rank of brigadier general. The Colonel 
thanked him, but said immediately: "Gen. Johnston, I shall never con- 
sent to receive promotion over the head of my friend. Col. Mott. He 
deserves it, and I request that you recommend him instead." This was 
done, and Col. Mott would have been commissioned but for his untimely 
death. 

From this period forth Col. Lamar was with his regiment at the front. 
In April they were in the lines near Yorktown, confronting McClellau 
and awaiting his attack. Here there was a continuous firing, with shells 
and balls Hying, numerous "skirmishes of little importance and signifi- 
cant of nothing," as he wrote; and here he cheered his men occasionally 
7 



98 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

by inakiug tliem a speech. He suffered much from the exposure; and 
as the spring opened, serious symjjtoms of vertigo again appeared. 

On the 5th of May the battle of Williamsburg occurred. In this 
hotly contested field he took a distinguished part, being complimented 
by three brigadiers, including his own, and by Gen. Longstreet, in their 
reports. But he had the great grief to lose his friend, Col. Mott, who 
fell gallantly leading his men. 

This battle was the first serious engagement of the great Peninsular 
Campaign. On the night of the 3d of May the Confederates abandoned 
their position at Yorktown and began a retrograde movement toward 
Kichmond. The Federal army pursued closely, and Gen. Longstreet 
determined to repel that pursuit. A line of fortifications had been 
thrown up about two miles east of Williamsburg, and it was occupied by 
a portion of Longstreet's Corps. Thus he fronted eastwardly toward 
the pursuing Federals, with his right flank toward James Eiver; and 
on the right, a dense forest. 

Orders were given to Gen. Anderson to organize columns of attack 
upon the Federal position and batteries, using the brigades of Wilcox 
(in which was Col. Lamar's regiment) and of A. P. Hill, supported by 
that of Pickett. The attacking columns were well arranged, and were 
gallantly led by Gen. Anderson. Leaving the fortifications behind 
them, the Confederate line pressed eagerly forward, and drove back that 
portion of Hooker's Division which confronted them. As the forces ad- 
vanced the battle broadened, and the brigades of Pryor, Jenkins, Early, 
and Colston, successively, became engaged. On the right flank of the 
Confederates they were successful in holding their gained ground; but 
on the left flank, on which Gen. Hancock had appeared late in the 
afternoon with a heavy assailing force, they were not so fortunate, and 
they failed to drive him back. The battle lasted during the day, and was 
inconclusive, each side claiming the advantage. 

The brigade of Wilcox, which was first in the field, was ordered to 
occupy the forest. The Nineteenth Mississippi was the center regi- 
ment of the brigade, the Ninth Alabama being to its left, and the Tenth 
Alabama to its right. The wood was entered. It was so dense that a 
colonel could not see his whole regiment when in line of battle. When 
the skirmish line had penetrated the wood something under two hun- 
dred yards, it encountered a brisk fire from the Federal skirmishers. 
The Federal line of battle was then developed about two hundred yards 
to the front, almost parallel with that of the Confederates, protected 
partly by a rail fence, partly by felled trees, and partly by low and 
boggy ground. Its left flank extended beyond the Confederate right. 

Gen. Pryor then came up with about seven hundred men of his bri- 
gade, and was placed on the right of Wilcox. Tiie order to forward was 
now given. The line advanced boldly, and almost instantly became en- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 99 

gaged in a close musketry fight. A heavy fire was concentrated on the 
Tenth Alabama, both in front and from its right flank; it was thrown 
into some confusion and gave way, but quickly reformed and returned 
to the attack with cheers. 

At this time Gen. A. P. Hill came up with his brigade. It was or- 
dered into action, covering Pryor's troops and the Tenth Alabama. A 
small regiment (the First Virginia) was placed in position to the rear 
of the Ninth Alabama, with orders to follow and support that regiment; 
and another regiment of this brigade (the Twenty-eighth Virginia) was 
directed to support the Nineteenth Mississippi. Pickett's Brigade soon 
arrived, and was posted to the right of Hill. The musketry was now in- 
cessant and heavy, and extended along the whole front, continuing from 
this time (11 a.m.), with but little intermission, until near dark. 

The Nineteenth Mississippi had met the enemj', compactly formed, 
under cover, and in rear of a fence and piled-up logs. Led by the gal- 
lant Mott, after a few minutes of close musketry, at a distance of less 
than thirty yards, it charged, and a stubborn fight ensued. The Feder- 
als were forced to yield, leaving the ground thickly strewn with the 
dead and the wounded. Driven from that position, the Federal line at- 
tempted to form to the rear; but it was again forced back, and sought 
refuge in tiie fallen timber. 

It was directly in fi-out of the fence that Col. Mott fell, shot through 
the breast with a minie ball. 

The Nineteenth Mississippi (says Gen. Wilcox in his rei>ort), after the fall of its 
highly esteemed and brave colonel, was commanded during the remainder of the day 
by its lieutenant colonel, L. Q. C. Lamar. This officer, suddenly called to the com- 
mand of his regiment, acquitted himself creditably throughout this long and stubborn- 
ly contested musketry fight, proving himself in all respects a competent, daring, and 
skillful officer. 

Col. Lamar's personal adventures, and those of his regiment, are more 
fully told in a report of the battle, made by himself to his brigade head- 
quarters, from which the following extracts are taken: 

Headquarters Nineteenth Kegiment Mississippi Volunteeks, ) 
Near Long Bridge, Va., May l.>, lS(i2. \ 

Sir: I have the honor to submit the following report of the operations of my com- 
mand during the action of the 5th inst.: 

At about 8..30 a.m. Col. C. H. Mott, then commanding our regiment, was ordered by 
Gen. Wilcox to make a sortie fi-om the second redoubt, on the right of Fort Magruder, 
through a field into the forest supposed to be occupied by the enemy in large force. . . . 

In consequence of the dense umlergrowth and uneven ground Col. ^Mott had placed 
the right wing of the regiment under my command, and directed me to operate with 
it according to my own discretion. At the command of our colonel the men advanced 
with great spirit and steadiness. A destructive fire was at once opened upon us b.\' the 
enemy. In the first volley, as I was afterwards informed. Col. Mott fell, shot through 
the body while cheering on his men. The fight became at once general along our 
whole line. The men under my command ])ressed on to the attack with the utmost 
eagerness, and yet with pei feet coolness, keeping our line as unbroken as the nature 



100 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

of the ground would allow, and firing with deliberation and telling effect. The ene- 
my, partially protected by the fence l>ehind which they were posted, contested the 
ground most stubbornly. The opposing lines could not have been more than thirty 
yards apart, and for a time I expected a hand to hand conflict with the bayonet; Ijut 
at last, wavering before the iniiietuosity and undaunted resoluti(jn of our men, the 
enemy began to yield ttiC ground, continuing to tire as they retired. 

Just as we reached the fence above alluded to, the [First] Virginia Regiment came 
upon our right companies, having been sent as reenforcements. They continued with 
us, two companies fighting in line with my regiment, the others in the rear acting as 
a support. Passing the fence, where, in evidence of the precision of our fu-e, the ene- 
my lay slain in large numljers, my men continued to drive the enemy before them un- 
til they reached an open place of felled timber, which furmed an abatis for the ene- 
my. Being on open ground, I deemed it proi>er to halt my command in order to con- 
nect it with the left wing, so that the unity and organization of the regiment could be 
preserved, and the whole put under the command of its colonel. 

The operations of the left wing of the regiment up to this time I cannot report from 
personal observation; but from Maj. John MuUins and other reliable sources I learn 
that the companies of which it was composed moved with the most perfect order, in 
line with the right wing, until the first position of the enemy was carried ; that here, 
coming upon the abatis of felled trees, the progress of the extreme left companies was 
impeded; that, owing to a severe fire from their left, supposed by them to have come 
from our own troops through mistake, they were tlirown into some confusion, which 
was increased by an order to fall liack and reform; but that, though to some extent 
scattered, they fought on eagerly, and the list of their killed and wounded shows them 
to have l)een in the thickest of the fight. 

Unaljle to find my left wing, and discovering that troops of other l.irigades were on 
both flanks of my command, I ordered it to advance. Our reenforcements had pressed 
on, and now occupied the front, and were most liotly engaged. I drew up my men 
within supporting distance, ready to advance and take the front at a moment's notice. 

For an hour we were exposed to a galling fire, which was borne with the same firm- 
ness that marked the conduct of the men in their flr.st successful attack. 

While in this position I was joined by Cajit. W. G. Martin, of Company B, and 
learned from him for the (irst time of the fate of Col. Mott, and the position of our left 
companies. . . . The [First] Regiment, which was on my left and somewhat in 
front, had now expended its ammunition, and moved from its position by filing to the 
rear by the right. I threw my regiment forward to the position thus vacated, and ap- 
plied in person to Brig. Gen. A. P. Hill, commanding (with his brigade) that portion of 
our line, for permission to hold it with my regiment as a part of his brigade, and re- 
ceived his consent. At tliis juncture the fire slackened on my new position, but, 
growing exceedingly severe to my right, I was ordered by Gen. Hill to throw my leg- 
iment in that direction, to supjiort the troo)is thus hotly engageil. In the execution 
of this order I encountered Brig. Gen. Pryor, with one of his regiments, very closely 
engaged with the enemy. Gen. Pryor at once ordered me to throw two of my compa- 
nies to the ri^ht, to arrest an apjirehended flank movement of the enemy. The re- 
maining portion of the regiment was held in reserve. Tlie enemy here ceased his at- 
tack, and in this position I remained until near 8 p.m., when, pursuant to orders, I 
moved my regiment from the field. From the time the order to advance was given 
until the conflict terminated this regiment was under fire, and through it all both offi- 
cers and men bore themselves with an intrepidity which merits the highest commen- 
dation. 

I append herewith a list of the casualties in this regiment, from which it ajipears 
that om- loss amounts to 100 killed and wounded. In consequence of heavy details 
and sickness among our recruits, we carried into the field only 501 men. 



mn LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 101 

. Not ouly did Col. Lamar's haudliug of his regiineut in this battle re- 
ceive the complimeutary uotice from Geu. Wilcox quoted above; but, 
also, Geu. A. P. Hill, iu his report, mentioned him iu these terms: 

Lieut. Col. Lamar, of the Nineteenth Mississippi, volunteered to serve under my 
orders, having becomi; separated from his brigade, and was eager to bear liis part in 
the day's fray, nobly seconded by the right wing of his regiment. He rendered me 
most efficient service. 

Geu. Pryor, also, said of him this: 

At this moment Lieut. Col. Lamar, of tlie Nineteenth Mississippi, just issuing from 
a severe but successful struggle, came up with his regunent, and reported that he had 
been sent to my assistani'e. Two of his companies I threw to my right, to arrest a re- 
ported flank movement of the enemy ; the balance I held in reserve. 

Aud Gen. Lougstreet said: 

Col. Kemper . . . and Lieut. Col. Lamar (favorably mentioned by three of the 
brigadier generals ) discharged their difficult duties with marked skill and fearlessness.* 

To the regiment itself, because of its gallantry, Gen. Johnston granted 
the honor of the right to inscribe " Williamsburg " on its standard. 

Although Col. Lamar's bearing at Williams! )urg met such ample and 
flattering recognition, he never plumed himself on his military career. 
He had no conceit of his own capacity as a military leader. Albeit no 
one had a greater admiration for and love of a gallant soldier, his own 
ambitious lay entirely apart from that career. In later years he was 
wont, at home and in the lobbies of the Senate chamber, in coteries of 
his friends (which embraced many of the most distinguished officers of 
both sides), to make his adventures at AVilliamsburg the subject of bur- 
lesque narratives, and the text of humorous dissertations on the cheai> 
uess of military glory, whereby he would seek, in jest, to lessen the pride 
of the "generals." 

Well was it for him that his ambition lay in other directions; for 
about the 15th of May, as he was reviewing his regiment, his vertigo re- 
turned suddenly, and in a most violent form. He fell as if he had been 
shot. The soldiers raised him upon a litter, covered him with the regi- 
mental flag, and carried him to his tent. From thence an ambulance 
conveyed him to friends iu Richmond. His connection with the line 
was over. 

Again for months there was the same slow and uncertain recovery. 
In June he went home, and from thence, in July, with his family, to Ma- 
con, Ga., where he enjoyed the solace of the society of his mother and 
sister. 

In September of this year he had the great misfortune to lose his 
younger brother, Jefferson M., to whom he was most tenderly attached. 
Jefl'erson was the lieutenant colonel of Cobb's (Georgia) Legion, and 
fell while leading a charge at Cramptou's Gap, in the Blue Ridge, in 

• ■' War of tlie Rebellion." Sei-ies I., Vol. XI., Piivt I., pp. 567, 579, 588, 589, 597. 



102 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR. 

Maryland. In that desperate and bloody fight he was ordered to pro- 
tect a small gap to the right of the field. Upon reaching the spot, he 
ordered a charge over a stone fence. He scaled it himself, in his sad- 
dle; but his horse was immediately shot, and fell under him. He 
promptly raised his cap, and, waving it, cheered on his men, calling 
upon them to follow him; but he was immediately pierced by a number 
of bullets from the enemy, who were in great force in front and on both 
sides. He still kept the field, refusing to be removed. Stretched out 
upon the ground, with his hand supi^ortiug his head, while his elbow 
rested upon the earth, he could still watch and encourage his men. When 
any faltering was apparent in their thinned ranks he would check it by 
simply saying to those in front, " If you fall back, you will tread on my 
body; " and to those in the rear, "If you retreat, you will leave me here." 
Hours passed away in an unequal contest. All that remained of Cobb's 
Legion were taken prisoners, clustering aboiit their dying colonel's form. 
He survived only a few days. His loss was a terrible blow to the fam- 
ily, for he was their Benjamin and their Joseph in one. He had been 
married less than a year before to a lovely cousin, a niece of Mrs. 
Howell Cobb's. The family had dreamed of a great future for " Jeffey," 
regarding him as the most highly gifted of the three brothers. Twenty- 
three years later Col. Lamar wrote of this lost brother : " I never knew 
a more perfect being, from the time of his childhood up to the day of his 
death. I never heard a word fall from his lips that could not have been 
uttered in the presence of his mother and sisters. His success was of ex- 
ceptional brilliancy, and his death was an irreparable loss to Georgia." 

Col. John B. Lamar, a cousin, was also mortally wounded in the same 
engagement, dying on the next day. 

In October, Col. Lamar, owing to continued bad health, resigned his 
colonelcy of the regiment, in order to accept other employment. When 
the regiment received intelligence of his resignation, a meeting of ofii- 
cers and men was called, and resolutions were adopted expressing regret 
for his resignation, and requesting him to recall it and to resume com- 
mand after his health should have been restored. To this he replied 
that his absence would necessarily be a prolonged one, and, while 
greatly appreciating the comiilinient paid to himself, and regretting to 
sever his connection with the regiment, he felt that it would be a grave 
injustice to the other officers who must command in the field and who 
deserved promotion, if he should consent to adopt that course. Col. N. 
H. Harris (afterwards brigadier general), who succeeded to tlie colo- 
nelcy thus vacated, is authority for the statement that the soldiers of the 
regiment regarded him as a heroic leader and felt deep sorrow at his 
resignation; that great and lasting mutual affection existed between the 
men and himself. 



CHAPTEK X. 

Envoy to Russia — Special Letter of Instructions — Trip to England — Official Dispatch- 
es — Mission Terminated — Anecdote of Thackeray — Anecdote of Disraeli — Speech 
in England — Return to the Confederacy — Speech at Atlanta — Death of Thompson 
B. Lamar — Judge Advocate of Third Corps — Speech in Lines — Surrender. 

ATEANSITION from the dullness, the monotony, and the priva- 
tions of army life in the beleaguei-ed Confederacy to the vivacities, 
the multiform interests, and the luxuries of the largest and gayest cap- 
itals of Europe was a great one; but just this is what came next to Col. 
Lamar. 

On the 19th of November, 1862, he was appointed Special Commis- 
sioner of the Confederate States to the Empire of Russia. In addition 
to his commission and his special passport he was furnished with a 
letter from President Davis to the Czar, a letter from the Secretary of 
State to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, letters of instruction 
from the Secretary of State, and copies of the letters of instruction 
theretofore given to Messrs. Mason and Slidell.* Of these papers the 
following is set forth in the text, as showing most clearly the views and 
policy of the administration in respect to this mission: 

Confederate States of America, Department op State, "I 
Richmond, November 19, 1862. J 

Lucius Q. C. Lamar, Esq., Commissioner to Russia, 

Sir: When several of the independent States wliich had formerly been members 
of the confederation known as the "United States of America" determined to with- 
draw from the Union and to associate themselves in a new confederation under tlie 
name of the "Confederate States of America," it was natural and proper that they 
should communicate this fact to the other nations of the earth. Tlie usages of inter- 
national intercourse require official communication of all organic changes in the con- 
stitutions of States, and tliere was obvious propriety in giving prompt assurance of our 
desire to continue the most amicable relations with all mankind. 

Actuated by these considerations, one of the first cares of the government was to 
send to Europe commissioners charged with the duty of visiting the capitals of the 
different powers and making preliminary arrangements for the opening of more formal 
diplomatic intercourse. Prior, however, to the arrival of the commissioners the United 
States had declared war against the Confederacy, and had in its communications to the 
different cabinets of Europe assumed the attitude of being sovereign over the Con- 
federacy, alleging that tliese independent States were in rehellion against other States 
with which they liad theretofore been acknowledged confederates on a footing of perfect 
equality. To the extreme surprise of this government, this absurd pretension was 
considered by the cabinets of f4reat Britain and France as affording a valid reason for 
declinins to entertain relations with the Confederate States, or even to recognize the 

See Appendix, No. ti. 

(103) 



104 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

contiimtHl fxistence of these States as indepeiulent sovereignties. It soon beeanie ap- 
parent tliat, ill consequence of tlie delegation of power formerly granted by these 
States to the Federal Government to represent tliem in foreign intercourse, the nations 
of Europe had been led into the grave error of supposing that the sei)anite sovereignty 
and independence of these States had been merged into one common sovereignty, and 
had thus ceased to exist. All attempts to dispel so grave an error by argument and 
appeal to historic facts were found unavailing, and the cabinets of Versailles and 
St. James intimated their deternunation to confine themselves to recognizing the 
self-evident fact of the existence of a war; to treat us as belligerents; and to postjione 
any decision of the question of rigid until that of viiglit was made clear. 

This result of our offers to enter into amicable relations with the two great powers 
of Europe who-e proximity caused them to be first visited by our commissioners nat- 
urally created some hesitancy in approaching his Imperial Majesty, Alexander II. 
Dcie self-respect forliade our a.ssuming an attitude which could possibly be construed 
into a supplication for favor as inferiors, instead of a tender of friendly intercourhe as 
equals. Nor is it improper to add that a communication to which extensive publicity 
was given, addressed by the cabinet of St. Petersburg to that of Washington, justified 
the inference of the existence in that city of the same views as those which were 
avowed at London and at Paris. 

Under these circumstances this government abstained from further obtruding on 
European powers any propositions for conmiercial or other amicable relations, and ac- 
cepted, with stern determination, the arbitrament to which all civilized nations 
seemed to invite it. The result has become matter of history, and 1 have only made 
these jjrefatory remarks that you may understand, and be able to explain, the causes 
which prevented this government from making, eighteen months ago, tlie same ad- 
vances to his Imperial Majesty which were made to two of the other great European 
powers. 

The time has now arrived when, in the judgment of the President, he may, without 
hazard of nusconstruction, temler to the Emperor of Kussia the assurances of the sin- 
cere desire of this |)eopleto entertain with him the most coi'dial relations of friendship 
anil commercial intercourse, and the President has chosen you to represent this gov- 
ernment in conveying such assurances. 

In opening your communications on tliis suliject with the cabinet of St. Petersburg, 
it is not deemed nei'essary that you resort to argument to maintain the right of these 
States to secede from the United States any further than may be embraced in the 
statement above given of the reasons which have caused delay in approaching that 
government on the subject. You will, of course, not refuse any explanations on this 
point which may seem to be invited, but we now place our demand for recognition 
and admission into the family of nations on the result of the test to which Europe, by 
common understanding, submitted our rights. We have conquered our position by 
the sword. We are ready and able to maintain it against the utmost efforts of our 
enemies in the future, as we have already done in the past. We weie independent 
States before secession; we have been independent ever since, in spite of an invasion 
by armaments far exceeding in magnitude that immense host which, to Russia's im- 
mortal honor, she overwhelmed with disaster by the voluntary sacrifice of her capi- 
tal. Nearly a million of armed men, aided by numerous fleets possessing unques- 
tioned control over the waters of our coasts, have, in a war now far advanced into the 
second year, utterly failed to make any ]ii'ogi-ess in the insane effort to subjugate this 
Confederacy, whose territory covers nearly half a continent, and whose population 
exceeds ten millions of inhabifcints. 

According to the Code of International Law, a nation which, with such elements 
of grandeur, also presents itself with an organized government and an obedient peo- 
ple, with institutions created in past generations by the free will of the citizens, and 



BIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 105 

still cherished; a nation defentled by numerous armies, that crush all attempts of a 
most jxjwerful foe to subjugate it ; a nation which is aiming at no conquest, seeking no 
advantages, and using its sword for the sole purpose of defending its inherent right 
of self-government— such a nation may well insist on its claim to recognition Irom 
those who may expect hereafter to maintain with it relations of mutual advantage 
in the exchange of good ollices and the freedom of commercial intercourse. 

It is not deemed necessary to dwell on the many considerations wliich plainly indi- 
cate the benefits that must result to both nations from the establii^hment of Iriendly 
relations and unrestritted commerce. No rival interests exist to impede the creation 
or disturb the continuance of sucli relations; but the people of each country haxe 
everything to gain from a free interchange of the commodities which the other pro- 
duces in excess of its own wants. Each, ])ursuing its own career in the development 
of its own resources, would be regarded by the other as supplying new aliment for 
an intercourse mutually advantageous, and additional motives for cheiishing the 
most cordial amity. 

On the subject of the recognition of the Confederacy you will not fail to represent 
to the government of his Imjierial Majesty that, while the «ar which now ravages 
this continent and afiiicts mankind was due, in some measure, to the determination 
of Europe to leave the decision of the questions which have arisen between the 
Northern and the Southern States of North America to the arbitrament of war, rather 
than by friendly intervention to promote their amicable adjustment; the adherence 
of those governments at the present time to a line of policy purely (jassive is the sole 
cause of the continuance of hostilities. Desperate as the United States now know the 
attempt to be, they can scarcely be expected lo al.iandon their avowed purpose of sub- 
jugating the South in the absence of some expi-ession on the part of the great powers 
of Europe justifying such abandonment. Tlie people of the North, knowing that the 
right of the Confederacy to recognition is dependent solely \ipon its ability to defend 
itself against conquest by its enemies, cannot interpret the failure of Europe to 
accord that recognition on any other ground than the conviction that the North is able 
to subjugate the South. The unprecedented silence of European cabinets, after the 
abundant evidence afforded by the events of the past eighteen months of the power 
of the Confederacy to defend itself, is scarcely less effective in stimulating the United 
States to continue its present atrocious warfare than language of direct encouragement. 
The Presi<lent is well aware that such can, by no possibility, be the intention of the 
liumane and enlightened ruler who now presides over the destinies of Kussia, but he 
is also well satisfied that such are the views attributed to neutral powers by the 
United States as being fairly deducible from the hesitation liitherto evinced in yield- 
ing to the just demand of this government for the recognition of its independent na- 
tionality. 

If your efforts to open negotiations with the Russian Cabinet on the basis of our 
recognition shall prove successful, you will be expected to continue your residence 
near that court as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, and to that 
end you will receive herewith your commission as such, together with letters of cre- 
dence to his Imperial Majesty. 

It is desiraljle that you seek occasion to confer with Mr. Mason or Mr. Slidell, or both, 
on the way to the seat of your mission, in order to inform yourself fully of the condi- 
tion of affairs in Europe at the time of your arrival, and if any imjiortant change 
shall have occurred rendering your compliance with any part of your jire^^ent instruc- 
tions impolitic or unadvisable, you may exercise your own discretion after conference 
with one or both of these gentlemen, in postponing the execution of them until fur- 
ther instructions from Richmond. 

I am, sir, your obedient servant, J. P. Benjamin, Secretary of State. 



lUd LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

Mr. Lamar started upon bis mission about the 1st of December. At 
first he designed to go by way of Mobile, taking passage on the war ves- 
sel " Florida; " but the uncertainty of her departure caused him to aban- 
don this jjlau and go by way of Mexico. He spent five days iu Vicks- 
burg, where he was pleasantly entertained at the hospitable home of 
Walker Brooke, Esq. P"'rom thence he took passage for Alexandria, 
La., in the steamboat "T. W. Eoberts," reaching Alexandria on the 
night of the 19th. 

On the 24th of December he wrote to his wife from Niblett's Blufl': 

I have just this moment arrived at this place. It is on the Sabine River, one hun- 
dred and twenty-five miles from Houston, Tex. "We got to Alexandria last Saturday. 
It took us three and a half days to get here in a hack. The country we have come 
through is one long stretch of pine barrens interspersed with patches of jirairie. The 
settlers are not in ten miles of each other, and so far as I can judge, have no means 
of support. I shall leave to-night on the boat for Houston. 

He left San Antonio on the 3d of January, 1863; and Matamoras on 
the 25th of January, on the French ve.ssel " Malabar," bound for Ha- 
vana. At the mouth of the Eio Grande they passed two French war 
vessels and one English. After a stormy passage he reached Havana 
on the evening of the 3d of February. From Havana he found his 
way to Saint Thomas, in the Virgin Islands; and thence to England, 
reaching Loudon on the night of March 1. 

On the 19th he wrote to his wife from the Burlington Hotel : 

I reached London on the niglitof the 1st of March, and have been much occupied 
ever since in receiving company and going to dinners. I have seen many of the no- 
tabilities, and have witnessed the grandest pageant, I ]iresume, that has appeared in 
London for many years.* Longstreetf and I had a splendid chance of seeing the 
prince and princess. The latter personage is very handsome and graceful. We have 
been to see the National Gallery of paintings, the Zonlogical Gardens, the Whitehall^ 
Parliament House, Richmond, and other places tedious to mention. You know I do 
not enjoy sight-seeing much, but my interest has been kept alive here all the time, 
everything is so grand and so hoary with antiquity. ... I have been with Mr. 
Mason a good deal. He is very popular here. Mr. Adams, the United States Min- 
ister, has t'oraplained that he was only treated with civility, while Mr. Mason was 
treated witli cordiality. I have met several members of Parliament. They seem very 
anxious to learn all about our affairs, of which they are becoming much better in- 
formed. I dine Tuesday next with Hon. Mr. and Mrs. Pococke (|)arliaraentary folks). 
I expect to meet some of the rulers there, as the in\'itation was very ceremonious. 
The dress of a gentleman at these dinnere is a full suit of black, white kid gloves, and 
white cravat. 

On the next day, the 20th of March, Mr. Lamar sent to Mr. Benjamin 

the following dispatch: 

London, March 20, 1863. 

Hon. J. P. BEN.TAMIN, Secretary of State, Confederate States of America, 

Sir: Learning that Mr. Beverly Tucker will start for Richmond to-morrow, I seize 

the occasion to send you a few notes which may possibl y be of interest. Though 
* Manifestly in honor of tlie marriage of the Princ-e of Wales, which took place on the 10th o£ 

March, 18(Ki. 

•(■ His wife's j-oong ncplicw. wlioni he look witli liim. 



ins LIFE, TIMES. AXD SPEECHES. 107 

I have been in London Imt a little more than two weeks, I have had, thiough the 
kindnes.s of jSIr. Mason, uiiexpected opportunities of obtaining' iuforn.atiun in regard 
to the state of puplic opinion liere an<l tliroughout Europe touching American aflairs. 
In this country the leading contestants lor power in butli jiarties, Conservatives and 
Whigs, supported by the great body of their respective adljerents, aie favorable to the 
success of the South. Many causes, however, operate to prevent this paitiality from 
yielding any practical result. Not only the government party, but even the Conserv- 
ative leaders, are exceedingly timid in regard to any movement ■which might give 
umbrage to the United States. They seem to consider that a war with that country 
would be the greatest calamity that could befall Great Britain ; and they have tlie im- 
pression that the United States would not regret the occurrence of a contingency 
which would justify them in declaring war. This belief has made a deep impression 
upon the mind of England, and though it has increased the willingness to witness the 
dismemberment of a hostile power and diffuseil in a wider circle the sympathy for 
the South, yet it has also had a powerful influence in holding the government to the 
policy of " neutrality " (so called) in which it has taken refuge. 

Another cause lies in the peculiar composition of parties in both Houses of Parlia- 
ment. You are aware that neither of the two great parties have such a working ma- 
jority as will insure their continuance in power. The Whigs can at any moment be 
ousted, but are equally able, in turn, to eject their successors. This gives to the Rad- 
icals, under Bright and others, the balance of power. Although weak in numbers (in 
Parliament), this last-named jiurty has become necessary to the maintenance of either 
party in jiower. At least their united opposition would be fatal to any government 
which might be organi .ed. These men are the warm partisans of the United States, 
and have of late made aseries of striking demonstrations by public meetings, speeches, 
etc. It is well understood, so I am told, that United States gold has been freely used 
in getting up these spectacles; and although they have been participated in by but 
few men of any note or consideration, yet they have been sufficiently formidable to 
exercise a powerful influence upon the policy of both the leading parties. It was this 
that eliciteil Lord Derby's remarkable speech. If the nation were divided solely upon 
the American question, the overwlielniing force of public opinion would be on the 
side of the South ; but inasmuch as it is an issue subordinate to many questions, both 
of domestic and foreign iiolioy, ami the two parties contesting for power are nearly 
equal in strength, the Radicals really control the action of the government in regard 
to American affairs. I do not see any causes now at work to change this state of 
things. At the same time no one can anticipate the policy of the government on 
this suliject. The events of a day may reverse it entirely, as the following fact will 
illustrate.* 

These abrupt changes are brought about by a cause which it is difficult for Amer- 
ican statesmen to appreciate. The nations of Europe constitute a federative league, 
a commonwealth of nations which, though it has no central head, is so intimate and 
elaborate as to subject the action, and sometimes even the internal affairs, of each to 
surveillance and intervention on the part of all the others. No government, therefore, 
can enter upon a policy exclusively its own; and its action in reference to foreign 
matters is consequently liable to constant modification. Lord Pahnerston is far 

*In cipher in the original. 
States tlie declaration of a learlinjr member of the Government party (tlie intimate, conflilciitial 
friend of T.ord P.) tliat tlie Confederaey would be recognized in a few 
days and tliat lie would he tbe ainiointcd Minister to tlie Confederate 
My informant (name states of America. All the names given in theoriginal. This took pl.ice 

given), also unques- .^ September last. Only a few days after, the same distinguished per- 

tionaljle. sonage said to my informant: "Tlie game is up. We have to talic an- 

other tack." 



108 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

more deeply engrossed with the conferenres, jealousies, and rivalries between the 
leading powers of Europe than with tlje fate of constitutional government in America. 
To thwart Louis Napoleon's policy in Greece, or to prevent his ascendency in Euro- 
pean afTairs, is of far greater importance than to pursue any policy at all with refer- 
ence to America, which is considered on both sides of the Potomac an alien in Euro- 
pean politics. In my opinion whenever this government has entertained the propo- 
sition of i-ecognizing the Southern Confederacy, it was a result due to iniiuences brought 
to bear in Europe. 

Notwithstanding the present troubled state of German politics, I am satisfied that 
much service to our cause would be done by your sending a commissioner to the Gov- 
ernments of Austria and Prussia. An intelligent gentleman residing in Berlin has as- 
sured me that the government and the army are extremely favorable to the cause of 
the South, and that the success of the South is not more sincerely desired at any other 
court than that of Austria; and the same feeling exists among the higher classes of 
that nation. Under proper management these two German courts would at least 
throw the weight of their favor upon any movement which might be inaugurated 
elsewhere in behalf of Southern recognition. An additional reason for having a com- 
missioner at these courts may be found in the fact that the United States Government 
has its agents throughout Germany enlisting " laborers " to take the place of those who 
are gone into the army. They profess that they only want them for this purpose. 
They give a free passage with promise of high pay on their arrival in America. They 
have been successful in finding men willing to emigrate on these favorable terms; and, 
as you know, a great number of them have enlisted in the United States army. This, 
with other causes, has made the lower and a large majority of the middle classes of 
Germany warm partisans of the North. The Government of the United States has 
made strong ettbrts to control puljlic opinion there, many of the leading newspapers 
Ijeing in its pay. 

I am here waiting for Mr. Fearn.but have sought in various quarters information 
respecting the probable success of my mission to Russia; and am glad to say that 
whilst the Government of Russia is inclined to favor the cause of the United States, 
there does not exist any feeling of hostility toward the South. I have some reason to 
think, from remarks made by a member of the Russian Legation here, that when the 
true nature and causes of the present war shall have been made known, and espe- 
cially when the emperor is made to see that it is not a rebellion, but a lawful asser- 
tion of sovereignty, we may reasonal)ly expect his more active cor>peration with the 
views of the French Emperor. There is no party in Russia absolutely hostile to the 
South. The avidity with which the Confederate loan has been taken up, both here 
and on the Continent, has caused great rejoicing among our friends; and it is claimed 
by them to be a financial recognition of the Confederacy. 

I am your obedient servant, L. Q. C. Lamar. 

Twenty-four years later (iu 1SS7) Mr. Lamar was interviewed by 
Col. D.jnu Piatt in respect to liis knowledge of the views of the French 
Court at this important juncture, and said: 

I know very well that Louis Napoleon was not only in favor of interfering in our 
behalf, but warmly so. He received me kindly, and spoke with the utmost frankness 
upon the subject. There were two oljstacles in his way. One was the fact of our 
slaveholJing, that would make intervention in our behalf unpopular among the mass- 
es of the French people. The other was the need of a naval power like England or 
Russia to join in the movement. The Count de Morney, the emperor's confidential 
adviser, opened his mind to me yet more freely, and gave assurances that made us hope 
with reason for the intervention of the Imperial (Government of France. On one oc- 
casion I was shown a note from the emperor, in which he gave a positive order that, 



ins TJFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 109 

had it not been revoked, would have brought on the intervention which we so ear- 
nestly souglit 

As the struggle went on in its first stage, when the Confederate cause had so many 
great victories to its credit, the emperor was induced to believe that we could win 
without outside assistance. When the tide began to turn through the exhaustion of 
our resources, tlie emperor became deeply interested, so that there was more ilanger 
to the Federal Government when we were losing than when we were successful. At 
any time before the cause grew utterly desperate the way was open to an alliance 
with France. So, had Hood defeated Thomas, and won his way to the Ohio, it would 
have had an appreciative influence in bringing about intervention. 

The motive for this course on the part of the emperor was not altogether a senti- 
ment. 

In the blockade of the Southern ports France suffered as England su3"ered, only in 
a less degree, from a cotton famine. Perhaps the French Government felt it more 
deeply than the Englisli, because in France the laboring classes had been taught and 
trained to look to the government for subsistence. When this failed the government 
was imperiled. Now, President Lincoln's navy had not only established a blockade, 
but his friends in Congress had enacted a high protective tariff' that was a threat of an 
irritating sort at the very time when Mr. Seward was courting favors from European 
governments; and when the news spread abroad that the Government of the North, 
failing to perfect its blockade, was sinking ships loaded with stone in the channels, so 
as to destroy our harbors, the indignation of the European press was very great. 

lu Jiily Mr. Lamar received from the Secretary of State a dispatch, 
iuformiug him that the Confederate Senate had refused to confirm his 
appointment as Commissioner, and giving the reasons therefor, to which 
he replied as follows: 

London, July 22, 1863. 
Hon. J. P. Benjamin, Secretary of State, Confederate States of America, 

Sir : I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your dispatch No. 2, advising 
me that, the Senate having fiiiled to ratify my nomination as Commissioner to Rus- 
sia, the President de.«ires that I consider the official information of the fact as termi- 
nating my mission. I have to thank you for the regret you express, on the part of 
the President and yourself, at this decision of the Senate; but, while I cannot free my- 
self altogether from a feeling of <lisappointment in the expectation of finding a career 
of usefulness, it is my duty to state that the reasons which yon inform me actuated 
the Senate are fully confirmed by my own observations of the conditions of European 
politics. Shortly after my arrival here I became convinced that the state of things 
supposed to promise useful results from diplomatic representations at the court of St. 
Petersburg had been essentially altered. Not only did there appear no evidence that 
the influence of France was in the ascendant in the councils of Russia, but it was very 
apparent that a growing coldness existed between the two governments, caused by 
the attitude which the French Government had assumed in relation to Poland. The 
progress of the insurrection, and the increasing manifestation of French sympathy with 
its success, have still fai-ther widened the breach, until at present all P^urope is greatly 
alarmed at the imminent risk of a hostile collision of the two empires. 

These considerations induced me, after frequent consultation with Messi-s. IMason 
and Slidell, to delay my departure for my post; and, as latterly the prospect of a res- 
toration of cordial relations became more remote, I had almost reached the dt'termi- 
nation of recommending to you that I should be released from my duties, or, at least, 
that they should be directed to another field. Although it could not be expected that 



110 LVCIVS Q. a LAMAR: 

the Government of Austria or Prussia would be prepared to take the initiative in rec- 
ognition, there was yet good reason to believe that either or both these powers could 
be so far influenced as to lend their moral weight to the efforts which are made in 
England and France. I cannot say that the grounds for this belief were sufficiently 
specific to be urged successfully against the dei-ision of the Senate, and I acquiesce in 
it the more readily since, in one respect at least, it anticipates by a few days the con- 
clusion that I was about to communicate to you. I trust, however, that you will not 
consider me as going out of my way when I urge that the principle which has gov- 
erned this decision will not be extended to the withdrawal of diplomatic representa- 
tion at London and Paris, as tlie proceeding in the House of Representatives and the 
tone of the press lead me to apprehend. The presence of these gentlemen at their 
respective posts is imperiously demanded by exigences of the public service, even 
though the main object of their mission may not for some time to come be caiTied 
out against the prejudiced obstinacy of the English Foreign Office, or the languor 
which has recently characterized the imiierial policy on American atlairs. 

In terminating my official relations with your department, permit me to express 
the hope that my brief residence in Europe has not been wholly fiuitless. In the en- 
deavor to secure for my mission a favorable reception at St. Petersbui-g, I have neces- 
sarily made the acquaintance of many persons in high official and social position, as 
well in England as in France. Oiiportunities for putting to work influences in our 
favor have not been wanting, and I have not knowingly neglected any that have pre- 
senteil themselves. 

I have the honor to be, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

L. Q. C. Lam.\r. 

Mr. Lamar's mission being thus abruptly terminated, be began at 
once to consider his return to the Confederacy, although still not en- 
tirely recovered from his last illness. His left leg was still disabled 
partially. On the 1st of August he wrote to his wife: 

If nothing prevents, I start liome on the 1st of September. ... If you were 
here, I would remain much longer, as it is necessary for my health. But I suppose it 
is my duty to go home and help the fighting. I only wish that our people knew how 
they are admired all over Europe. It would nerve their souls to go through with the in- 
creasing troubles that threaten them. There are many Confederates here— too many, 
indeed, of those who ought to he at home fighting. ... If I should be captured 
by the Federals, do not be alarmed. They will only place me in confinement, if they 
do that. Well, I can stand anything that they can inflict. Tluy can't break my spirit, 
and I will be restored to you sometime or other. 

It so happens that all of the documents given above are dated from 
Loudon, but Mr. Lamar spent much of his time at Paris as well. There 
he saw much of the French court, and did quite the same work which 
he did in London. He acquired some familiarity with the French 
tongue, aud took lessons in the art of fencing. 

It was at one of the semiofficial dinners alluded to in the foregoing 
correspondence that he met Mr. Thackeray. This distinguished gen- 
tleman seems to have taken quite a fancy to the "rebel coloneL" On 
one occasion Mr. Lamar was telling a party of gentlemen about a visit 
that ho had made to the church of the great Baptist minister, Mr. Spur- 
geon, and of the eloquent sermon which he had heard. Mr. Thackeray 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. \\\ 

was a member of the Established Church, and had never heard Mr. 
Spurgeou. He expressed disbelief in his powers, and said that he be- 
lieved him to be overrated. Whereupon Mr. Lamar undertook to re- 
hearse the sermon which he had heard; and, doing so with the remark- 
able faculty which ht^ had for reproducing the longest speeches or 
sermons with the greatest fidelity, if only they had interested him, and 
with his animated and impressive manner, he delighted Mr. Thackeray 
very much; "but," said he, "Mr. Lamar, that is your sermon, and not 
Spurgeon's. I believe that you can beat him preaching." 

During his stay in England Col. Lamar witnessed a scene in the 
House of Commons, which he afterwards described in a literary address, 
to illustrate the value of courage and perseverance in the face of formi- 
dable difficulties. The incident is narrated in his own words: 

IVLany years ago a singular scene was enacted in tlie Englisli House of Commons. 
A very important suliject was under discussion, and a young member wlio liad never 
claimed the attention of the House before arose to address them upon it. His style of 
oratory ill accorded with the notion of that exacting assembly. His swelling and {)re- 
tentious periods, his bizarre and unique diction, resembling the rich but fantastic mo- 
saic of Oriental halls, excited their ridicule, and his voice was drowned by groans and 
hoots, hisses, and tumultuous cries of " Down ! sit down ! " from every part of the floor. 
For a time the unfortunate speaker struggled resolutely with this overwhelming deris- 
ion; hut tinally, when his voice was completely lost in the storm, he seized upon a 
momentary lull to exclaim: "I have many a time encountered great difliculties, and 
have overcome them ; obstacles far greatei' than this have presented themselves before 
me, and I have removed them. I yield to you now; I relinquish the floor, but mark 
my words : the time shall yet come when this House shall hear me." 

Years afterwards, in 1S6.3, one of those weighty questions which constitute epochs in 
the political history of England arose. The public mind was agitated to its very 
depths, and the House of Commons filled the eyes of the statesmen of the world. I 
was present when the great deliate occurred. The hall was crowded to suflbcation. 
Tbous inds turned back disappointed from the unenterable doors. The beauty and 
the wit, the nobility and the intellect, of the world were there — either as participants 
or as witnesses. For years uo such assembly had gathered, even in that place of great 
assemblages. As the eye toiled over the imposing throng the mind was irresistibly led 
back to that other scene, so graphically described l)y Macaulay, where the fiery Burke 
hurled the denunciation of his country at Hastings; and that tremendous jiageant 
seemed to have arisen into a second existence. Again was England faced by an al- 
most unsup|iorted man ; but this man was the herald and champion, not the victim, 
of a new order of things. The thrilling interest of the occasion was intensified by his 
well-known history, for this was the hissed and derided speaker of years before. So 
far from yielding to that crushing defeat, he had toiled on yet more earnestly. He 
had studied the temper and measured the mind of that peculiar body. He had re- 
formed his style of expression ; he had treasured up large stores of knowledge, both 
of men and things; and now he arises to redeem, in the face of the breathless world, 
the pledge of his early manhood. That redemption was complete. His voice rolled 
over the mighty throng, soft as the tones of a harp swept by an angel's hand, and as 
irresistible as the arm of Michael. The breath which fluttered from thousands of 
parted lips was checked lest an accent be lost, and the echoes which fell from the 
statued galleries were buried in thousands of trembling hearts. He concluded, and 
the shout which arose from the reeling hall swept over the tumult of London like a 



112 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: . 

paean of old Rome. He liml plucked his laurels from the grasp of an opposing nation, 
and with them had bound, in a brotherhood of immortal renown, the might of an 
unconquei'able resolution and the name of Benjamin Disraeli. 

Mr. Lamar's departure for the Confederacy was delayed until about 
the 1st of December. Meanwhile the following extract is given from a 
contemporary newspaper, as illustrative of his method of speaking to 
the people of England about the interests of the South. He had run 
over from Paris. 

A Southerner in England. 

Col. L. Q. C. Lamar, who was recently on a visit to his English friends, was enter- 
tained atone of those agricultural dinnera at which the noblemen who best represent 
that interest and the better order of farmers mingle in convivial intercourse, and from 
whom emanate those real English opinions that best express the sense of the country 
in its conservative views. Mr. Lamar was invited to partake of the festivities at the 
annual dinner of the Chertsy Agricultural Society, on the IGth of November, at which 
Mr. W. S. Lindsay presided. On Mr. Lamar's health being proposed, he addressed 
the meeting in a speech in which full justice was done to the cause of the South: 

With a full and distinct understanding of the diversity of opinion that existed be- 
tween his hearers and himself as to some of the institutions to which he referred, he 
asserted in the face of that company, and before the world, that the statements wliich 
had been made against the South were calumnious and untrue; and that the white 
race in the South had been the guardians, the protectors, the benefactors of the black 
man; that they had elevated him in tlie scale of rational existence, and that they had 
Christianized him to a state to which he has never before attained. He only desired 
Englishmen to listen not to opinions, nor to misrepresentations, but to facts. When 
the American Continent was discovered and occupied by the European race, that 
race came into contact with two savage races. One was the noble Indian race, the 
ancient occupiers of the continent, and the highest type of savage manliood ; the other 
was a race brought there not by the agency of the Southern people, but by agencies 
which he would not then discuss. It was the African race, which all philosophers 
and historians pronounce to be the lowest type of natural man. It was a race without 
a God, without rational ideas, cannibals, not attaining even to the civilization of the 
fig leaf. [" Hear! " and a laugh.] 

What had been the history of the two races he had descrilied? The Indian, the 
noble race, incapable of domestic life, incapalile of anything but its wild and nomadic 
existence, had been driven back into continually narrowing circles, with constantly 
diminishing means of snl)sistence, and was in danger of complete extinction by the 
advancing wave of civilization. But the other race, the negro, with all its foulness 
and barliarity, being naturally a servile race, had become domesticated; and, in spite 
of the institution of slavery if they pleased, but still with slavery, had risen higher 
and higher in the rational scale, until now it furnished heroes and heroines for modern 
romances, themes for modern songs, and had even been invited by some statesmen 
within the charmed circle of social and political equality. ["Hear! hear!"] An insti- 
tution that has done so much for that race must be considered carefully. He might be 
told that, having brought the slave up to that point, the South owed it to Christendom 
to emancipate him. [" Hear! "] In answer he would refer to the opinions of British 
statesmen, British travelers, and British philosojihers, who were united in the opinion 
that the emancipation of that race at this time, and especially in the manner proposed 
by the rulers of the North, would be a cnrse to both races. [" Hear! "] 

But he could safely say that so many and so great were the boons which the South 



lUS LIFE, TIMES, A\D SPEECHES. 113 

had already conferreil on the nogro race, that the world had ample srnaranty that if 
the time should ever come for the South to believe that liberty would be a boon, and 
not a curse, then she would be prepared to confer that boon upon them. [Cheers.] 
And he might add that if that time should ever come, they would be capable of as- 
serting their own claims; and the whites could not, if they would, withhokl the boon. 
["Hear! hear!"] Mi^^representation had been constantly made to the English peo- 
ple upon the subject, and it had been said that in the South the negro was treated 
only as property, and was deprived of all the lights of human beings. This he pro- 
nounced false. The laws of every Southern State, in short, regarded the negro as a 
man, threw around him the guarantees of personal security and legal i>rotection, and 
allowed him as much personal liberty as he is capable of enjoying in his present in- 
tellectual and moral condition. They all awarded the penalty of deatli for the mur- 
der of a slave, and imprisonment in the penitentiary was the punishment for maim- 
ing. [" Hear! "] 

Eeturning at last to the Confederacy, Mr. Lamar pursited a difPereut 
route from that liy wliicli he went. He sailed first from Liverpool to 
Halifax, by the "Asia." From Halifax he went to Hamilton, on the 
island of Bermuda; and thence he took the "Ceres," to run the block- 
ade into Wilmington, N. C. In these voyages he was accompanied by 
Mr. Walker Fearn, his former Secretary, and by Mr. Charles A. L. La- 
mar, his cousin. As the " Ceres " was nearing the Carolina coast she 
was sighted and pursued by a Federal ship, and in her flight was 
stranded. The vessel had to be abandoned, and recourse had to boats. 
Mr. Lamar was enabled to save but little of his luggage, losing nearly 
all the effects he was endeavoring to bring to his family; and what he 
saved was drenched with sea water. However, he got in safely. 

From the 9th to the 31st of January, 1864, he was in Eichmond, hav- 
ing his accoitnts audited. 

On the 15th of March he made at Milledgeville his great speech on 
" The State of the Corintry." Before the people was not only the ques- 
tion of the foreign relations of the Confederacy, but also a question of 
the gravest moment in regard to its internal affairs. The government 
had, as a war measure, suspended the use of the writ of Iialmis corpus. 
Gov. Brown, of Georgia, in a message to the State Legislature, had in- 
veighed in the severest terms against this step. Mr. Lamar's Milledge- 
ville speech, therefore, dealt with the diplomatic question, and then 
passed to a defense of the action of the government on the habeas 
corpus. A contemporary Milledgeville newspaper said of it that 

There was something peculiarly impressive in the circumstances under which this 
distinguished son of Georgia appeared, to address these burning words of counsel to 
our people. He was near the spot of his birth, and stood in the very spot where his 
honored iiither had received the highest judicial functions known to our laws. These 
influences seemed to give inspiration to his powers, and he held his large auditory 
spellbound for nearly two hours. 

Substantially the same speech Mr. Lamar made again at Columbus, 
Ga., aliout the" 20th of March. Afterwards, a speech by Vice President 



114 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

Stephens, taking the same position as Gov. Brown, and defending his 
message, having appeared, Mr. Lamar repeated his Milledgeville ad- 
dress at Atlanta on the 14th of April, with such altei-ations as were nec- 
essary to answer Mr. Stejjheus, as well as Gov. Brown. It is the Atlanta 
speech which is given in the Appendix.* 

The address was received with the greatest enthusiasm. The news- 
papers circulated it widely, and commented upon it freely. The Culiun- 
bns EiKjiiirer, of the 25th of March, said: 

It has long been the fashion of our pubhc speakers in this country to devote them- 
selves in tlieir liarangues as mueli to the aiuuseinent of fools as to the edification of 
men of sense. The first oilice is that of a demagogue ; the last, that of the statesman ; 
and the Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar is certainly no demagogue. His observations in Europe 
seem to have been very general, or, perhaps more properly to speak, generally miimte ; 
and the result, as related in the flowing sentences of his own eloquent style, was well 
calculated todisaljuse the Southern mind of much of the bitter jirejudice that has been 
rankling in it for two years past against Great Britain. The address was well calcu- 
lated to send his hearers home happy. It was better calculated still to give moral 
stamina to the confidence which is springing up anew in the hearts of our people at 
home in our capacity to ultimately triumph; and, best of all, it was calculated to send 
along the line of battle arrayed under the Confederate flag at the front a thrill of ex- 
ulting joy, the exhibition of which must redoidjle the strength of our own invincible 
hosts, and rapidly enhance the demoralization of the foe. 

We predict [said the Atlanta paper] that new luster has been added to the his- 
toric name of Lamar by the grand effort spoken of. The speech was one of the ablest 
and most effective we have ever heard, and never have we seen an audience carried 
so irresistibly with every conclusion of the speaker, as was the case on this occasion. 

Mr. Lamar [said the IMilledgeville paper] addressed himself to the task of under- 
mining the ingenious defense of Gov. Brown's position contained in that speech (of 
Mr. Stephens'). That he performs the work undertaken with thorough and perfect 
success, the reader shall see in a day or two. He does it, too, in such a manner that 
we are left in doubt whether most to admire the massive power of his argument or 
the excellent temper in which it is set forth. 

Numerous other papers eulogized, in similar strain. 

During the year 1864, owing to his infirm health, Mr. Lamar was not 
in the military service; and he passed his time in Georgia, between the 
towns of O.xford and Macon. 

At this period he was called to mourn the death of his elder, and only 
siirviving, brother — Thompson B., colonel of the Fifth Florida, who 
was killed in battle near Petersburg. And this brother was one whom 
to mourn was to mourn indeed. A braver man or nobler gentleman, it 
was universally said, did not live. He was modest by nature, a lover of 
justice, impartial, a shrewd observer, highly cultvated in mind, liberal 
and kind in feeling, and possessed of the greatest probity of character; 

* Appendix, No. 7. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 115 

he would have adorned auy station. He commanded a company in the 
First Florida, at Peusacola; was made lieutenant colonel of the Fifth, 
and went with it to Virginia; was wounded at Sharpsburg (Antietam) 
while gallantly rescuing with his own hands the standard of his regi- 
ment; served as adjutant to Gen. Joseph E. Johnston; and was made 
colonel of the Fifth, in which station be fell, universally lamented. 

On the 1st of December Mr. Lamar had returned to Richmond. He 
was at once appointed Jvidge Advocate of the military court in the 
Third Army Corps (A. P. Hill's), with the rank of Colonel of Cavalry. 
The work of this office was ardiious, and was, as he wrote, " the most 
unpleasant duty I ever had to perform in my life." In the discharge 
of its functions he manifested " a kind heart, which would yield to noth- 
ing save a sense of duty." 

It was about the 20th of January, 1865, that, at their special invita- 
tion, he made a speech in the lines to Harris' Brigade, which included 
his old regiment. "Never," writes Gen. Harris, "shall I forget that 
scene: the earnest faces and torn and tattered uniforms of officers and 
men as shown by the flickering torchlights, the rattle of the musketry 
on the skirmish line, the heavy detonation of the enemy's constant ar- 
tillery fire, the eloquent and burning words of the speaker, and the wild 
cheers of the auditors, stirred to the innermost depths of their hearts by 
his patriotic words." He stood on a real stump, with the ragged veter- 
ans of Lee huddled close about him. Attracted by the cheering, the 
Federals shot at the noise. Col. Lamar went on with his speech, duck- 
ing his head to the right or the left as the bullets whizzed close by him. 
Finally the firing became so heavy, continuous, and accurate, making 
the splinters fly from the stump he was on, that he concluded his 
speech with this remark: " Those Yankees must have owl's eyes." 

However, hopes fail. The speeches, the cheers, and the fighting came 
alike to naught; and soon the dramatic interview at Appomattox ended 
all. On the morning of the evacuation of Petersburg (April 3), a time 
when few men were unselfish enough to think of others. Col. Lamar 
went with his purse to a brother officer, and forced him to share it. 
When the surrender had taken place a knot of officers were bidding 
each other farewell. One of them spoke of leaving the country, and 
asked Col. Lamar what he proposed to do. With trembling voice and. 
tears unrestrained (for it was a day when strong men wept without 
shame), he said: "I shall stay with my people, and share their fate. I 
feel it to be my duty to devote my life to the alleviation, so far as in my 
power lies, of the sufferings this day's disaster will entail upon them." 

The following letter tells its own story : 

Appomattox C. H., Va., April 11, 1865. 

Dear Brother: I send this letter to you by Col. Lamar, of Mississippi, with whom we 
served in Congress. I found him here in I^e's army, and he was included in the sur- 
render. He is about starting home via Memphis, and will want to get out from that 



116 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR. 

point. I hope j'ou will afford him every proper facility. We know him well enough to 
know he tli.at will abuse no privilege extended to him. I only left home a week ago 
last night. I stayed with Gen. Grant last night, about seventeen miles from here, and 
arrived here about noon. The formal laying down of arms will take place this p.m. 
I shall start on my return for City Point to-morrow morning. All well at home when 
I left. 

Very truly yours, etc. E. B. Washburne. 

Maj. Gen. C. C. WASUBrKSE, Memphis, Tenn. 

Col. Lamar did not avail himself of Gen. Washburne's letter, how- 
ever, but remained in Kichmond several weeks before setting out upon 
his return to Mississippi. 



CHAPTEE XL 

Southern Sacrifices and Condition— Gen. Walthall— Settles at Cofieeville— Conditions 
of Law Practice— Abstains from Politics— B. N. Harrison— C. C. Clay— Southern 
Sufferings— Correspondence— Accepts Professorship of INIetaphysics — Made Law 
Professor — Character and Methods as a Professor — Resigns Professorship— Address 
at University— Death of Jud^e Longstreet- Address at Emory College — Agricul- 
tural Address— Lee Letter — Letters to Keemelin— U. S. Marshal Pierce — Debate 
with Alcorn at Holly Springs. 

THE surrender of Gen. Lee at Appomattox on the 9th o£ April was 
followed by that of Gen. Johnston to Gen. Sherman on the 2(5th 
at Raleigh, and by that of Gen. Dick Taylor to Canby at Citronelle, 
Ala., on tiie dtli of May; so that when Col. Lamar started home from 
Richmond, as he did about the 20th of May, the war was ended. 

After the lapse of three decades the hopes and fears of that exciting 
pei-iod are now but fading 'memories. The fierce passions and hot ha- 
treds engendered by the long struggle for political supremacy, and by 
the sterner issues of the battlefield, have passed away; and we may now 
contemplate this eventful ejiisode in our national history with a philo- 
sophical and dispassionate calmness, which was not possible then. 

Regarded in its broadest and most far-reaching results, the late Civil 
War can hardly be considered as a national, or even a sectional disas- 
ter. Hard as it bore upon the South especially, and much as it cost 
the whole nation in treasure, in passion, in tears, in blood, it would still 
seem that, as the world's history goes, the losses and sitft'erings endured 
were not an extravagant price to pay for the results achieved; for the 
assurance of an indestructible Union which promises untold national 
glory and human happiness for the future, and incidentally for the ex- 
tirpati(m of the deplorable cancer of slavery. The great calamity was 
farther back. It consisted in the existence of those conditions which 
rendered possible the war and the controversies otit of which it grew; 
in the failure of the constitution to fix more clearly the status of the 
slave population, the relations of the States to the Union, those of the 
States to the Territories; and especially in the existence of those mutual 
jealousies at the time of the formation of the constitution, which made 
indefiniteness in that instrument apparently expedient, and " compro- 
mises" imperative. 

But however we may now regard these matters, then, and to the South- 
ern people who had staked all and lost all, appeared no solace. From the 
Potomac to the Rio Grande the universal and despairing thought was: 
"Vce virfis!" To them the memory of their happy and glorious past in 

(117) 



lis LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

the Uiiiou bad become a fountain of Mara. The present was a horror, 
and the future held little hope. Conquest is not conversion; and still, 
in their view, those principles which waited tipou the formation of the 
Federal compact, and but for the recognition of which tiiat compact 
would never have been made, had been betrayed; and the treachery had 
been crowned by the infamies of invasion in the name of liberty, and 
of subjugation in the names of equality and fraternity. During the 
long and bitter 'struggle for the principles which they cherished, a 
struggle in which they believed themselves to have acted always on the 
defensive, they had suffered so bravely and so much. The very women 
and children at home had gone hungry and ill-clad; all domestic happi- 
ness had been surrendered for years; all the able-bodied men from six- 
teen to sixty had been sent away to the hardships and dangers of the 
battlefields; all profitable industries had been renounced; jjrivate for- 
tunes had been poured into the army chest; the very fields, for want of 
markets for their products, had been abandoned and desolated; the ter- 
rors of invading hosts had been endured; the homes and the cities had 
been given up to pillage and the torch; the names of a thousand bloody 
fields had been written upon their stricken hearts with indelible 
tears; in every household for years had been borne the daily torturing 
dread — a dread to be displaced only by the crowning sorrow of the 
fact — of the loss of the bravest and best beloved; the throne of the om- 
nipotent God had been hourly besieged with groans and prayers— and 
all to what end? To this: that not only the humiliation 'of conquest 
awaited them, the loss of fortune and of honorable estate in the coun- 
cils of nations, but also that their honor was challenged; and while 
the decision of the sword, which so sternly settles facts, never yet in 
truth settled a question of right and wrong, either political or moral, 
they experienced the injustice that their failure to maintain their cause 
by the sword 'brought them under the imputation that they were "reb- 
els" and "traitors." 

Perhai)s no conquered peopile ever suffered so much; because no other 
people ever were conquered who had such lofty conceptions of personal 
and national liberty. In England a thousand years of sturd}' contests 
had developed the highest ideals of ijolitical rights which the world 
had ever known. These ideals, denied to us in practical application by 
the British Crown, had produced our glorious revolution of '70. They 
had been embodied in the Federal Constitution, and our national life 
for ninety years had infused them in their largest and highest develop- 
ment into the lifeblood of every thoughtful American. In the march 
of American political progress Southern statesmen had l)cen always in 
the van. It was a peculiar phase of Southern intellectual life that all 
ambitions and all higher culture led to statesmanship and to the polit- 
ical career. The very women were skilled in statecraft. And thus it 




GEN. EDWARD C. WALTHALL. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 119 

was that when the South fell, and its theories of the political structure 
of the government and of the rights of the citizens of the several States 
were denied without appeal and by the armed hand, the Southern peo- 
ple felt that they had been stricken in the very citadel of their intel- 
lectual and political lives — as if the flower of their own labors, and of 
those of their fathers for centuries, had been trampled into the dust. 

The country, moreover, was utterly impoverished. Not only were the 
slaves freed, but also laud values were enormously reduced. The rail- 
roads had been torn up to a great extent, and were without rolling stock. 
Many of the cities were in ruins, and a large proportion of the dwellings 
both in town and country were destroyed; no cotton ci'ops had been 
made for three years; all movables had been consumed by the war — 
farming utensils, wagons, and live stock. At one sweep the eleven 
Southern States, with a free population of five millions, had lost over 
two thousand millions of value; and of this immense loss nineteen hun- 
dred millions had fallen upon the six States of South Carolina, Geor- 
gia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. Out of this wreck 
were to be met the debts incurred during the period of great prosperity, 
with five years' accumulation of interest. It was ruin, apparently irre- 
trievable and hopeless. 

Everything was to buy. Clothing was scarce, and so was food. Even 
the floors of the dwelling houses had been stripped, the carpets having 
been used in lieu of blankets; and many families of refinement and for- 
mer wealth were without the commonest articles of household and table 
furniture. The grim specter of poverty sat at their firesides, and con- 
fronted them at table. 

When Mr. Lamar left Richmond on his return home he had recovered 
to some extent from tlie shock of the downfall of the Confederacy, and 
was in a frame of mind not at all morbid. He expressed himself as 
being hopeful of early pacification and a happy future for the South. 

On his trip he traveled over part of the route with Gen. E. C. Wal- 
thall; and this meeting laid the foundation for a friendship which en- 
dured through his life, and was of a character so firm and true as to be- 
come almost proverbial in Mississippi. The relation between these 
men was so intimate, so cordial, so generous, and so helijful to each as 
to make indispensable here a notice of this friend. 

Gen. Walthall was born in Eichmond, Va., April 4, 18/U. He was 
brought to Mississippi while still young, and was educated at the same 
celebrated high school attended by Mott and by Autrey — St. Thomas' 
Hall, in Holly Springs. Admitted to the bar, he settled in CofFeeville, 
and tliere off'ered for practice. He was early elected District Attorney 
(in 1856), and discharged the duties of that oflice with great success 
and credit. He was reelected, but resigned and entered the Confeder- 



120 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR. 

ate army as a lieutenant of the Fifteeuth Mississippi Eegiment, in 
1861. His gallantry and military skill were so conspicuous that lie was 
rapidly promoted. Made lieutenant colonel of his regiment in July, 
1861, he commanded it at Fishing Creek. In the spring of 1862 he was 
made colonel of the Twenty-ninth, and in December of the same year 
brigadier general. In this capacity he achieved a brilliant reputation, 
and was made a major general in the Army of the West in 1861. At 
the battle of Missionary Ilidge he served with great distinction. After 
the terrible defeat at Franklin he and Gen. Forrest " added greatly to 
their laurels. Forming the rear guard of the army, they protected it 
against the attack of the victors until a secure position was reached." 
Gen. J. E. Johnston said of him that, "if the Confederate War had 
lasted two years longer, Gen. Walthall would have risen to the com- 
mand of all the Confederate armies." He served after the war four 
times as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. He re- 
moved to Grenada in 1871. In 1885 he was appointed to succeed Mr. 
Lamar in the Senate, and was elected to that oiiice by the Legislature 
in 1886; was reelected in 1888 without a dissenting vote, and again in 
1892 without being a candidate for the office. As a Senator his course 
has been marked by great iirmness, wisdom, and conservatism. His 
unbending integrity, purity of morals and of life, high sense of honor 
and chivalric nature, accessibility, courtesy, vivacity, and personal mag- 
netism have all united to make him a favorite of the people of Missis- 
sippi. Mr. Lamar admired and loved him exceedingly, and throughout 
all of his life, from this time forth, found in him an unfailing support 
for both mind and soul. In a letter of 1868 he wrote to Gen. Walthall: 
"Do you know that but for you I could not keep up? I would have 
given up long ago, and never made an effort." 

Mr. Lamar passed a few months at Oxford with the Longstreets. 
About the 1st of September, 186.5, after some yearnings for a wider 
and more attractive field in the city of Memphis, he concluded a part- 
nership with Gen. Walthall for a practice in Coffeeville, and by the last 
of the month he had established himself and his family in that village. 
Here he led an uneventful life for a year, laboring at his profession. 

At this period, and for some years after. Col. Lamar's belief was that 
bis political career was over. Not only was he disfranchised and pro- 
scribed, but also the fate of the Confederacy and the outcome of the 
movement for secession weighed heavily upou him. By nature dis- 
trustful of liis own powers— a fact which attracted freipient observation 
when he was a younger man — he now considered himself discredited as 
a public leader. In the latter part of 1870, anticipating that he would 
be forced to enter upon a political discussion, he sketched the outline 
of a speech, from which the following extract is taken: 



/^ 



NTS LIFE, TIMES, AXD SPEECHES. 121 

It is needless for me, my fellow-eitizens, to assure you of the reluctance with which 
I enter upon a discussion of this character. You too well know the care with which 
I have for now mauy years abslained from any participation in political uiatters; and 
this abstinence has Ijeen the ellVct not of any disgust for such a career, but of a con- 
viction of duty. When a nation has just emerged from the throes of a great civil 
warfare, where section was arrayed against section, class against class, two things are 
to be done : First, the work of reconstruction is to be effected ; Secondly, a willingness 
for the proper acceptance of the issue's decision is to be created. The former is the 
labor of the victor, and of the victor alone; it is to be accomplished by the prescience 
of wisdom and the magnanimity of justice, by wise legislation leading to strong con- 
stitutional guarantees. The latter is the work of the vanciuished, and can be effected 
only by a zealous advocacy of compromise measures. To none of these things can 
one who has been an ardent secessionist lay his hands actively. Wherever he might 
take his stand suspicion and distrust would spring up around him and choke him. 
Feared by all, any party with which he might seek to array himself would exclaim, 
" Save us from our friend ! " and sach an afflliation as would alone enable him to ac- 
complish his purpose would be impossible. 

Hence it is that for five or six years past I have, deemed every duty to which man 
is subject— duty to himself, duty to his family, duty to his country— to dictate to such 
men silence ; and by this I mean not to censure those whose convictions and acts are 
different from mine. I have thought, and still think, that all such a one can do, or 
should do, is not to uphold or approve, but quietly to acquiesce in, the result of the 
wager of battle. This have I sought to do, and liappy am I if my example has in- 
spired in a single other breast the desire which animates mine: the wish to be in the 
country one peaceable, law-abiding citizen. 

Still, as an observer of political affairs. Col. Lamar was neither mo- 
rose nor indifferent. Especially did lie feel just then a keen interest in 
the fate and welfare of Mr. Davis and those intimately associated with 
him. On the 21st of November, 1865, he writes to Dr. Waddell, the 
Chancellor of the university, in respect to Mr. Burton N. Harrison, 
Mr. Davis' private secretary, who also had been imprisoned, as follows: 

I shall write, this mail, to Sharkey. I have more liope, however, from Alcorn's 
energy than from Sharkey's influence. I will also write to Pinson and Reynolds, of 
the House, and West. The incarceration of young Harrison has weighed upon my 
spirits like a nightmare, and it gives me some relief to make an effort for his release. 
His continued imprisonment indicates a purpose on the part of the govermnent which 
I am almost afraid will not yield to mere influence. It has some connection with the 
designs in reference to the President of the late Confederacy. Until those designs are 
accomplished or thwarteil. there seems to me but little prospect for poor young Har- 
rison's release from his confinement. But you may be assured that I will leave noth- 
ing untried, within the range of my influence, to effect his release. I feel his posi- 
tion the more, that I was the means of getting him the post which has resulted so dis- 
astrously to him. 

The imprisonment of Hon. C. C. Clay also distressed him greatly. It 
was another of the closely personal matters, which, in conjunction with 
the hastening developments of public affairs, as administered by the 
Congress, pressed deeply upon him the sense of implacability in the 
Eepublican party. Mr. Clay had been a Senator from Alabama. He 
was a man of elegant and dignitied manners, not robust, suave but co- 



122 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

gent ill elocution, firm and daring in policy. He had served also in the 
Confederate Senate. Toward the end of the war he had been sent on a 
confidential inissiou to Canada by the Confederate Government, in- 
trusted with secret service money for the purpose of enlisting aid. 
When the Confederacy fell he voluntarily surrendered to the United 
States, although he was charged with complicity in the murder of Pres- 
ident Lincoln. He was imijrisoned at Fortress Monroe, but was re- 
leased on parole, and w^as finally fully acquitted. He wrote to Mr. La- 
mar the following account of his experiences: 

HuNTsviLLE, Ala., March 15, 1866. 

-J/i/ Drar icimar.- Your fraternal letter only reached me on yesterday. . . , las- 
sure you it gave me great pleasure to hear from you and to read the generous senti- 
ments of love and sympathy you felt. If my means were adequate to my will, I 
would fly to yon, my dear friend, ere a month passed over us. But there are insuper- 
able difficulties in my way. My parole confines me to this State unless my personal 
business absolutely requires me to leave it. My father is tottering to his grave under 
the accumulated weight of nearly fourscore years and many cares and sorrows. Since 
my mother's death, caused by giief for me, he has never left the lot; and, indeed, 
rarely gets out of the house. . . . Had I foreseen what I should suffer at the hands 
of those among whom I sought a sanctuary of justice to vindicate my character and 
that of my friends and the South from an atrocious calumny, I should not have sur- 
rendered, but have made my escape, as I might easily have done. I was treated as 
the vilest felon; crucified in body and soul; subjected to indignities and outrages 
more disgraceful to the United States Government than humiliating to me ; and would 
have been murdered by the slow tortures, conceived in devilish malignity and Yankee 
ingenuity, but for the grace of God. It is too long and painful a tale of horroi's to 
write to you. If we live, you will hear it or see it in print some day, I think. I have 
turned very gray, but look and feel as well as I have for many years. I shall prob- 
ably continue to live in Alabama while it pleases God to let me live. I confess to you 
that my interest and my inclination both incline me to go elsewhere; but as I feel in 
some measure responsible for the suflerings of the people of this State, and as I have 
been honored by them beyond my deserts, I am persuaded that it is my duty to share 
their fate. I could be happier, I think, almost anywhere than here, the scene of so 
many departed joys, never to return, of so many sorrows never to be forgotten, of so 
many wrongs so hard to forgive. That command of Christ, " Love your enemies," 
so like a good God, and so unlike a wicked man, is kept constantly in memory here, 
to wound and i-eproach. The Tories are so much more despicable tlian the bloodiest 
Yankees. 

I left our friend and chief in delicate, not bad, health. His beard is snowy white, 
his step not as firm and elastic as formerly, and his voice is stridulous. Guarded and 
goaded as he is, he cannot long survive. I trust that the guard will be removed from his 
prison before long; it is kept there, not for his security, but, I fear, to torture him. 
There is scarcely an officer in the Fortress besides the commandant (a Massachusetts 
Radical and proh'gi- of AVilson's), who does not regard his treatment as cruel and un- 
magnanimous and mean. 

This letter is a sigh from the depths of suffering. It is an epitome 
of the sorrows of the Smith. Here are some other extracts from old 
letters, showing a different ])hase of trouble and anxiety. They are 
from J. W. M. Harris and N. H. Harris, of Vicksburg, the latter o£ 



HJS LIFE, TIMES, ASD SPEECHES. 123 

whom was the brigadier general of the brigade to which Mr. Lamar's 
old regimeut belouged. 

We are hard at it now. Wlien our senior retnrneil he found his home shattered 
in pieces. . . . Our olliee furniture consisted of one desk, two chiiirs, and one book: 
the Code of 1857. This was our start. We have now a neatly furnislied office, some 
two or three hundred books, and are little more than paying expenses. ... If 
any man twelve months ago had told either of us this when, despondent and gloomy, 
the one borrowed fifty dollars in gold from a little Jew friend, a fellow-Mason, to 
come from Eufoula on; the other had returned from the army with seven iloUars in 
greenbacks (the remnants of the sale of a dearly loved old warhorse) and one suit of 
clothes, then I say we would have thought that man crazy. Our eyes were gazing 
out on the wide world for some other home, Colonel. But God helped us. 'Twas he 
that aided us. 

From his mother, Mrs. Troutman, to Mr. Lamar, under date March 
23d, 1SG6, from Macon, Ga.: 

Our people here are very despondent. Gen. Cobb and others say that we have not 
yet seen the " bottom of our trouble." One of our papers, the Telegraph, says that there 
will be revolution before Christmas. The Federals are seizing all the cotton they can 
get hold of, upon the plea of its being subscribed to the Confederate Government. Geor- 
gia is anxious to lie at peace. The people are yielding, and submit as well as they 
may to compulsion. Everything is quiet and still. The people earnestly desire to do 
right, and are well pleased with President Johnson. There is great destitution among 
many of our people: those who have been accustomed to even the luxuries of life. 
In Calhoun, where I went with your sister two weeks ago, there were such striking 

evidences of poverty as to make it painful to imagine. Mrs. J , a granddaughter 

of Mrs. C (relatives), does her own washing, cooking, and all her other work, as- 
sisted by a girl ten years old. The village is in a ruinous condition. Many of the 
houses burned, and no repairs going on. I was told that persons who had been rich 
have now barely the necessaries of life. It was a sad thing to witness. Your sister 
could not collect a cent of money. . . . Are you heavily taxed in Mississippi? 
Every silver spoon, fork— indeed, everything that we are not compelled to have— is 
taxed by the United States. We are old, and it will not take much for us the lialance 
of our lives. . . . Write soon, dear son, and tell me you have courage to meet all 
the trials of life with cheerfulness, and that you are contented to commence life again 
with renewed hope and confidence in your final success. May God aid you in all your 
efforts. 

From the same to the same, September 4, 1866: 

People here are hard run, and considerable talk of repudiating all debts by a con- 
vention of the people of the State, if the Legislature does not act to meet the wishes 
of the people. It is earnestly to lie hoped that it may not be carried out. Some of the 
wealthiest men in Jasper and Jones are reduced to the bare necessaries of life. I 
firmly believe that it is all right and best for us all. God cannot err. 

Good when he gives, supremely good; noi- less when he denies. 

E'en crosses, from his sovereign hand, are blessings in disguise. 

Why should we doubt a Father's love, so constant and so kind? 

If we could truly realize this, how many of the sorrows and afflictions of life would 
lose their poignancy, and a sweet feeling of implicit trust and love would fill our hearts 
with happiness. I trust, dearest Lucitis, that, in some degree, you feel this blessed 
assurance, and can trust your God for the future. Be encouraged. God opens your 
way before you, and when an avenue of usefulness is closed he leads you gently on, 



124 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

his redeemed ohild, into ways you have not known. And thus he will ever do; only 
put your unfaltering trust in him. 

Mrs. Lamar, from Coffeeville, Februarj- 16, 1866, to her motlier, Mrs. 
Loiigstreet: 

Perhaps it will all turn out right in the end. I try to take this view of everything 
whicli happens, and be thankful for the portion of this world's goods which is left to 
us. True, tlie times are very much changed, but they might be worse. We keep no 
man servant now about the lot. Lucius lias been working about the fences and gates 
and locks to his outhouses all the morning. He feeds his cows and helps cut the 
wood and does a great deal of work. If he can only have good health, I feel as if we 
woulil Ije hajipy under almost any circumstances. 
• From Col. Lamar to Mrs. Lougstreet, July 26, 1866: 

I feel sometimes pretty blue about the future. How I am to get along I can't see 
now; but I hope to get some law practice in addition to ray salary. 

Col. Lamar was burdeued not only by the general expenses of his 
family and the depression of the times, but also by debts which he had 
incurred before the war. They were not great when made, compared 
with his ability to pay at the time; but they were very onerous after 
the impoverishment described. Nevertheless, he labored courageously 
and faithfully to discharge them; and this he finally did, after years of 
self-denial, out of his earnings, meeting principal and interest, declining 
to admit of any rebates, or even reductions in interest. At the period 
now under consideration he was using even his jewelry to pay such debts 
as those articles would meet. 

In June of this year Col. Lamar was again elected to the chair of Eth- 
ics and Metaphysics in tiie university, and accepted the position. He 
moved to Oxford, in order to enter upon the duties of his new work, in 
September. It was his intention, as it was his privilege, not to abandon 
the practice of law, but to accept such cases as should come to him while 
teaching. He had always a fancy for metaphysical study and investi- 
gation. It will be remembered that he bad held the same chair for a 
short time in 1860-61. 

During his first year at the university — that is, during the session of 
1866-67 — Prof. Lamar discharged, ad interim, the duties of Law Profess- 
or, the chair of Law not having been supplied. Consequently, although 
be was relieved of part of his own proper work for that time, his labors 
were very onerous. He conducted the classes in Psychology, in Logic, 
and in Law, besides composing written lectures. In January, 1867, 
however, he was relieved of this pressure to some extent. He was unan- 
imously elected to fill the Law chair, which was thenceforward his ex- 
clusive work. 

There was but one voice from those who came in contact with him, 
in regard to Prof. Lamar's efficiency. He was an enthusiast in his 
calling, whatever that might be; and that enthusiasm he carried into 
his professorial work. As a member of the faculty he was always wise 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 125 

and prompt in counsel, temperate and considerate, altliousli firm where 
occasion arose. To his pupils he was always accessible and kind, com- 
panionable, inspiring them all with commingled sentiments of profound 
respect and personal regard. He was devoted to their interests. He 
felt that, for the time, he was the representative of the true principles 
of the science which he taught, and that he was individually responsible 
for the results of his teaching. He possessed in a wonderful degree 
the faculty of infusing his own spirit into all who sat under his instruc- 
tion. It was his lot to fill three of the least attractive chairs in the uni- 
versity — Mathematics, Metaphysics, and Law. Yet to each of them he 
gave a charm in the eyes of his pupils, alike unusual and beneficial. 
Many of those pupils treasured up his instructions, and bore away with 
them rich fruits of their association with him; and in the professional 
eminence which they attained proved themselves successful channels 
for the communication of the same benefits to others. 

To a knowledge of the law coextensive with its range, he united a 
power of analysis, generalization, and elucidation which nearly divested 
it of all obscurity. His lectures upon the most intricate and obscure 
branches, such as conditions and limitations in deeds, executory devises, 
contingent remainders, and the exact boundaries between the law and 
equity, presented those troublesome subjects in entirely new lights, and 
gave to them a symmetry, consistency, and persi)icuity equally admira- 
ble and unexpected. For his pupils he set daily lessons, upon which 
each pupil was siibjected to a searching examination. The lesson end- 
ed, he took up the subject, and in a lecture which, it is said, never 
flagged in interest or tired in delivery, unfolded it in all its amplitude 
and modifications, anticipating and removing, so far as was ])ossible, all 
the doubts and difficulties which might arise in the minds of the stu- 
dents. Tn the exercises of the law classes, a member of each class was 
now appointed, whose duty it became at the next meeting to deliver a 
lecture on what was taught at the preceding recitation. This he did 
under the criticism of the whole class, any member of which was privi- 
leged to object to the lecture that it omitted something important or 
contained something incorrect. This exercise was deemed valuable in 
several respects. It constrained the sustained attention of the class to 
the recitation and the professor's lecture. It trained the lecturing 
student in the habit and art of appropriate style and manner of stating 
and unfolding legal propositions in a court of justice. If the lecturer 
were criticised, he was expected to defend his lecture if he thought fit, 
and thus debates among the students often arose on the scope and mean- 
ing of their recitations; all conducted orderly, under the supervision of 
the professor. 

Moot courts were also held every week, upon the plan of a complete 
court of justice. Records were provided and neatly kept, with a clerk. 



126 LIVIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

sheriff, bailiff, and juries. Cases for trial were devised by the professor, 
whicli were brought and defended by students appointed for the jjurpose, 
with all of the formalities and details. The records were kept with ex- 
actness. Each student was expected to serve in various capacities in 
his turn, and thus he received trainijig in the special duties of the offi- 
cials of the court. 

Many years later — indeed, after Mr. Lamar's death — Hon. C. E. Hook- 
er, in a memorial address spoke of this portion of Mr. Lamar's life as 
follows: 

The love and affection nhich he aroused in the hearts of young men wa.'i wonder- 
ful. I know of no criticism to which a professor can be subjected more to be dreaded 
than that of young men assembled from all portions of the State in the classes of a 
university. You will not find a graduate ijf that institution who was educated there 
during the period that J\Ir. Lamar acted as professor that does not feel for him anil lias 
not borne for him in all the changing stages of life that perfect affection and profound 
admiration that he inspired in the hearts of all young men who came in contact with 
him. 

In the month of November, 1868, the family with which Mr. Lamar 
was so thoroughly identified were deeply afflicted by the loss of the ac- 
complished and angelic Mrs. Longstreet. A recurrence to his own trib- 
ute to her in a previous chapter will suggest the distress which this 
event caused to him as well as to the others of her loved and loving 
circle. 

The year 1869 was distinguished by nothing of note in Mr. Lamar's 
history except the marriage, in May, of his oldest child— a daughter. In 
the fall of that year also he purchased a body of laud, about thirty acres, 
in the northern part of the town of Oxford; and on this premises began 
the erection of a residence, which was completed in the following April. 
This home, the first of his own since he had left " Solitude " in 1857, 
was the slowly earned fruit of hard labor at his profession; for at this 
time his practice had so increased that he, with his moderate ideas in 
that particular, descriVied it as " very large." For a year or two past he 
had associated with himself a junior partner, of whom he had become 
very fond — a Mr. Edward D. Clarke, who later married a niece of Gen. 
Walthall's. 

In the fall of 1869 occurred' the election, under the authority of the 
United States Government (as will be more fully narrated in the fol- 
lowing chapter), by which the State was reconstructed and "radical- 
ized," as the phrase then was, and which led to his retirement from the 
faculty of the university. The new constitution was ratified. In 1870 
the State was released from military rule, and turned over to the civil 
authorities of the new rff/inie. All of the State officials and a large ma- 
jority of the Legislature were Kejiublicans of types most obnoxious to 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AXD SPEECHES. 127 

the people of the State. The incoming party laid its hands on the board 
of trustees of the university, and infused into it a large element of their 
own kind. As the papers of the day put it, perhaps a little too strong- 
ly, the board was also " radicalized." There was general apprehension 
that the university would be assailed, that it would be made a training 
school for " radical " i^olitics, and even that it would be converted into 
a mixed institution, for blacks as well as whites — a condition wholly re- 
pugnant to the feelings of the Soutliern people. The Governor of tlie 
State was ex officio President of the board, and his election Mr. Lamar 
had opposed strongly. Altogether he expected but little consideration 
from the new administi'atiou, and felt that his own self-respect demand- 
ed his resignation. This he transmitted to the June meeting, and thus 
severed finally his connection with the university. While leaving the 
institution, however, he left it gracefully. At the Commencement, on 
June 27, 1870, he delivered the address to the literary societies. 

It was one of his ablest and most eloquent efforts. For one hour he held bis vast au- 
dience asdeli,i;hted listeners. The young men of our country who were not privileo;ed 
to hear it should have its wholesome, timely counsels before them. His word paint- 
ing of two events in the life of England's leading statesman (Disraeli) was equal to 
the grandest effort of even his distinguished subject, and was rich in encouragement 
for the young men who were about to step forth on the theater of life. . . . Col. 
Lamar was followed by Mr. Joseph A. Brown, the first honor man of the fourteen 
graduates of the law class, and valedictorian on this occasion. . . . His tribute to 
his law instructor (Col. Lamar) was beautiful and just, mingled with regret to many by 
the announcement that Col. Lamar had resigned his chair in the university. . . . 
On Mr. Brown's taking his seat, Col. Lamar arose, and with evident emotion thanked 
the young orator who had addressed him; and, turning to the law graduates, he said: 
"And now, young gentlemen, as you go home I pray that you may have prosperity 
and happiness through life, with just enough of sorrow to remind you that this earth 
is not your liome."* 

This was the closing scene. 



■^o 



At the same time, however. Col. Lamar did not wholly abandon the 
idea, just yet, of continuing to teach law. He opened a negotiation with 
the law firm of Nisbets & Jackson, of Macon, Ga., looking to an associ- 
ation with them; all of which will appear from the following extract 
from a letter, dated May 30, to Judge James Jackson: 

The arrangement of the courts in this State by the recent legislation renders it al- 
most impossible for a lawyer to leave home. I have just received from Gen. Walthall, 
the leading lawyer in North :Mississippi, and second to none in the State, a letter turn- 
ing all his business in the Federal court over to me, on account of liis being unable 
to come to Oxford. . . . This will give you some idea of how our profession is 
disturbed in this State. The lawyers here, consisting mainly of old Wliigs, whose ex- 
elusion from political honors made them more attentive to their profession, are a 
body of talented, high-toned men, who are deeyjly discontented with the shock which 
Alcorn and his Legislature have given to their interests, and many of the leading men 

*CorresponiIence of the Weekly Clarion. 



128 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

have fjone to New Orleans and Memphis. The wound is an incurable one, and tlie 
state of things is permanent. The negroes have a huge and increasing majority. I 
must take my property and family from the State. JetF Davis approves my purpose, 
and says he sees nothing but sorrow and wrongs for Mississippians in the future. I 
shall most probably move to Macon. I would like much to practice witli you. I pre- 
fer you to any living man. The fact that I would be also associated with the Nisbets 
is an additional attraction. If, however, that arrangement is made, I would so nuicli 
like to move my law school to Macon, and have you all in it, the Judge to be the 
Chancellor. He would be delighted with it. Tlie {vuAi young manhood of Georgia 
coming in contact with him, their bright hopes and budding aspirations, their rever- 
ential attachment to him as their preceptor, and the interest that they would take in 
his lectures, would enliven and illumine the evening of his life as nothing else of an 
earthly nature can. He would not find it difficult or irksome. I could take ofl' his 
hands all the details. I have been very successful as a law professor. The Judge can 
take a second growth in this career. 

However, these castles iu Spaiu crumbled away. The Federal court 
was not removed from Oxford, as be expected it would be; aud the es- 
tablished practice aud the local attachments jiroved too strong to leave. 

The foregoing letter, to one who can read between the lines, will give 
some disclosure of the pleasures which Mr. Lamar derived from his pro- 
fessorship, and the reluctance with which he gave it up. 

In Jidy of this year the honored Judge Longstreet ^jassed away, in 
his eightieth year. He died surrounded by the members of his family 
circle, Mr. Lamar and his wife being present. "The death scene was 
almost a demonstration of immortality. His mind was clear and his 
soul was calm, in the assurance of Christian hope. Placing his finger 
upon his wrist, he marked the beating of his failing pulse. Growing 
weaker, his hand dropped away, and the finger lost its i^lace. Motion- 
ing that it should be replaced, it was done, and he resumed the count 
of his last heart beats, growing fainter and fainter." — "Look, Jennie, 
look! " exclaimed Mr. Lamar to his wife, as amongst the awe-struck by- 
standers, "he beheld a sudden illumination overspread the pale face of 
the dying man, with a look of wonder and joy in his eyes, and every 
feature expressing unearthly rapture. That was the end." * 

Mr. Lamar was not a man given to fancies, religious or other; but 
this scene of Judge Longstreet's death made upon him a most profound 
impression. If not exactly convinced of it, he was yet strongly per- 
suaded that those dying eyes had, in very truth, beheld something of the 
glories of tlie other world. In his address made at the Commencement 
of Emory College, but a few days later, he spoke with great emphasis 
and impressiveness about what he had witnessed. He said, also, that 
the loss of Judge Longstreet had filled his heart with unutterable sad- 
ness. 

This address at Emory College, in July, was the one from which quo- 



' Juil;,'!' Lon.ssli-eet," Bishop O. P. Fitzgerald, p. V.rl. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 129 

tatiou was made iu the first chapter of this work. Here ho was received 
with great cordiality. He was tendered the professorship i>i Belles Let- 
tres and History, but declined it, having determined to remain in Mis- 
sissippi. 

In the autumn of this year Mr. Lamar delivered an address before 
tlie Agricultural and Mechanical Association of Carroll and Choctaw 
Counties, \ipou tlie needed changes in our agricultural system, and the 
relation of government to agriculture. In brief outline his speech was 
to this effect: 

The emancipation of the slaves had revolutionized Southern farming. 
It had converted what before was capital into a never-failing and clam- 
orous claimant for profits. The x^lauter must therefore capitalize his 
own manhood and intelligence. This he could do in three principal 
ways: by diversification and rotation of crops, by the use of labor-sav- 
ing machinery, and by the higher culture of fewer acres. By diversi- 
fying crops a most appalling waste of values would be prevented. The 
crop of 1870 was estimated at four million bales of cotton. This great 
quantity depresses prices one-half. Two million bales at twenty-five 
cents per pound would bring as much money as four million at twelve 
and one-half cents. If this be true, or apijroximately so, we get abso- 
lutely nothing for the third and the fourth millions. We suffer a clear 
loss of the labor, outlay, and exhaustion of lands expended in making 
them. That expenditure would have produced one hundred million 
bushels of corn. What is true of the people as a whole is true of indi- 
viduals. Those who raise cotton exclusively grow poor; those who raise 
cotton, corn, meat, potatoes, etc., grow iu wealth, and work no harder. 

After dwelling for a time upon the next topics of machinery and in- 
tense culture, Mr. Lamar turned to the governmental relation to agri- 
cultui-e. Government can contribute to the aggregate wealth of its cit- 
izens no direct and positive increment. It does its good by a negative 
influence, by preventing injustice and crime, by secui'ing property from 
invasion, and thus by affording to its citizens an opportunity to enrich 
themselves. Government resembles the fences which surround our fields. 
They are a needful protection, but produce neither harvests nor fruits. 
A law cannot create capital. If it could, there would be an end to la- 
bor. If government makes a man or a section rich, it is by wronging 
other men or other sections. 

The speaker then considei'ed the evils of class legislation, of excessive 
and partial taxation, of lavish and disci'iminating expenditures, at length, 
including a discussion of the operation upon agricultural communities 
of the existing tariff. He showed how the North was prospering under 
the existing management, and the South suffering. This finished, the 
speaker continued: 
9 



130 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

We are told that we are uiuler a new n'gime, that the past of the South was marked 
by great intellectuality, that her leaders were great and pure; but that while they 
were engaged in tracing and enforcing the principles of constitutional government, 
the North with more practical wisdom was using the government as an instrument 
for its own enrichment. We are told that the South must imitate the North in this 
respect, that her people must give up their character for virtue, intellectual and moral 
dignity, and become treasury-eaters side by side with those Northerners who are will- 
ing upon such terms not only to grant us an act of amnesty, but also to permit us for 
a time to share their plunder. And all this to a certain extent is true. 

The speaker then discussed at some length the prond records of the 
South in standing by her political princiijles and her convictions of 
right without balancing them against calculations of profit, and con- 
cluded: 

Choose you then. Will you have hon(jr? Then adhere to the practices and prin- 
ciples of your fathers; stand for the rights of the people and for an honest govern- 
ment economically administered. AVill you have profit? Then cast in your lot with 
those who administer the government for profit, who oppress the poor and the la- 
borer; turn your backs on the faith of your fathers, and fall in with those whose prac- 
tices, whatever they may signify to them, can mean nothing but reproach to you. 

I want no response to these questions. I read it in your eyes. The pure spirit of 
patriotism illuminates your countenance. In vain will the harpies who prey upon 
our stricken land beckon to you to sell your birthright for a mess of pottage. 

It was at this period also that Mr. Lamar wrote his celebrated " Lee 
Letter." This epistle was elicited by a proposition, after the death of 
Gen. E. E. Lee, to celebrate his birthday in Vicksburg, and by an invi- 
tation extended to Col. Lamar to deliver the memorial address. It is a 
beautiful specimen of character analysis and of antithesis, besides pre- 
senting interestingly Mr. Lamar's conception of the characters of Lee 
and Washington, the two great Virginians.* 

On the 11th of September, 1870, Mr. Lamar wrote to Charles Keeme- 
lin, of Dent, O., a German gentleman whose writings in the Coiinnoner, 
of Cincinnati, had arrested his attention and excited his admiration, as 

follows: 

The country is in a deplorable state, and the people, with all their sacred convic- 
tions scixttered to the winds, are absorbed in the prosaic details of making a living. 
Our public men have become bewildered in the wreck of all that they considered per- 
manent and true, and know not what to do or advise. There is a perfect anarchy of 
opinion and purpose among us. If you will come down and see us, and show us some 
definite way of getting out of our present very indefimte condition, our gratitude will be 
unspeakable. 

We feel that the fate of our section is not in our hands; that nothing we can do or 
say will afiect the result. 

In another letter to the same correspondent, written in the year 1871, 

he said: 

I have nothing to do with politics. Some kind friend in Washington sends me the 
Globe occasionally, and I read the debat es with interest. It makes me realize the 

'■= .Appendix, No. 8. 



ins LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 131 

great revolution which has been wrought, both in the political institutions of the 
country and in the thoughts and phraseology of those who direct its affairs. It is 
fortunate for most of our Southern leaders that they are excluded from their former 
positions in the govfrnraent. They could hardly sustain the high reputation acquired 
in the old arena. Toombs possibly might, he is so ardent in his temperament and so 
keenly alive to the influences of jjassing scenes and immediate events; but Mr. Davis, 
Hunter, and the others, would be at a great disadvantage in every encounter with the 
new men who, produced by the times, are up to its passions, its questions, its de- 
mands and resources. 

On the 22cl of June, 1871, occurred an incident which gave Col. La- 
mar a great deal of annoyance at intervals during the remainder of his 
life. 

The United States Government had instituted in the District Court 
at Oxford a number of prosecutions under the Kuklux law, and the 
town was filled with strangers: prisoners, witnesses, deputy marshals, 
and soldiers. It was a time of great bustle and no little excitement. 
Many of the persons attracted thither were desperate and reckless men, 
disreputable, and altogether dangerous, who were turbulent and aggres- 
sive, calculating on their "backing" by the United States authorities 
and the presence of the soldiery. One of these men was a witness for 
the government in one of the Kuklux cases— "Whistler by name— about 
thirty years of age, illiterate, apparently addicted to liquor, and ill- 
looking. 

Col. Lamar's law ofSce opened on the same stairway and passage as 
the Federal court room. As he approached it on this occasion he found 
a scene of excitement and turbulence. Whistler was beating a citizen 
of the town named Kelly, an old man, poor, under the influence of liq- 
uor, and unable to defend himself. So great was the commotion that 
the court, which was engaged in hearing a bankruptcy case, was dis- 
turbed, and the judge ordered a deputy marshal to arrest the parties 
and turn them over to the Mayor of the town, who had police powers. 
In the meantime Kelly had appealed to Col. Lamar for protection, to 
which Whistler replied by swearing at the Colonel. The latter applied 
to the Mayor, whose office was in the same passageway, to have the man 
arrested, and passed on; but the arrest was not made. 

When the deputy marshal reached the scene Whistler had his pistol 
out, and seemed to be trying to shoot Kelly. The deputy arrested 
both parties and carried them before the Mayor. He then started to 
return to the court room, where he was needed; but hearing the noise 
renewed, he saw Whistler violently struggling to draw his pistol again. 
The deputy then turned back toward the scene of violence, but Whist- 
ler's pistol was taken from him by a man named Eoberts, and he went 
off with a party of soldiers. The deputy then returned to the court room. 
In the afternoon the prosecution against some of the alleged Kuklux 



132 LUCIUS Q. a LAM All: 

f)risouers was taken up. Col. Lamar was iu the court room, and. seeing 
tlie deputy, asked of him the name of the man whom he had arrested, 
and what had been done with him. He was told the name, also that 
"Whistler was there as a witness for the United States; that he had been 
delivered u^j to the Mayor, but that he had walked off before the Mayor's 
face with some soldiers. The Colonel then said that the dei:)nty shouLl 
have held him in custody, for he had himself seen him insulting and 
threatening peaceable citizens. The deputy answered that he would 
arrest him again, and give him up to the town marshal. The Colonel 
replied: "No; the town authorities seem powerless in presence of the 
soldiers. I will speak to Judge Hill about it." 

About this time Whistler came into the court room and took a seat 
on the steps leading up to the dais occupied by the jixdge, and conse- 
quently within the space reserved for the members of the bar, officers 
of the court, jury, etc. At this time Col. Lamar and Marshal Pierce 
were engaged in a whispered jocular conversation. There was a cessa- 
tion of proceedings before the court, and the Colonel, seeing Whistler, 
arose. He made a motion, ore le/nis, that the coxirt have Whistler ar- 
rested and placed under a peace bond. He proceeded to give his reasons, 
stating the facts in the case, and was saying that Whistler was evidently 
a violent, turbulent man, who should be placed under restraint, when 
Whistler arose. He approached the Colonel. He was armed with a 
large pistol, which was in a scabbard attached to a belt around the waist; 
and as he aj)proached he was trying to draw the weapon. The Colonel 
was not armed. He said to the judge: " I ask your Honor to make this 
man take his seat and keep it until I finish my statement." Then he 
seized a chair and raised it, saying: "If the Court won't make you, I 
will." Whistler jumped backward, and the Colonel put the chair down. 
The Court commanded order. Various officials scattered about the 
room shouted out, "Arrest Col. Lamar! arrest Col. Lamar!" and one 
of them said to some soldiers present as guards to the prisoners, "B}- 
virtue of the authority of the United States I order you to arrest that 
man " (pointing to the Colonel ) ; to which one of them replied, " We 
are not under your orders." 

The Colonel protested that he had done nothing to justify arrest. 
The deputy approached him for the purpose of quieting matters, and 
was about to place his hands upon him when the Colonel waved him 
aside without touching him, saying: "I am committing no disorder." 
Marshal Pierce then came running i;p, followed by other persons. He 
jumped in between the Colonel and Whistler, and seized both, turning 
his face toward Whistler. His iDurpose was pacific; but the Colonel 
neither recognized him nor knew of his purpose, and struck him with his 
fist a quick, severe blow upon the jaw, which dislocated the jaw, and sent 
him sprawling. Then there was a great excitement. The United States 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 133 

Attorney demanded that the Ci)lonel be arrested. No one paid any at- 
tention, however, to Whistler. Mr. Emory, the foreman of the grand 
jury, rushed out and returned in a very short time on the double-quick 
with another squad of soldiers, with guns in hand, one of whom advanced 
within the bar. The judge continued calling upon the Colonel to ob- 
serve order, and threatening his arrest. When the soldiers came in 
the confusion became greatly intensified. Two gentlemen who were 
armed — E. O. Sykes, an attorney from Aberdeen, one of the Colonel's 
former law students, and Maj. Thomas Walton, a Kepublican, afterwards 
United States Attorney — sprang to his side, pistols in hand, to defend 
him or fall with him. Matters assumed a most dangerous appearance; 
the ominous click of the military rifles sounded through the room, and 
had the soldiei's not behaved with great discretion bloodshed might 
have followed. Meanwhile the Colonel had become greatly exasperated. 
He continued to address the Court, saying in substance that he had seen 
Whistler commit the assault, and that he would not sit quietly by and 
see an uuofi'ending citizen struck down without raising his voice. He 
denounced the parading ot soldiery in the courts in times of profound 
peace. When the Court threatened to have him arrested he said at first 
that he might be sent to jail, but that he regarded the jail now as a more 
suitable place for gentlemen than most others. After the soldiers M'ere 
brought in and their guns were cocked, becoming much incensed, stand- 
ing on his tiptoes with his clinched fists shaking over his head, and his 
face blazing with wrath, he declared that if they undertook to put him in 
jail the streets should "swim in blood." The citizens of the town, hav- 
ing gotten news of the occurrence, began to run in. Gen. Featherstone 
and Col. Manning, friends of the Colonel, here requested him to desist 
from speaking and to go with them into an adjoining room. This he 
did at once, catching himself short up as he often did in his passions. 
After a very short absence he returned, made some pacific remarks, and 
apologized to the Court for his part in the disturbance. When he had 
taken his seat Marshal Pierce came forward and said: "I ask the Court 
to place Col. Lamar under arrest for striking me in open court." The 
Colonel sprang to his feet and said: " I am sure the Court will not make 
that ordei'. I did not strike him until he tried to arrest me unlawfully." 
The marshal replied: "I did not approach you for the purpose of ar- 
resting you; I only wanted to give you friendly counsel." "Then," 
said the Colonel, " I regret very much that I struck you. I hope you 
are not hurt," stating, besides, that he did not know at the time that it 
was the marshal. The two men entered at once into an amicable expla- 
nation, and Col. Lamar repeated his apology to the Court. The soldiers 
afterwards discussed the matter with some of the citizens. Their ser- 
geant said: "We didn't want to hurt him; we never saw a better fight 
or heard a better s^jeech. He hadn't broken any law." 



134 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

Col. Lamar's apologies were accepted by the judge, and the incident 
was supposed to be terminated; liut on the next day, without notice to 
him, the following order was entered ui)ou the minutes: 

Whereas a most unfortunate and much to be regretted difficulty occurred in tlie 
presence of tiie Court on yesterday, in which Col. L. Q. C. Lamar, a member of the 
bar of this court, was a party; and whereas soon tliereafter the said Lamar made an 
apology to the Court which was satisfactory to the judge of the court as an individual, 
yet, being the judicial representative of the LTnited States forthe time being, the judge 
of the court deems it necessary for the vindication of the court and the government 
that the name of said L. Q. C. Lamar be stricken from the roll of attorneys theieof, 
and that he be prohibited from practicing as an attorney and counselor therein. 

This action on the part of the Court excited great surprise and no 
little indignation amongst the members of the bar. The newsiDapers, 
which contained accounts of the fracas, made emphatic comments upon 
it; the Cbirion, for instance, saying that "It will detract nothing from 
his fame as a lawyer and as a high-toned, chivalric gentleman, in the 
highest sense of the term." The attorneys of the court bestirred them- 
selves to memorialize the Court for his reinstatement; but he forbade 
them to do so, maintaining that he had done nothing but what was his 
right in protecting himself in a very moderate manner from a murderous 
assault, in the first instance, and from an unlawful and oppressive arrest, 
as he deemed it, in the second. He declined to be placed in the atti- 
tude of a petitioner for pardon. After a few days of cooling time, how- 
ever, the district attorney of his own motion moved the rescission of the 
order, which motion was promptly granted, and amicable relations re- 
stored. 

The affair, however, was much distorted and misrepresented. The 
radical papers made much ado over it. The versions varied, but all de- 
picted a scene of great and unprovoked violence. The university students 
were asserted to have rushed into the bar, and to have joined in the 
row; the Kuklux prisoners were depicted as vaulting over the railing 
of the bar, with cheers, to take part, etc. — of all of which not a word 
was true. The matter was even exj^loited in the Kuklux report of Con- 
gress as in some surt a Kuklux performance, and as connecting the 
Colonel with the Klan in some undefined manner. 

During his later career this affair was occasionally made the text of 
assaults upon the Colonel by his political enemies. "When in the Sen- 
ate, he had reason to expect that Mr. Blaine would recur to it in one of 
their ccmtroversies, and ho prepared himself to meet the charge with 
evidences of such character that he regretted that the j)oint was not 
made. "When he was named for Secretary of the Interior the matter 
was revived; and again, in a general assault upon him by the Trihiiup, 
of New Y(n-k, when he was nominated for tlie Supreme Bench. On the 
latter occasion Col. I'ierce, the ex-marshal, gave him a written statement 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 135 

of the whole afPair, from which the main features of the foregoing nar- 
rative were taken, and which closed with the following paragraphs: 

I was appointed Marshal of the United States for the Northern District of Missis- 
sippi during June, 1870 (reappointed June, 1874), and had my oflice at Oxford, the 
home of Col. Lamar, wliose acquaintance I soon liad the pleasure of making, and 
whom I afterwards knew well. Our relations, otlicially and personally, were always 
most pleasant, as also were his with the other otlicers of the court. 

I had known that it was mainly due to his eflbrts and personal influence that a 
riot was averted at Oxford, at an election held during November, 1869; and from in- 
tercourse with him I knew him to be conservative, law-abiding, and considerate of 
the views of other men. Knowing his great ability, his extensive knowledge of our 
institutions, and liis conservative tendencies, and lielieving that he could best repre- 
sent the people of that district, I favored liis election to Congress, and voted for him. 

This, be it remembered, when the ReiDiiblicaus had a candidate in the 
field. ■ 

On the same occasion Judge Hill, in a letter of July 5, 1887, said: 

I was shown, a day or two since, by a friend of you and myself, a copy of the Ti'ih- 
une, in which there is an allusion to a difficulty whicli occurred in the court at Ox- 
ford, regretted by no one more than yourself, the allusion to which is regretted by 
no one more than myself. I trust that it will not be alluded to again. If so, and it be- 
comes necessary, I will do all in my power to render it harmless to you, as well as to 
myself. It occurred under most extraordinary circumstances, its disposition was at 
the time satisfactory to all concerned, and it ought to be buried in the sea offorgetful- 
ness. 

In the autumn of this year (1871) the county officers and members of 
the State Legislature were to be elected. An active canvass was made 
by the Democratic-Conservative party, one of the features of which was 
a series of joint discussions between Gov. Alcorn and Hon. Robert 
Lowry. They met at Holly Springs on the 9th of October. Col. Lamar 
happened to be in the town on business connected with his profession. 
There was a discussion in the morning between the two canvassers, and 
a second bout was projected for the evening. Gen. Lowry, however, 
was taken sick; and Col. Lamar, who was in the audience, was called 
upon — mainly through the instrumentality of his former young partner, 
Mr. E. D. Clarke — to represent the Democratic champion in this emer- 
gency. 

" Imagine my consternation," writes the Colonel afterwards to a friend. " I had 
not made a political speech in ten years, and was almost ignorant of the current 
campaign politics. I had heard Alcorn's speech in the morning, but not with any 
view to controverting its positions. I had not a document to verify my statements, 
nor a note with which to refresh my memory. But my friends would hear to no refusal ; 
so I rose and opened the debate. I replied to Alcorn's morning speech, but my re- 
marks took a very different range from what had got to be called ' the issues of the 
canvass.' But I had good reason to flatter myself that, while I did not meet the nat- 
ural antici]iations of what the occasion required, my speech answered more to the hid- 
den thought and to the hearts of my audience than if I had followed the established 



136 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR. 

lines. It certainly disconcerted Alcorn so much that he was unable to get along in 
his reply, though usually a most irrepressible ' slangwhanger.'" 

Certainly the sijeecli was a successful one. The newspapers of the 
day gave it very comijlimentary notices. Mr. Clarke writes him, under 
date of the 13th of October: 

With the general approbation that your speech has elicited, the complimentary 
things that Alcorn said of you, and the opportunity that you had of being a little mag- 
nanimous toward him, I tliink that it was altogether a field <lay for you; and, as you 
say that I pushed you into it, I am in liopes that you will think that there is no oc- 
casion to blame me for it. 

We have now reached the period at which Col. Lamar, after his long 
retirement from political life, was drawn back, more by the force of cir- 
cumstances than by his own will, into that heated arena. The special 
significance of his later career was liis agency in the rehabilitation 
of his desolated section, and the reconciliation of the alienated North 
and South each to the other. In order to j^resent properly the condi- 
tions of this second phase of his political life — the ulijects which he set 
himself to accomplish, and the obstacles which needed surmounting — a 
review must be taken, as short as the case will admit, of the reconstruc- 
tion of the Southern States. 

It is not a pleasant task to recall those old wrongs and quarrels; bet- 
ter far that they should be buried in oblivion than that they should be 
remembered in any spirit of sectionalism or partisanship. But by 
those who love their country and its people, who have a firm faith in 
their generous nature and its glowing future, these topics may be con- 
sidered with tolerance and respect for all honest differences which 
sprang from most extraordinary circumstances, even if also with stern 
reprobation of all unworthy partisanship. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Eeconstruction : President Lincoln's Plan — Southern States; In or Out?— Presiflent 
Johnson's Plan — Provisional Governments — Southern Constitutional Conventions — 
Temper of Southern People — Temper of Congress — Howe and Stevens — Gloomier 
Days — Reconstruction Legislation— Military Rule — Demoralization— Carpetbaggers 
—Reconstruction Constitutions— Three Delayed States — Radical Rule— Freedman's 
Bureau — The Negro Problem — Southern Sentiment. 

EVEN before the surrender at Appomattox, President Lincoln had 
begun a process of reconstruction. By his proclamation of Decem- 
ber 8, 1863, he had <jffered to tlie people of the Confederate States, with 
exception of certain enumerated classes, amnesty, with restoration of all 
rights of property, except as to slaves, upon the condition of taking and 
keeping an oath to support the Federal Constitution and the Union of 
the States thereunder, and also to support the acts of Congress passed 
during the rebellion, unless they should be held void by Congress or 
by the Supreme Court. The President's plan of reconstruction was 
that, whenever in any rebellious State a number of persons, qualified 
under the proclamation and under the general laws of the State itself, 
as those laws existed before the secession, equal to one-tenth of the 
vote cast at the Presidential election of 1860, should reestablish a re- 
publican government, it would be recognized; saving to Congress, how- 
ever, its right to determine, in each House, whether it would receive 
any representation therefrom. 

This plan the President communicated to Congress in his message of 
December 8, 1863. Thereupon, after some delay, a bill was passed on 
the subject. The bill so passed conformed, in the main, to the Presi- 
dent's plan; but it differed in some respects which he considered im- 
portant. Meanwhile, and during the pendency of that bill before Con- 
gress, in Louisiana and Arkansas constitutions had been reformed and 
officers elected by loyal citizens, conformably to the President's procla- 
mation. But the reconstruction bill, as passed, would have undone this 
work, as it prescribed conditions wliicli had not been met. For this 
reason, and also because he did not altogether approve of its policy, the 
President withheld his signature from the bill, and it failed to become 
a law. His proclamation of July 8, 1864, however, declared that he ap- 
proved, in the main, the principles of the bill, and that he would, in 
conformity with its spirit, appoint Provisional Governors in the rebel- 
lious States in case the people thereof should desire to return to their 
allegiance. 

This action of the President excited a strong protest and much oppo- 
sition from some of the leading Kepublicans. 

(137) 



138 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

111 the winter of 18()4-65 ineffectual efforts were made to pass recon- 
struction bills through Congress, with features regulating suffrage and 
recognizing the provisional governments of Arkansas and Louisiana. 
In July, 1865, a joint resolution passed, whereby the rebellious States 
were excluded from representation in the electoral college; and aj^plica- 
tions made later in the session, by Louisiana, Virginia, Arkansas, and 
Tennessee, for recognition of their iM'ovisioual governments organized 
by the loyalists, were 2)osti3oued until the next meeting of Congress. 

On the lltli of April, 1865, only four days before his assassination, 
Mr. Lincoln said, in a speech, that " we, the loyal people, differ among 
ourselves as to the mode, manner, and means of recoustructi< m " ; and he 
spoke of censure to which he was subjected because of his course in 
that matter. The trouble about the new constitution of Louisiana, and 
apparently as to the others, was that they did not enfranchise the 
negroes. 

This was now made a serious objection by many. Wlien the proclamation was is- 
sued i)ul)lic oiiiiiinn tiad not advanced far enougli to sustain a measure so radical as 
negro sutt'rage; hut, as the sectional struggle drew to a close, and after the colored men 
had borne their part in it, the sentiment in favor of their political e()uality witli white 
men — or, at least, Southern white men — grew stronger in the Republican party. 
Thus, while the people of the Northern States were not yet quite ready to grant polit- 
ical equality even to the best-educated colored men within their own borders, the 
radical representatives in Washington were intent on bestowing universal suffrage 
upon the utterly illiterate negroes of the South.* 

Another question which now came to the front was whether the se- 
ceding States were in the Union or out of it. The advanced Radical 
leaders now claimed that, while the States had neither the right nor the 
power to secede, still their rebellion had put them out of the Union, 
either by reducing them to the status of Territories, or by suspending the 
Federal laws within their borders; and that before their ancient Federal 
relations could be resumed the consent of Congress had to be given. 
Meanwhile, that they were not to be taken into consideration as States, 
even on the question of the adoption of amendments to the Constitution 
by a three-fourths vote of all the States. President Lincoln did not 
accede to these positions, and in this particular the radical leaders 
made further complaint of him. 

Such was the situation when the surrender of the Confederate armies 
came, and the dire calamity of the murder of Mr. Lincoln. President 
Johnson undertook to carry out the reconstruction policy of his prede- 
cessor, with some modification in the way of a larger exclusion from the 
benefits of the amnesty. The change from the agency of Mr. Lincoln 
to that of Mr. Johnson in this particular was unfortunate for the South. 
Independently of the exasperation which naturally arose from the Pres- 
ident's murder, and which gravely complicated the situation, the one man 

*" Three Decades of Federal Legislation," Cox, p. 34S. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 139 

was much less qualified — both by position and by nature — td befriend 
the South effectually, than the other. Mr. Lincoln was a manager of 
men, while Mr. Johnson undertook to drive them. Mr. Lincoln was 
most firmly established in the confidence of the Northern people, while 
Mr. Johnson was not. The Northern people were accustomed to Mr. 
Lincoln's leadership, even outside of the limits of the constitution, and 
to an extent which bore the appearance of autocracy; but no habit of 
deference led them to submit to Mr. Johnson. In short, it is more than 
doubtful if the advocacy of President Johnson did not work the South 
more ti'ouble than good. 

His amnesty proclamation was issued on May 29. On the same day 
he declared his policy of reconstruction by another proclamation ap- 
pointing William W. Holden as Provisional Governor of North Caro- 
lina, placing his right to act in the premises upon the constitutional provi- 
sions that " the United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union 
a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against 
invasion and domestic violence," and that it shall be Pi'esident's duty 
" to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." 

So, also, in quick succession Provisional Governors were appointed 
for the States of Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, South Carolina, 
and Florida. These Governors were all directed to call conventions in 
their respective States for the purpose of altering or amending the State 
constitutions. The delegates were to be chosen by the loyal people, 
who were defined as those already qualified to vote and not excluded 
by the amnesty proclamations, and who should take an oath to support 
the Federal Constitution and to uphold the acts of Congress and the 
executive proclamations regarding slavery. The Governors were also in- 
vested with such powers as were necessary and proper to enable the 
loyal people to restore the States to their proper constitutional relations 
with the Union. 

The President's proclamation further directed that the various mem- 
bers of the cabinet and the Federal judges should put the functions of 
their respective departments into operation in the seceding States. 

About the same time the President also recognized the loyal govern- 
ments established in the States of Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and 
Louisiana. 

The conventions provided for in the President's proclamations were 
held in all of the States, except Texas, in the summer and autumn. 
They all declared the ordinance of secession void. They all abolished 
slavery. All, except South Carolina, repudiated the debts incurred in 
aid of the rebellion: a measure demanded by the President. 

The Southern people now considered that they had done all that was 
demanded of them by the Federal authorities. They had met every re- 
quirement of the President's proclamations, and the policy of those 



140 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

proclamations had been disclosed siuce December, 1863, without any 
deuial by Congress or the Nurtheru jjeople, albeit there was some ob- 
jection from ultra radicals. They expected confidently that their ac- 
ceptance of the terms imposed for their rehabilitation would meet its 
due recognition, and that the States w'ould be restored to their Federal 
relations and to their self-government. 

Their action had been not only prompt, but loyal as welL When the 
crash came, although devoted to the Confederacy and overwhelmed by 
its fall, they perceived the path of duty open to them. The conqueror 
was entitled to their allegiance; they would give it freely and unre- 
servedly. They were a faithful and true people wherever they acknowl- 
edged allegiance. Never was there in history a more generous effort on 
the part of a conquered people to submit with propriety and decorum. 
No repining, no sullenness, no covert hostility. Their work was done, 
their cause had failed, aud they acquiesced. They were fully aware 
that it was best for themselves that good feeling should be restored. 
Already, before the expiration of the year, they had begun to 

Forecast the years 
And find in loss a gain to match; 
(To) reach a hand through time to catch 
The far-off interest of tears. 

They had begun to comfort themselves with the reflections (and the 
leading newspapers abounded with editorials presenting that view) that 
the war, even in its result of discomfcirture, would work out good to 
their children: in the removal of tendencies toward seclusion from the 
world, aud the establishment of a more catholic national life; in the ex- 
tinguishment of the domestic tendency to withdraw to the isolation uf 
large j^lantations, aud the consequent introduction of wider social rela- 
tions; in the development of manufacturing enterprises, to follow upon 
a change in the nature of labor; in a fuller development of the agri- 
cultural resources by diversification of crops aud a more intense culti- 
vatiou, etc. 

In December the Xeif York Post, a i-adical paper, apropos of a recent 
bitter political speech made by Mr. Colfax, said: 

The Southern people claim that it is their intention to keep this oath, and they add 
that they do it cheerfully. Their leading men exhort them to attend to their private 
affairs and to submit honestly to their defeat. Now, to ask more of them at jiresent, 
to ask them that they shall be glad and ]iroud of their defeat, is to forget the nature 
of men's minds and hearts; it is to dem.and impossibilities. 

In November Gen. Grant had gone South on a tour of inspection 
connected with a question of the distribution of troops. In a report to 
the President, he said: 

I am satisfied that the mass of the thinking men of the South accept the present 
situation of affairs in good faith. The questions which have hitherto divided the 
sentiments of the people of the two sections, slavery and State rights, or the right of 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES 141 

a State to secede from the Union, tliey i-egard as having been settled forever by the 
highest tribunal that man can resort to. 

This report the President, in his special message of December 18, 
submitted to Congress; and in that message he said: 

Tlie people of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisi- 
ana, Arkansas, and Tennessee have recognized their respective State governments, 
and are yielding obedience to the laws and government of the United States with 
more willingness and greater promptitude tlian, under the circumstances, could have 
been reasonably anticipated. . . . The people throughout the entire South evince 
a laudable desire to renew their allegiance to the government, and to repair the dev- 
astation of the war by a prompt and cheerful return to peaceful pursuits. 

This message was at once violently assailed in the Senate. Mr. Sum- 
ner denounced it as a " whitewashing message." For the measures of 
President Johnson were far from giving satisfaction to the radical wing 
of the Kepublicau party. Congress had no sooner met than there was 
a caucus of the Republicans on the question of the admission of the 
Southern Senators and Representatives chosen from and accredited by 
the reconstructed States. It was agreed to exclude these members from 
the preliminary roll; and in advance of the President's message, on the 
first day, in botli Houses numerous bills were inti-oduced, looking to a 
reversal of the President's policy of reconstruction. The Neir York 
Henild commented on these proceedings thus: 

Tliese proceedings in both Houses clearly indicate an ultra radical and revolutionary 
system of Southern reconstruction as the policy resolved upon by the radical leaders 
of the Republican majority of this Congress. However imjirobable and visionary we 
may have been inclined heretofore to consider the remorseless propositions for South- 
ern reconstruction of such fanatical leaders as Stevens of the House and Sumner of 
the Senate, we are now brought face to face with the danger of their enforcement. 

The opening proceedings of the Lower House of this Congress foreshadow the 
practical reduction of the excluded Southern States to the status of Territories con- 
quered from a foreign enemy, and still in a state of revolt. Coercion! There is noth- 
ing here but coercion. The radical leaders of this Congress seem to be enraged at the 
conciliatory sentiments of restoration adopted by President Johnson, and which, in 
preparing the minds of the Southern people for the great change which has come upon 
them, have been attended with most wonderful success. His patient and patriotic la- 
bors, in view of the earliest possible restoration of the South to law and order, indus- 
try, prosperity, and political harmony with the North, excite apparently no consider-- 
ation among the majority in either House of Congress. 

The Southern people regarded these developments with the greatest 
interest and with a growing anxiety. Their State organizations had 
been recognized by the President as prepared for local government 
without further Federal intervention. They had chosen Senators and 
Representatives, in accordance with the President's programme. These 
ofiicials had been carefully selected from those citizens who had op- 
posed secession, and were qualified as loyal under the tests prescribed 
in the President's proclamation. Whatever might be the legal attitude 
of the individuals who had participated in the rebellion, and however 



142 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

numerous those individuals might be, it was self-evident that, as the 
President said in his auiuial message, "States cannot commit treason." 
This was a question of the State's representation and status. 

The Southern people were versed in the lore of politics, and were 
thoroughly acquainted with the theories on which the United States, 
through every deijartmeut of the government (executive, legislative, and 
judicial) had justified, under the constitution, its armed resistance to 
their secession. They knew that these theories were that the ordinances 
adopted by the several States in their attempt to secede were utterly 
null and void, wholly without operation or effect; that the citizens of 
the States remained citizens of the United States; and that the States, 
as such, did not either cease to exist (because they were indestructible), 
or get out of the Union (because that was indissoluble). They knew 
that the only claim ever made by the extremest Unionists rested still 
upon the constitution; by the constitution the Union had lieeu formed, 
and the constitution was the ligament which bound the States together 
in the Union. To them it seemed the simplest and most unanswerable 
proposition that, the claim of the Union upon the States being throiif/h 
the constitution, it must be asserted in conformity to that instrument. 
They knew, also, that in the constitution was foixnd no word which au- 
thorized or contemplated either the holding of indestructible States in 
subjection, or the forfeiture by those States of their rights in the 
Union. 

They knew, also, and held in mind the Crittenden resolutions of 1861 
— adopted in the House with but two dissenting votes, and in the Senate 
by a vote of thirty to five, and by which the national faith was pledged 
that " This war is not prosecuted on our part in any spirit of oppression, 
nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugatiou, nor purpose of over- 
throwing or interfering with the rights and established institutions of 
those States, but to maintain the supremacy of the constitution and all 
laws made in pursuance thereof, and to preserve the Union with all the 
tiil/iuli/, n/im/ifj/, and rights of the several States unim^xdrcd ; that as 
soon as these objects are accomjjlished the war ought to cease" — on 
which pledge the war party in the North had received the earnest and 
efficient support of all its people and of many of the i)eople of the 
Soutiiern border States. 

They felt, moreover, what the President's message also stated, that 
the policy and action of the administration, accepted and acted upon by 
them, even to the extent of the emancipation of their slaves— or at least 
the ratification of that emancipation while there were doubts of its con- 
stitutionality — " implied an invitation to those States, by renewing their 
allegiance to the United States, to resume their functions as States in 
the Union." They had renewed their allegiance, and renewed it in 
good faith. They therefore expected to resume their interrupted 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 143 

"functions as States in the Union." When, however, they saw that 
Congress, instead of receiving their Representatives and Senators, ex- 
cluded them with courtesy of the scantest; when they found that hos- 
tilities were, in fact, so far from being over that they were merely 
transferred from the battlefields to the legislative halls, they were 
disappointed and disgusted beyond measure. They began to conceive 
a profoiind conviction that, instead of confronting a great and magnan- 
imous peojjle, who, although flushed by victory, would still because of 
their victory be reasonable and generous in their demands, they were 
opposed by a faction drunk with power and the lust of it, ready to claim 
everything and dare anything, within the constitution or out of it, to 
perpetuate their imperial dominance over the whole nation — a domi- 
nance given by the accidents and exigencies of civil war, and which 
could be continued into times of peace only by new disturbances and 
new animosities. It was not the people of the North, it was not even 
the Republican party; but it was the radicals — bold, grasjiing, reckless, 
and remorseless. 

The South saw Senator Howe rise in the Senate, reject the whole the- 
ory of the indestructibility of the States, declare that " it is poetical li- 
cense (and not political science) which talks of " their immortality, and 
maintain that the seceded States had become reduced to the mere con- 
dition of Territories, to be governed at the will of Congress. It saw 
Mr. Stevens, in the House, repudiate the doctrine and the pledge of the 
Crittenden resolutions, and deny the dignity, equality, and rights of the 
Southern States; saw him repudiate the dogma of an indestructible 
Union, and assert that " the future condition of the conquered power 
depends on the will of the conqueror; ' saw him forsake the great char- 
ter of the constitution, and appeal to principles of international law, in 
order to uphold the heresy of States in subjection to the Union, avow- 
ing that "they must come in as new States, or remain as conquered 
provinces." Is it to be wondered at, that the suggestion of Virginia — 
the mother of statesmen and of States, the cradle of Patrick Henry 
and of Washington — as a conquered province of this Union was regard- 
ed in the South as a monstrosity, and filled every heart with indignation 
and a sense of outrage? 

But these inconsistencies and heresies were not all. The Southern 
people felt also, and felt deeply, the imputations freely made against 
their truth, their patriotism, and their honor. It was not upon inat- 
tentive ears, nor into indifferent minds, that the words of Mr. Stevens 
and his coadjutors fell. Said he, speaking of the former slave States: 
" They will at the very first election take possession of the "White House 
and the halls of Congress. I need not depict the ruin that would fol- 
low. Assumption of the rebel debt or repudiation of the Federal debt 
would be sure to follow. The oppression of the f reedmen, the reamend- 



144 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

meut of their State constitutions, and the reestablishmeut of slavery 
would be the inevitable result." Their disquiet and seuse of outrage 
at such imputations were not lessened, it is needless to say, by the prop- 
osition (which they regarded as the key to the whole situation), in the 
nest breath, that " If they should grant the right of suffrage to persons 
of color, I think that there would always be Union white men enough 
in the South, aided by the blacks, to divide the representation, and 
thus" — what? continue freedom and equality to the negroes, and the 
integrity of the Union? by no means; but — "continue tlie Repuhliain 
asccnde)icy." 

Such statesmanship as this was winning the day, and people who had 
until then accepted the situation in good temper and faithfully, who 
were endeavoring to discharge their whole duty and heal the wounds of 
strife, despaired. They became embittered. They apprehended a dis- 
position to humiliate and degrade them. Even Mr. Stevens' Union men 
spoke with indignation. It was not for this they had bargained. They 
had predicted a generous responsiveness from the North, and they were 
twitted with their ovei'confidence. 

The months rolled by with matters in this very unsettled, unsatisfac- 
tory, and trying condition. The State governments organized by the 
Federal administration were in full operation, but their Federal rights 
continued to be withheld by the Federal Legislature. Things grew 
worse instead of improving. The Freedraan's Bureau, established by 
the Act of March .3, 1865, was in power all over the South, and was fast 
arraying the negroes solidly against their former owners in all political 
matters, and in many localities was causing great industrial trouble. 
President Johnson, who had in the prosecution of his independent re- 
construction measures arrayed the radical leaders against him, was 
making unfortunate and violent speeches throughout the country, " as- 
cribing to the leaders of Congress disloyal and even criminal motives," 
and thus further inflaming their opposition to himself and their hostil- 
ity to the South. A joint committee of fifteen, which had been ap- 
pointed by Congress to inquire into the condition of the seceding 
States, and to advise Congress in respect to the admission of Southern 
members, made a report of the most inflammatory character — admira- 
bly adapted and probably intended for a campaign document in the 
approaching Congressional election — wherein the most one-sided and 
unjust charges were made against the Southern people, and the conclu- 
sion of which was that "it was essential to the preservation of the 
Union that the Southern States should not be reinstated in their for- 
mer privileges until they should have given substantial pledges of loy- 
alty and submission." The Tenure of Office act was passed, by which 
was taken away from the President (so far as an act of Congress would 
avail to strip him of his constitutional rights in that respect) the power 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 1^5 

of removing Federal officers from office without the consent of the Sen- 
ate, a power which had been exercised throughout the whole national 
history. A Civil Rights bill of stringent character was passed over the 
President's veto— based on doubts both of its wisdom and its constitu- 
tionality — whereby it was declared that "all persons born in the 
United States, and not subject to any foreign power," should be citi- 
zens of the United States; penalties were denoimced "against all in- 
terference with the civil rights of any classes of citizens," and officers 
of the United States were given the right "to prosecute, and the Fed- 
eral courts alone the right to try all such offenses," its object being to 
make the negroes equal with the whites in all civil and political mat- 
ters. A fourteenth amendment to the Constitution was proposed to the 
States, which " made all persons born or naturalized in the United 
States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, citizens both of the 
United States and of the several States of their residence; provided for 
a reduction of the congressional representation of any State that should 
withhold the elective franchise from any male citizens of the voting age; 
excluded from all offices, Federal and State, all persons who as State or 
Federal officers had taken an oath to support the Federal Constitution, 
and had afterwards engaged in the rebellion, or given aid or comfort 
to those engaged in it, until Congress should jiardon them; invalidated 
all Confederate war debts, and prohibited any questioning of the Unit- 
ed States war debt, including jjeusions and bounties. This amendment 
at once swept away the President's amnesty, and incorporated intt) the 
organic law of the Union, by an enforced ex post facto legislation, a 
principle hateful to all English-speaking people from time immemo- 
rial — the principle of the bill of attainder — theretofore expressly pro- 
hibited by the constitution itself, to Congress and the States alike. 
Now, however, the acceptance of it, with all its prescriptive features of 
their best and most intelligent people, by the Southern States was 
made an indispensable condition to their recognition by Congress. 
But those States, one after the other, rejected it — as, indeed, in honor 
they could do nothing else. 

These measures, howevei-, unprecedented and revolutionary though 
they were, were still but the preliminaries to others more extraordinary 
and ruthless. Mr. Stevens, in his celebrated speech of December 18, 
1865, had said of the Southern reconstruction measures of President 
Johnson this: "That they [the Southern States] would disregard and 
scorn their iiresent constitutions, forced upon them in the midst of 
martial law, would be both natural and just. No one who has any re- 
gard for freedom of elections can look upon these governments, forced 
upon them in duress, with any favor." Yet now, in 1867, the faction 
of which he was the most potent leader, in order to force upon those 
States such constitutions as Congress should apiarove, and in order to 
10 



146 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

perpetuate the essential features of those constitutions bj' an equally 
enforced amendment to the Constitution of the United States, enacted 
and proceeded to enforce the reconstruction laws, whose only intended 
result Mr. Stevens had himself already expressly condemned. 

Those acts were three, j^assed on the 2d and the 23d of March and 
the 19tli of July. The ten Southern States were divided into five mil- 
itary districts, under the command of officers of the army, to be as- 
signed thereto by the President. Each of these commanders was to 
have under his control troops enough to enforce his authority. The 
powers conferred upon them within their districts were almost unlim- 
ited. Subject oidy to the approval of the general of the army, they 
could remove any officer whose authority was derived from the local 
government of the States; and it was provided that '"no district com- 
mander or member of the Board of Registration or any of the officers 
or appointees acting under them shall be bound in his action by any 
opinion of any civil officer of the Uniteel States." Thus was civil law 
absolutely subordinated to the military; and the general of the army, 
not the President, given sujjreme control. The commanders were 
themselves to conduct the process of reconstruction. "They were to 
enroll in each State, upon a test oath, all the male citizens of one 
year's residence not disqualified to vote by reason of felony, or ex- 
cluded under the terms of the proposed fourteenth amendment; and 
they were then to hold an election in each State for delegates to a 
State convention, in which only registered voters should be permitted 
to vote or to stand as candidates, the number of delegates to be chosen 
being apportioned according to the registered vote in each precinct. 
These conventions were to be directed to frame constitutions extending 
the franchise to all classes of citizens who had been permitted to vote for 
delegates; the constitutions so framed were to be submitted to the same 
body of voters for ratification, and if adopted were to be sent to Congress, 
through the President, for its approval. When its constitution should 
have been approved by Congress, each of the reconstructed States was 
to be readmitted to representation, so soon as its new Legislature had 
ratified the fourteenth amendment. Meanwhile, its government was to 
be deemed provisional only, and in all respects subject to the para- 
mount authority of the United States at any time to abolish, control, 
or supersede the same." * These bills were passed, of course, over the 
President's veto. In his message upon them he thus characterized 
their provisions: 

The power Urns given to tlie commanding officers over all the people of each dis-. 
trict is that of an absolute monarch. His mere will is to take the place of all law. . . . 
Such power has not been wielded by any monarch in England for more than live 
hundred years. In all that time no people who speak tlie English language have 
borne such servitude. 

*"]>ivisioii and Ueiiiiiuu," AVilson, j).2Gr. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 147 

But these acts? did not only establish martial law in time of profound 
peace, did not only suspend the writ of habeas corpus and sweep away 
every vestige of republican government in ten States, did not only enact 
a bill of attainder against nine millions of people at once;* they also 
invaded the recognized prerogative of the States, a prerogative recog- 
nized throughout the whole history of the Union, and recognized now, 
to determine upon whom the right of suflVage should be conferred; and 
while withdrawing that right from the great mass of the most intelli- 
gent and influential citizens contrary to the State laws and constitutions 
conferred it upon a million of ignorant and recently emancipated ne- 
groes, wholly unjjrepared by either traditions or education to act upon 
even the simplest political questions, and set those negroes to making 
constitutions which should not only dominate the fortunes and the lib- 
erties of the whites, but also establish themselves in power. 

The military commanders entei'ed at once upon the discharge of their 
duties. Their powers were dictatorial not only in political matters, but 
also in those appertaining to the ordinary business aiTairs of the commu- 
nity. They could abolish charters, extend franchises, stay the collec- 
tion of debts, prohibit the foreclosure of mortgages, levy taxes, impose 
fines, inflict penalties, authorize the issuance of bonds and the contract- 
ing of State debts, set aside the decision of the courts, remove all offi- 
cers, and fill all vacancies without the form of elections. 

They issued general orders, difl'ering in some respects, but generally 
to the efiect that the laws of the States would be enforced; that officers 
engaged in the discharge of their duties would be continued except in 
cases where the commander should see proper to remove them for cause; 
and that the courts should continue to discharge their functions, sub- 
ject, however, to the intervention of military commissions and inspect- 
ors at the discretion of the commander. 

The practical operation of these measures was catastrophic. Shoals 
of unscrupulous adventurers appeared, few knew from whence. Loud 
in their professions of loyalty, they assumed the leadership of the inex- 
perienced, credulous, and timid blacks, infusing into their minds the 
most extravagant ideas of private rights and public duties, inspiring 
them with dislike of their former owners, and organizing them into 
leagues of secret nature, but political use. An extraordinary carnival 
of crime and plunder was opened. Bribery, embezzlement, perjury, in 
all forms ruled the hour. In a few months negro majorities gained 
complete control of the State governments, and these majorities were 
implicitly obedient to their white manipulators, the "carpetbaggers." 
The ranks of these latter gentry were to some extent reenforced by na- 
tive whites, who were even more detested by the Southern people under 
the name of " scalawags." Taxes were piled up and enormoiis debts were 

*" Three Decades of Federal Legislation," Cox, p. S77. 



148 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

accumulated, the proceeds of both of which went mainly into the pock- 
ets of these adventurers aud the prominent negroes, their confederates. 
Hajjpy indeed was that State whose credit was not good, for its disre- 
pute was its only salvation. No civilized country ever before had pre- 
sented such a scene. 

One of the most distinguished and honored gentlemen in Mississij)pi * 
said of these jDeople iu a public address delivered in 1875: 

The Government of the United States " proceeded to sponge out the constitutions 
of eleven great commonwealths, to overturn tlieir governments, to reverse tlieir social 
systems, and in eflect to prescribe new constitutions for them. Unfortunately the 
party which controlled it sought to exliibit it, and did exhibit it, only in its aspect of 
boundless authority. In their hands it seemed to have unlimited power to tear down 
and to wound, without the power to build up and to heal. Confronted by the most 
novel and formidable social and political problem ever presented to the statesmanship 
of any country, and which, God be praised, can never again be presented in this, 
they recklessly turned over the Southern States thus dislocated as so much food to the 
lowest grade of hungry partisans, leaving the adjustment of the grave difliculties in- 
volved in these great fundamental changes to the most ignorant, narrow-mindeil, and 
selfish class of men that ever bore sway in any country; men atflicted with what ap- 
pears like moral idiocy, and to whom the sense of public duty is as color to the blind. 
It is not to be wondered at that these men at once formed a partnership with the 
newly enfranchised slave — a most unequal partnersliip as it has turned out — to cap- 
ture and ' run' the State governments of the South. That which has followed might 
have been foreseen. ... I assure you that the fact has become known at last to the 
American people that the only oppression in the South is the oppression of the whites 
by colored majorities led by radicals. To my mind it has now become clear as the 
noonday sun that the only intimidation here is the intimidation by a few hundred 
radical adventurers of the whole population. AVith unparalleled au<lacity they 
threaten the whites with the Federal bayonet, and assuming that they alone can se- 
cure Federal aid they threaten the colored peoiile that they will desert them and 
take from them this protection, so that they will be turned over to the white people, 

*non. Wiley P. Harris, a man of '*pui-est ray serene," whose wide and varied culture, profound 
legal learning, e.Kceeding mental power, phenomenal intellectual integrity, devoted and unselfish 
patriotism, matchless calmness and wisdom in counsel, pure morality, and unfailing courtesy gave 
him a unique place in the aU'ections and lionor of Mississijipians. This speech will befound iu full 
in "Lowry & McCardle's History of Mississippi." It was one of great conserv.atism. He was ad- 
vocating the policy of cooper,ating with the liberal Republicans, led by Evarts, Schurz, and Adams. 
He urged tliat they were marked by the logic of the situation as the true reformers of the I'nion. 
Amongst other stiiking remarks, the following: " For one I long to see a government at Washing- 
ton aud a government here toward whicli I can feel a genuine sentiment of reverence and respect. 
It is a dreary lite we lead here, with a national government ever suspicious and ever frowning, 
imperious, and hostile; and a home government feeble, furtive, false, and fraudulent. ITnder such 
influences the feeling of patriotism must die out amongst us, and this will accomplish the ruin of a 
noble population. You might as well destroy the sentiment of religion as the .sentiment of patriot- 
ism, for human character is a deformity if either be wanting. . . . We are in anew world, we 
are moving on a new plane. It is Ijetter tliat we hang a millstone about our necks than idinic to 
these old issues. To cling to them is to perpetuate sectional seclusion. Of all things it will not do 
to fall into a hypochondriacal condition in politics. I pity the man wdio in a great crisis says to 
himself: ' I can't go there, because there is the old Whig line; ncu- there, because that is the Itepub- 
licin line; nor there, because I will be compelled to cross the Democratic line.' It sometimes hap- 
pens that a man gets himself into suclV a condition of ment.al delusion that old party lines or names 
are like running water to a witch. Under some mysterious law or eccentric antipathy he can't cross 
them. It m.atters not where duty commands him to go or on wdiat mission of patriotism he may be 
proceeding, if he chances to And one of thcs • lines in his path, he is brought to a dead halt, and 
must nei-ds turn and retrace his steps." 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 149 

who, as they falsely assert, will reduce them to a condition as bad as it was before 
emancipation. . . . The mass of blacks don't vote, but are laterally voted. Tliey 
are ridden and driven Ijy a little nest of men wlio are alien to the State in feeling. 
I say in feeling because they liabitually traduce the State when tliey go abroad, 
i . . But say our radical rulers: ' Look at the government of Mississippi and see if 
there be not this glimmer there ' — i. c., the glimmer of the liglit of lionest or intelligent 
government. I confess that I don't see it. I have no great exjierience in government, 
but I have never conceived that anytliing like it was possible in a republic. Col. 
Lamar, whose word goes a long way, said the other day in his speech that it was the 
worst government on the face of the earth. The states-manship of it has reached no 
higher tlian tlie levying of taxes, tlie issue of State warrants, and the funding thereof. 
This might be borne, but the taxation is ruinous, while the credit of the State is sink- 
ing under corrupt and wasteful expenditures. The jieople murmur and the world scoffs 
at it. True, Gov. Ames is pleased to say that these murmurs are a disgusting sham. ' I 
pay more taxes than tliese howling taxjiayers.' When I read that part of his testimony 
in the Vicksburg case I was reminded (if a passage in the book of .Jolx Job had been 
stripped of his wealth and of his children, and afflicted in many ways; and he cried 
out in his agony. His comforters said to him, ' You are a howler; ' and Job replied, 
' Does the wild ass bray when he hath grass? or loweth the ox over his fodder? ' The 
office holders and fee-and-salary men don't howl; they have both grass and fodder. 

" One more subject I will touch before concluding, and that is the charge brought 
against us of unfriendliness to people simply as Northern people, our disposition to 
ostracise them socially, and persecute them in every way. This is called didot/aliy. 
There is a class of people in the United States who have made the art of manufactur- 
ing and spreading falsehoods, and public falsehoods at that, take rank amongst the 
great industries of this busy peoi)le. A distinguished man to whom 1 nuide this re- 
mark said: ' Yes, and you may say that there is a prodigious and highly cultivated 
talent for believing falsehoods which nourishes the industry.' 

" On tins matter of social ostracism I have this to say : If any two hundred Southern 
men backed by a Federal administration should go to Indianapolis, turn out the Indi- 
ana people, take possession of all the seats of power, honor, ami profit, denounce the peo- 
ple at large as assassins and barbarians, introduce corruption in all the branches of 
the pulilic administration, make government a curse instead of a blessing, league with 
the most ignorant class of society to make war on the enliglitened, intelligent, and 
virtuous, what kind of social relations wouM such a state of things beget between Mr. 
Morton and his fellow-citizens and the intruders?. When these people first flocked 
into the State they thought or assumed that they represented the majesty of an of- 
fended nation, and like the order of men to which they belong expected to act the 
part of public patrons, to be surrounded by clients, and to pass amongst us amid sa- 
lama and genuflections; but they were instantly undeceived. 

" We have ever since the war prayed earnestly that the true representatives of the 
Northern people might come among us : their mechanics, their farmei-s, their profes- 
sional men, the representatives of their industries. We got only the chendier d'wdm- 
irie, and we know him at sight. A gentleman (a Republican), visiting the Soutli last 
winter to satisfy himself on this and other points, said: ' When I saw the great "os- 
tracised," and reflected upon what they had done here, I said to myself: 'These men 
would be ostracised anywhere.' " They have diligently labored to create the belief 
that Northern men cannot live here without humiliation and without danger of vio- 
lence. Now the class of men we want they don't want. That is clear. Their Com- 
missioner of Immigration has, 'for agricultural and other purposes,' introduced three 
thousand colored men into the State, and not a sin-le white man, unless it be some 
vagabond who wanted a free passage. They sav to the Northern man, ' Bewnre of 
man traps and spring guns ; ' and to the negro, ' Come on, there is no danger.' Truly 



150 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

there is none. Does it not stand to reason tliat if we can tolerate the cla^s of North- 
ern men we have here as rulers we can tolerate the Northern farmers or mecljanics 
or professional men as neighbors? 

"All this wretched and contemptible drivel passes now for nothing with the real 
men of the North. The radical coterie here but poorh' represents the Northern peo- 
ple. They miserably misconceive them. The plain truth of the matter is, these men 
wish to disguise what it is that carries men to Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, and the 
arid plains of Colorado, and prevents tliem coming to this fruitful land. It is just 
this: No sane man, being weil out of Mississippi with liis wife, children, and property, 
would trust them to the tender mercies of such a government as we have here. It is 
pretended that a narrative of the lives of these so-called persecuted men, if put into a 
book, would shelve Fox's ' Book of Martyrs.' Now let me ask if the most pronounced 
carpetbaggers and South haters here look like persecuted men? They grow so rapidly 
in sleekness and fatness that I have to be introduced to them over and over again — 
they do so improve out of my acquaintance. Minds at ease and consciences at rest is 
written in their ' placid ' countenances. Yet they cry out like St. Paul : ' Verily, I die 
daily.' Good-natured fellows they are, too, in their way. There is an old adage v\ hich 
says that ' a- man is good after being fed.' " 

Such were the men to whom the South was delivered. It was such 
as tiiey who in Virginia complained of the moderate admini.stration of 
Geu. Stoneman, in that he did not make enough j^laces for them to fill, 
that he did not appoint negroes to offices, that he did not make tlie peo- 
ple of the State sufficiently anxious to get back into the Union; and to 
appease and satisfy whom President Grant relieved the General from 
the command of the district. 

Not only were they intrusted with the offices and all power for the 
time being, and with the creation of the organic law for the States which 
they had seized upon and reviled; but, also, arrangements were made 
for the coutinuance of their power, even after the removal of the bayo- 
net rule. On March 11, 1SG8, an act of Congress was passed by which it 
was provided that the constitutional conventions might authorize the 
election of all the representatives in Congress and all the State officers 
provided for by the constitutions, by the voters already registered, and 
at the election to be held on the question of ratifying the constitutions 
themselves. Thus, although the new constitutions in some instances en- 
franchised those whom the reconstruction laws disfranchised, still this 
legislation " authorized the district commanders to cheat these classes 
out of their rights " by ordering the elections before they could qualify.* 
Through this uieans the ratification of the fourteenth amendment by the 
required number of States was secured. This ratification, under the 
terms of the constitution of the United States, could not be done by the 
conventions then in session, pliant though they were, but only by the 
"Legislatures;" and tints were the Legislatures organized to that end, 
free from the obstructive influence of the recently reenfranchised whites. 

By such processes constitutions were secured in all of the States ex- 

*■' Three Dcciiies of Feilenil Legislation," Cox, p. 4S3. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 151 

cei^t Virginia, Mississippi, aiul Texas; niid iu the summer of 18G8 tliey 
were reachiiitted to representation, antl the military rulp terminated 
shortly afterwards. For the three excepted States, however, further 
and harsher measures yet were necessary. Virginia had failed to rati- 
fy the constitution formed, the convention having omitted to make any 
provision for its submission to the people, because a split had taken 
place in the Republican ranks over its proscriptive provisions, and its 
defeat was feared. In Mississippi the same proscriptive provisions, 
notwithstanding the presence of the military in sixty different places 
through the State, had caused the rejection of the constitution in the 
election of 1868. In Texas the new constitution was not adojjted until 
December, 1868, and was not i-atified until November, 1869. For these 
three States, therefore, a joint resolution was adopted by Congi-ess, in 
March, 1869, declaring that all offices held by persons who could not 
take the test oath of nonparticipatiou in the rebellion — even to the ex- 
tent of giving aid or countenance to persons engaged in it, etc. — should 
be vacated, and should be filled by persons who could take the oath. 
This step, of course, swept out all of the few genuine Southern people who 
were yet in office in those States. There was even difficulty in finding 
carpetbaggers enough to fill all of the offices, and for months many va- 
cancies continued in the retired counties. In Mississippi, during the 
spring of 1869, in certain counties licenses for marriage could not be 
obtained, and the clergymen who performed the ceremonies without 
them were liable to fines of one hundred dollars in each instance, al- 
though it is believed that such fines were never iu fact imposed. 

During the year 1869 the constitutions of the three delayed States 
were ratified, a separate submission of the objectionable franchise and 
test-oath features being made in Virginia and Mississipj^i, and those 
features being rejected. Early in 1870, therefore, those States also 
were readmitted to Congress. But it must not be imagined that, for 
this reason, the dark days of reconstruction were over. True, the Sen- 
ators and Representatives were seated, and the military commanders were 
gone, but the carpetbaggers and all which they signified were still dom- 
inant in the land. Troops of soldiery were stationed all through the 
States, recognized to be so placed as posses comifatus for the civil author- 
ities. Just in proportion as the white people were more disliked by the 
carpetbaggers than they had been by the army officers, did these troops 
now become a greater menace to their peace; and, on the other hand, 
just as the people had respected the army officers, and did despise the 
carpetbagger or scalawag sheriff or mayor, so now was that menace the 
more hateful to them, and the more provoking. They felt that so long 
as that condition should continue the equality and dignity of the States 
were not restored. It did continue, and those evil people did maintain 
their supremacy by the power of the army, in part, for a number of 



152 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

years longer. It was only upon the installation of President Hayes, in 
1877, that the troops were wholly withdrawn. 

Grave as were all of these great political questions, and exasperating 
to the Southern jjeople as was the manner in which they were dealt with 
by Congress, still a further irritant was the working in their midst of the 
Freedmau's Bureau. This Bureau was not by any means a charitable 
institution merely. It was also, both in its structural capabilities and 
in its practical operation, a great political engine, and one felt by the 
South to be most pernicious to all true philanthropic and patriotic ob- 
jects. Oi-ganized in the spring of 1865, for the purpose of aiding the 
freedmen by the allotment to them, on easy terms, of government lands, 
for the distribution of vast sums in largess, and for other forms of 
charity, its injudicious and prodigal expenditures fostered in the negroes 
a spirit of idleness and dependence to which already they were but too 
prone.* Allotting to the freedmen, in forty-acre tracts, government 
lands by whatever tenure held, including in theory lands to be acquired 
by confiscation; in charge of a commissioner who recommended to the 
President that he should exact of every Southern man who should ap- 
ply for a pardon a provision out of his lands for such freedmen as had 
been his slaves, as a condition to the grant of pardon; excluding all 
persons e.xcept freedmen and loyal refugees from the privilege of pi'e- 
empting or homesteading government lands, to the extent of three mil- 
lion acres — all produced in the minds of the negroes, under suggestion, 
it is to be feared, of agents of the Bureau, an idea that they were to be 
given the property of their former masters, and threatened serious 
troubles.j Introduced into every county, and placed exclusively under 
the management of either "cai'petbaggers" or officers of the army, it 
became in the eyes of the freedmen a visible sign, everywhere and al- 
ways, that the whites were deposed from authority. Backed by details 
of soldiery; empowered to act on all interests touching the l)lacks, even 
to the extent of nullifying judgments of the civil courts, and even ou 

*Gen. Grant, in liis report to the President of Decemliei', 1865, already quoted, sMiil: "Conversa- 
tions with otlicers connected with tlie Bureau led me to think . . . that the belief widely spread 
among the freedmen of tlie Southern States that the lands of tlieir former owners will, in part at 
least, be divided amonjjst them, has come from the agents of this Bureau. This belief is sei'iously 
interfering with the willingness of the freedmen to make contracts foi- the coming year. ... In 
some cases, I am sorry to say, the freedmau's mind does not seem to be disabused of the idea that 
the freeiiman has the right to live without provision for the future. The cfl'ect of the belief in tlie 
division of the land is idleness and accumulations in camps, towns, and cities. In such cases I 
think it will be round that vice and disease will lead to the extermination or great destruction of 
the colored race." 

fin December, 1SS5, there was a stampede of the people from the country in Warren County, 
Miss., to the city of Vick.sburg for protection; the negroes were reported as .arming and demaml- 
ing lands by Christinas, else they would take them by force. Two years later Gov. Humphreys, ou 
the suggestion of (ien. Ord, District Commander, issued a proclamation, calling attention to the 
fact that widesppe<id and well-vouched reports were current of conspiracies amongst the bl.aidcs, in- 
stigated by white men, to seize lands, even if it precipitated a war; and wnrninir the blacks that 
they would receive no support from the I'nited States in such conduct, and enjoining upon the 
•whites to treat the negroes kimlly and jiisth-. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 153 

matters so simple and unpolitical as the collection of wages and debts; 
and doing its work not liy tiie due jirocess of law, but by a military or- 
der or by a court martial — its tendency was to create in the minds of 
the blacks l)oth a suspicion of the laws of the State and a belief that 
they were outside of and superior to those laws.* Filled, as its offices 
principally were, with men who were adventurers, bargainers, blackmail- 
ers, seekers after office, the negroes were banded into clubs and leagues 
needless for any legitimate jjurpose, taught to jmrade the streets in mil- 
itary array with arms and drums, were massed to be voted, and so were 
taught to regard the Southern whites as their political enemies by na- 
ture; while, on the other hand, the whites themselves were inspired with 
disgust for the Bureau and contempt for its work, and also with a de- 
spair of ever reaching the reason of the negroes in political matters by 
any argument or ajjpeal. 

It would be difficult to place a refined and honorable people in a sit- 
uation more cruel than was produced by all of those combinations of 
affairs. Not only had they been utterly impoverished, not only had 
they seen swept away, as they believed, the last vestige of the doctrine 
of State sovereignty (a doctrine which they had been reared to con- 
sider the palladium of their civil liberties); but also, in the very fact 
of their double disaster, they w-ere brought face to face with a Gorgo- 
nian problem which had frowned upon the nation for nearly a century. 

What could five millions of whites do with over four millions of newly 
and suddenly emancipated slaves, who were aot only ignorant, but also 
were of the almost hopeless African race? ^How were the molds of na- 
ture to be altered, and a jieople whose racial characteristics were want of 
personal ambition and absence of either personal or national initiative, 
whose veins were filled with indolent tropical blood, freed from the 
domination of their masters, and tempted by the soft climate of the 
South to pass their lives in uncontrolled idleness, to be energized and 
elevated into the life of the Anglo-Saxon? How was the leopard to be 
made to change his spots, and the Ethiopian his skin? Seventy-seven 
years before, Jefferson, the great founder and leader of the State 
Eights school of politics, the author of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, himself an ardent abolitionist, had dismissed the question of 
emancipation from his mind in despair of any solution of these prob- 
lems, saying that " nothing is more certainly written in the book of 
fate than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the 
two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government." His 

"In General Order No. 31, of August l(i, ISiie, from Vicksburg, Gen. Wood rleclared that " infor- 
mation has been receiveil at these headquarters that in various parts of this State parties engaged 
in planting, sine-e the tirniination of the active work of making the crops, are discharging the freed 
people whom they hired for tlie year, without settling fully witli them for their previous labor. 
. . . The commission of such outrages on the i-ights of the freed people will not be iiermitted in 
this department, and in such portions of the State as it may be reported to occur a military force 
will be stationed to prevent it." 



154 Ll'CICS Q. a LAMAR: 

first ijropositiou had proven a prophecy, although the Coustitution of 
the United States was against it; could the latter be falsified? 

It soon became clear that the problem which had dismayed Mr. 
Jeifersou was much overmatched by that which was now presented to 
the South; for besides all the difiiculties inherent in the nature of the 
case, certain others, imuecessary and very grave, had been created by 
the Federal Government, by the reconstruction laws, and by the work- 
ing of the Freedman's Bureau. The good faith and honesty of the 
South in dealing with the question were denied in Ihiiiae; the exijeri- 
ence and special knowledge of her people touching the capabilities and 
needs of the negroes, arising from two hundred years of most intimate 
and affectionate relations, were cast aside; suspicion and distrust of 
the whites, as such, were insijired into the breasts of the colored peo- 
ple, and they were marshaled into adverse afliliations on the basis of 
their color; and finally, and worst of all, the influence and controlling 
power of the Southern people were nullified, and the administration of 
all puljlic affairs was practically placed in the hands of the negroes 
themselves, for the avowed purpose that they might protect themselves 
against white " aggressions." Thus, while by the facts of the case and 
by the laws of nature a state of vigilant and wise tutelage was impera- 
tively demanded, the fiat of party as impei'atively decreed that a full 
and unchallenged equality of all public-social, and political rights 
should be extended, at once and without reserve. This unwise de- 
mand, which substituteth idealistic theories for inflexible facts, and 
required of the South that she should stake her whole future upon the 
experiment, was decreed in terms so stern that there was no avoiding 
it. It was useless to inquire of the hand at the helm: What can you 
do if we refuse to obey your orders? All things were felt to be possi- 
ble in the way of coercion, since that was done which had been done. 
Threats wei'e heard from every cjuarter that if reconstruction, on the 
plan prescribed, were not effected, and effected si^eedily, by the white 
vote, it would be without; and suggestions were not wanting from 
those high in power and place that if more were needed confiscations 
and banishments would follow. 

It would be a task ungracious and i;nprofitable indeed, and one of 
great labor besides, to detail all of the irritations and wounds from 
which the South suffered during that unhappy decade. The half of 
them has never been told, and probably never will be; but enough has 
been set forth to indicate their general nature and extent. The result 
of it all was that as the months passed away and the South saw that 
the repose which it so greatly needed and had expected came not, nor 
would be permitted to come except under conditions which it regarded 
as needless, humiliating, and dangerous, the conviction became gen- 
eral and deeply seated that what was desired and intended by the 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 155 

party in power was not a restored Ihiion of equal States, but a sub- 
jected South, a dominant North, and a radical faction ruling all. The 
painful and exasperating belief gained ground daily that nothing 
which the Southern people could say or do, no vote which they might 
cast or withhold, would avail anything to change the course of their 
destiny; that the rights of American citizens and the Constitution of 
the United States were to be to them never a shield, but always a flam- 
ing sword. No palliating faith in the patriotism, the law-abiding 
spirit, or the philanthropy of their rulers existed. The whole history 
of the struggles between the North and the South had generated in 
the minds of the Southern people a profound skepticism in respect to 
the existence of the one and the others. Distrust of the Northern 
spirit and hostility to the Northern people, such as all the fortunes of 
war and all the bitterness of surrender had failed to arouse, began to 
stir in the South; and her people began to look upon their brethren of 
the North as possessed by a cruel hatred wdiich rejoiced to believe evil, 
and by a malignancy which would stop at no wrongs or oj)pressious. 

However, in course of time this deplorable condition of feeling be- 
came somewhat relieved. When the dust and turmoil of the impeach- 
ment of the President and of the reconstruction had somewhat sub- 
sided, leading Southern statesmen ( the very persons whom the radi- 
cals denounced and disfranchised), men of acute instincts and broad 
political vision, saw that by no means all of the Northern people, nor 
even a majority of them, were really inimical to the South, biit, on the 
contrary, were truly anxious for a full and equal restoration of all the 
States and the prompt resumption of normal relations; that the harsh 
and oppressive measures to which the Southern people had been sub- 
jected did not spring from a universal desire to humiliate and sup- 
press, but from a conviction, honestly if even mistakenly entertained, 
that those measures were the quickest and surest way to accomplish 
those desirable ends, and to secure at the same time what were regard- 
ed as the legitimate results of the war. The moderate wing of the Ee- 
publicau party, led by such men as Schurz, Evarts, and Adams, came 
to be kindly regarded and their utterances received with favorable ears. 
But in this softening of the sterner mood there was no moral amnesty 
toward the leading radicals. For them, for those who under the guid- 
ance of Mr. Stevens and Mr. Morton waved the " bloody shirt," the South- 
ern mind has never had aught but a judgment of the sternest reprehen- 
sion. They are not believed to have been moved by any lofty, or even 
pardonable, motives in their institution of the coercive measures of 
1867, but only by party zeal and the determination to control the pat- 
ronage and revenues of the nation at all hazards and all costs. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Reconstruction in Mississippi — Ejection of Gov. Clarke — Constitutional Convention of 
18(J5 — Gov. Humphreys — Col. Lamar on the Situation in 1866 — Legislation of 1805 
and 1867 about Freedmen — Rejection of Fourteenth Amendment — The Fourth Re- 
construction District — Partii'ipation or No? — Constitution of 1868-69— Removal of 
Gov. Humphreys — Adelbert Ames, Military Governor — Louis Dent and Election of 
1869 — Gov. Alcorn — The KuKlux Prosecutions — Col. Lamar in Retirement — The 
New Outlook. 

THE ills consequent upon the war and attending the proce.ss of re- 
construction bore with full weight upon the State of ^Mississippi. 
But through all of their troubled political history during this period 
her people deported themselves with great moderation and dignity. 

On the 22d of May, 18G5, and shortly after the surrender of Gen. 
Taylor, the Governor, Charles Clarke, was ejected from his office in the 
most summary manner by the Federal officials, and incarcerated in Fort 
Pulaski. His last official act was the appointment of a commission to 
proceed at once to Washiugton for the purpose of securing from the 
President, if possible, terms favorable to the peace and welfare of the 
State. One member of this commission was Judge Sharkey, whom the 
President afterwards appointed Provisional Governor. 

The proclamation by which Gov. Sharkey convened the convention of 
1865 closed with these words: 

The business of improving our government, if it should be found to need it, and of 
promoting reconciliation between the Northern and the Southern people are now 
prominent duties before us, so that we may hereafter live in a more secure and per- 
fect enjoyment of the great patrimony left us by our fathers, and so that those who 
are to come after us may long enjoy, in their fullest functions, the inestimable bless- 
ing of civil lilierty, the best birtliright and noblest inheritance of mankind. 

A study of the composition of the convention by one familiar with 
the personalities of the previous political history of Mississippi dis- 
closes, in a most striking manner, the temper of the peojile in respect to 
their future course. It may be safely asserted that uo deliberative body 
ever assembled in the State composed of men whose abilities were 
greater, whose social position and intlnence were higher, or whose po- 
litical views and counsel were more respected. But their presence in 
this convention indicated a recognition by the people of the necessity for 
a new departure in their policy. The leading members were in full ac- 
cord with the sentiments of Gov. Sharkey. Of the ninety-eight dele- 
gates, seventy were Whigs, or members of the old Constitutional-Union 
party. There were only thirteen whose politics had been in sympathy 
with the movement for secession. Its President was the Hon. J. Shall 
Yerger, universally loved and honored thruugh the State, an ardent 
(156) 



LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 157 

aud most efficient leader of the Whigs, and one of the fifteen who, in 
the Secession Convention, had voted against the ordinance. Immedi- 
ately upon its organization Gen. W. T.Martin, formerly a distinguished 
officer of the Confedei-ate army, introduced a resolution, which was 
unanimously adopted, tendering to Gen. Osterhaus, commandant of 
the district, the freedom of the House, remarking jocularly that he felt 
more pacifically disposed than formerly. This courtesy Gen. Osterhaus 
duly acknowledged as a "friendly invitation," from which he experi- 
enced a "justifiable pride and pleasure." 

Of this convention Mr. Cox says that it "did some notable work. 
It did enough to disarm even tlie radicals, if the latter had not been 
determined to make the South the stronghold of their party." * It de- 
clared the ordinance of secession null and void, abolished slavery, and 
repealed all laws jjassed in aid of the rebellion. 

An election was held under tlie amended constitution for Governor 
and other State officers, Congressmen, and members of the State Legis- 
lature. By the common consent of both of the old parties Benjamin 
G. Humphreys was chosen for Governor. This gentleman, although he 
had served in the Confederate army, and with such credit as to attain 
the rank of brigadier general, had been a consistent Old Line Whig 
aud an earnest opponent of secession. He was, as his memory is to-day, 
most highly esteemed throughout the State for his many sterling qual- 
ities aud his simple aud courageous nature. In his inaugural address 
to the Legislature, which met on the 16tli of October, 1865, he said: 

I have always believeil that no one or more States could constitutionally sever the 
ties that unite the people of the several States into one people. Yet I am not un- 
mindful that a different docti'ine was taught in tlie early stages of our government, 
and was maintained by some of the brightest intellects and most illustrious jiatriots 
that adorn our political history. 

The So\ith, haing ventured all on the arbitrament of the sword, has lost all save her 
honor; and now accepts the result in good faith. It is our duty to address ourselves 
to the promotion of peace and order: to tlie restoration of law, the faith of the con- 
stitution, and the stability and prosperity of the I^nion ; to cultivate amicable rela- 
tions with our sister States, and establish our agricultural and commercial prosperity 
upon more durable foundations. 

In June, 18G6, is heard the first expression from Col. Lamar of his 
views as to the political situation; and that is at the Commencement of 
the university, in presenting prize medals to the successful declaimers 
of the sophomore class. He made "one of the happiest efforts of his 
life." His speech was " most eloquent and impressive. In alluding to 
the condition of the country and her future prospects, the Colonel 
seemed to be not quite so hopeful of the situation as the orator who had 
preceded him. He did not think that there was even the shadow of the 
doctrine of State rights left, and lie deemed it cruel to delude the people 

*'* Three Decaries," p. :J92. 



158 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

with false views as to our present status, and with false hopes as to the 
future. He could see no liberty when a political Hue is drawn with 
rii/l/f on the one side and on the other power. He was of the opinion 
that all that is left for the Soiith is the moral and intellectual culture 
of her people, and these were worthy of her highest ettorts." * After 
this utterance, which was wholly informal and impromptu, at a purely 
literary festival, Col. Lamar gave no further public expression of his 
political ideas until the year 1871; but maintained an unbroken silence 
in the seclusion of his professorial and professional life. 

Meanwhile events progressed. The second session (called) of the 
Legislature convened in October, 1866. In his message to that body 
Gov. Humphreys congratulated the people of the State upon the with- 
drawal of the negro troops from the State, and upon the transfer of the 
business of the Freedmau's Bureau to the control of officers of the reg- 
ular army, from which facts he hoped for better things; beyond them, 
however, he saw but little in the political horizon to cheer the patriot 
or excite the hopes of our citizens. The proposed amendments to the 
constitution, " which, if adopted, will destroy the rights of the States 
and of the people and centralize all the powers of government in the 
Federal head," were pressed by the radical Congress. Then the Gov- 
ernor said: 

As the chief magistrate of tlie State I have sedulously avoided all collision with 
the Federal power, and have yielded obedient acquiescence in every case of usurpa- 
tion and wrong inflicted upon our citizens l)y Federal authority. Our people are 
wearied of war, its desolation, its vandalism. They have returned to their allegi- 
ance to the Constitution of the United States. They now seek for peace, its quiet, and 
security, by suljmission to its power. 

This Legislature, at its previous session in 1865, had passed such laws 
as it conceived were needed to provide for the changes in social and 
industrial conditions flowing from the emancipation. It accordingly 
enacted three or four statutes, which, together with similar acts adopted 
by the Legislatures of other Southern States, became known as the 
Black Coilex. Those enactments placed the negroes far in advance of 
their civil condition as slaves, but by no means gave them full equality 
in all respects with the whites. The most important discriminations 
were those whereby colored persons were left disqualified to acquire 
real estate, except in towns under certain conditions; whereby they 
coiild be arrested as deserters by their employers and carried back to 
their work, in case they should have made binding contracts for service 
during rflefinite terms and should quit such service without good cause 
(right of ai)peal to the courts being carefully secured); and whereby 
certain more stringent definitions of, and ]mnishment for, crimes of cer- 
tain classes committed by negroes against the persons and property of 
whites, were retained in force. 

* Correspoiulence of the Clnrion. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 159 

These discriminations proved most unfortunate in their political re- 
sults. The radicals seized upon them as proofs that the Southern peo- 
ple were intent on violating the principle of liberty, while yielding its 
name; and, in the absence of those interpreting and modifying lights 
which only a thorough knowledge of Southern social conditions and of 
the temper of the Southern people toward the negroes coidd supply, 
the masses of the Northern people accepted for the time being that un- 
charitable and sinister theory, and the harshness of the reconstruction 
measures became possible. 

It does not enter into the scope of this work to comment upon or ex- 
plain those acts. They are susceptible of explanation wholly consistent 
with Southern honor and generosity. They were well meant. If the 
situation had l)eeu disembarrassed of the supervision, suspicion, and 
dictation of Congress, they would not have been so ill contrived, if ad- 
ministered in a humane and liberal manner, to accomplish the ends de- 
signed. The conditions were altogether anomalous and unprecedented. 
Human experience furnished no guides. Any legislation must have 
been, as this was, altogether tentative; but a special misfortune of this 
legislation was that, while it was designed to be tentative toward a 
larger liberty, Congress chose to construe it as being tentative toward 
a resumption, in effect, of bondage. It will be for the calmer thought 
of later philosophical historians to determine how far it was justifiable 
or excusable, under the circumstances. Meanwhile Congress neither 
admitted justification nor allowed excuse, and the South suffered. 

In respect to those statutes Gov. Humphreys, in his message of Oc- 
tober, 1866, said to the Legislature: 

Immediately after your adjournment, in December, 1865, 1 appointed Hon. William 
Yerger, of Hinds County, and Hun. J. M. Acker, of Monroe County, commissionere to 
visit Wasliington City and lay these laws before the President, and to request him to 
indicate which of them the military authorities in the State would be permitted to 
nullify. 

The President, in his reply, gave them full assurance that none of them should be 
nullified except l)y the civil courts of the land. . . . While the Civil Rights Bill 
cannot be received' as a rule for your guidance, the interests of the white race will be 
subserved by the relaxation of the rigidity of our laws, which, in order to guard soci- 
ety against threatening evils, was rendered necessary. Public justice to both races de- 
mands the admission of negro testimony in all cases brouglit before the civil and crim 
inal courts. And, now that the negro has shown a confiding and friendly disposition 
toward the wdiite race, and a desire to engage in the pursuits of honest labor, justice 
and honor demand of us full protection to Ids jierson and iiroperty, real and (lersonal. 

Accordingly the Legislature, in February, 1867, repealed all of the 
discriminating features of the laws, except that which required negroes 
to fulfill their term contracts for service, the retention of which was 
deemed imperatively demanded by the peculiar nature of the cotton 
crop and of the contracts (involving large advances to irresponsible la- 
bor) under which it was produced. This action was taken prior to the 



160 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

passage of the reconstruction laws; nor was it produced by appieheu- 
siou of those laws, for the same Legislature, in January, by a joint reso- 
lution imanimously refused to ratify the fourteenth amendment. 

The reasons for that action were set forth in a learned and statesman- 
like document, submitted by a joint committee, of which the Chairman 
was Hon. H. F. Simrall, a distinguished lawyer (later a judge of the su- 
preme court), an old Whig, who soon afterwards affiliated with the mod- 
erate wing of the Eepublicau party. The points made by the report 
were these: The danger of disturbances in the working of the Federal 
system, arising from the sudden introduction of new elements so vast 
and untried, upon the mere suggestion of theories, and in the absence 
of any experience showing the need of such action; that the amendment 
attempts to force upon tlie States new rules in respect to the elective 
franchise, the object being to com^jel the acceptance of negro suffrage, 
while sutfrnge itself is not a natural right, and is withheld from many 
persons more intelligent, and while the subject-matter has always been 
committed to State control ; that the amendment degraded and disfran- 
chised the most intelligent, useful, and respectable class of Southern 
citizens, in a form most odious and tyrannical, by v.v post Jhdo law; that 
the Federal Constitution itself prescribed the mode of its amendment, 
and this amendment was not constitutionally submitted to the Legisla- 
tures for their adoption, since it had been passed by a Congress from 
which the Senators and Representatives of eleven States were compul- 
sorily (excluded, at the same time that Congress was estopped by the 
whole course of the legislative, administrative, and jiidicial hist(H-y of 
the United States since the outbreak of the war (which was elaborately 
reviewed) to assert that those States were not members of the Union. 

This able report embraced, as one of its opening paragrai^hs, the 
following clear and iineiiuivocal statement of its position as to the ex- 
isting status: 

The Civil War has closed with two facts indisputably estabUshed, universally ac- 
cepted, and recognized by the people of the South : First, that slavery is forever abol- 
ished; second, that the Federal Union is indis?olvable. 

Tiie Legislature had hardly adjourned when the reconstruction law, 
or Military Bill, as it was then called, was passed by Congress, and 
was put into operation by the administration. Mississippi, with Arkan- 
sas, was established as the fourth district, and Gen. E. O. C. Ord placed 
in command. The important question immediately arose as to the 
course to be adopted by the people of the State in respect to those 
measures. Should they turn their faces toward the future wholly, and, 
submitting with as good grace as they could muster to the ungracious 
inevitable, take active part in the reorganization of the State govern- 
ment? or should they decline to take any part whatever in these revo- 
lutionary proceedings, and leave the matter wholly to the Federal au- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 161 

thorities, to make or mar as tlioy might through the agency of tho ne- 
gro votes? The newspapers instituted a symposium upon these vital 
questions, to which many of the most prominent men of the State con- 
tributed open letters. Their opinion, to which the papers generally 
acceded, was in favor of adopting the former course. Public opinion 
formed, with wonderful rapidity, in favor of acquiescence and an active 
and patriotic jjarticipation. Many who, in the first impulse of resent- 
ment at the rigors of the law, had declared their opposition to any recon- 
struction iipon the basis projected, on more mature reflection renounced 
their position; and multitudes who had halted between two opinions 
finally took stand openly in favor of reconstruction — not through ap- 
proval of the scheme, but as a choice between two evils. Public meet- 
ings were held, with the usual accessories of barbecues, speaking, etc., 
in the interest of " j)articipatiou." To the committee for one of those 
. meetings Judge Harris said in an open letter, in June, 18G7: 

It will be a source of lasting regret that we — the white and the colored people of 
the State — were not left free to work out this problem for ourselves, and the consid- 
erations of a common country, a common interest, and a common destiny permitted 
by their natural and inevitable influence to draw the two races together; and I fear 
that it will be the source of many calamities to both that now, when the power of the 
ballot is placed in the hands of the coloi-ed people, the exigencies of a party in the United 
States should lead to an attempt to incite them to regard their countrymen and neigh- 
bors as enemies, and to separate themselves from the white people in devising and 
maturing the measures which a common interest and destiny demand at this time. 
We cannot live here as enemies of each other. If we begin in enmity, we will surely 
end in disaster and rnin. All measures, therefore, which look to the establishment 
of trust and confidence between the two races ought, by all means, to be encouraged. 

As the summer drew on, however, and the election of delegates to the 
Reconstruction Convention approached, this conciliatory and wise tem- 
per was disturbed by the arrogance and hostility of the administration, 
both national and local. TJie " participators " lost ground rapidly. Hon. 
D. C. Glenn, one of the most highly gifted and generous of Mississippi- 
ans, wrote to Mr. Lamar, under date of September 22, that 

My long trip through the North and AVest has sent me home utterly unrecon- 
structed. I am cured of that. j\Iy opinion now is that all should register who can, 
and vote against a convention. Let the South hold herself ever free to war on these 
satrap bills. 

From such influences so great a coldness arose toward the new order 
that when the election was held many voters remained away from the 
polls. In consequence of this fact, perhaps, it resulted that the ques- 
tion of the convention was carried, and also the delegates elected were 
almost wholly radicals and negroes. 

The convention convened on the 7th of January, 1868; Its member- 
ship and temper was such as to make it utterly obnoxious to the people 
of the State. It plundered the treasury. It insulted the people and 
11 



162 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

the State iu every debate. It grasped at supreme x^ower. It not ouly 
derided the sorrows of tli3 stricken State, but also jeered at its protests. 
"A committee was appointed to prepare a memorial to Congress, asking 
for power to remos'e the State oiEcials appointed or elected under the 
provisional government, and to appoint others in their stead. A protest 
against tliis memorial, repelling the charge that the provisional govern- 
ment was iu the hands of the rebels, and that the lives and property of 
loyal men were insecure, was signed by fifteen members; but it was not 
allowed to be entered on the journal. The convention, by a vote of fifty 
to nineteen, ordered the protest to be ' wrapped in brown jjaper and re- 
turned to its author.' " * 

The constitution proposed by this convention was proscriptive in 
the extreme in its fi-anchise features. It was placed before the people 
for ratification. At the same time measures were taken for the elec- 
tion of State and county ofBcers, to serve under the new constitution 
if it should be ratified. 

The error of the preceding year was not to be repeated. An active 
canvass was made by the whites in opposition to the ratification, and a 
full Democratic ticket was put into the field, which was headed by 
Gov. Humphreys, as a candidate for reelection. The radical candi- 
date was B. B. Eggleston, the late President of the convention — "Buz- 
zard" Eggleston, he was called. The election, held on the '22d and 23d 
of June, resulted in the rejection of the constitution and the election of 
Humi^hreys over Eggleston by a majority of about eight thousand votes, 
notwithstanding the fact that it was held under military direction 
and with troops scattei-ed all over the State. 

On the 4th of June, pending the canvass. Gen. Ord was displaced by 
Gen. Irwin McDowell. On the 1.5th Gen. McDowell issued an order 
removing from office Gov. Humphreys, whose utterances and conduct 
had been always of the most conservative and moderate character, as 
indicated in previous pages, as an impediment to reconstruction, and 
appointing Gen. Adelbert Ames, of Maine, in his place. At the same 
time Attorney-general Hooker was removed, and one Jasper Myers 
appointed instead. "Gov. Humphreys declined to vacate his office, 
regarding the order of Gen. McDowell as a 'usurpation of the civil 
government of Mississippi, unwarranted by and in violation of the Con- 
stitution of the United States.' Congress, however, sustained the or- 
der (notwithstanding President Johnson's disapproval of it), and a 
body of soldiers took possession of the Governor's ofiice, ejecting the 
lawful incumbent at the point of the bayonet. The Governor's man- 
sion was then demanded, and upon Gov. Humphreys' refusal to vacate 
it the bayonets of the soldiers were again brought into requisition. 



'•Three Decades," Cox, i>- 326. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 163 

After the rightful occupant had been ejected Geu. Ames took posses- 
sion of the niansiou and of all the public buildings and archives." * 

This summary ejection of the Governor, it is needless to say, was 
much resented by the people of the State. It was considered as done 
in the interest of Eggleston's candidacy, at his instigation, and it was 
understood to mean that Congress would not only not tolerate any op- 
position to its methods, but also none to its instruments, noble or igno- 
ble. The appointment of Gen. Ames, who was an alien to the State, 
without part or lot in its fortunes or sympathy with its people, was 
regarded as no less worse than the removal of Humphreys. But the 
indignity of his appointment soon shrank into insignificance before the 
wrath kindled by his administration. No temperate terms will de- 
scribe the humor with which the people of the State regarded him. 
His rule was deemed to be stupid and blundering, oppressive, lawless, 
and self-seeking. 

The radicals did not acquiesce in the rejection of their constitution 
and the defeat of their ticket. On the contrary, encouraged by the 
election of Gen. Grant to the Presidency, and speculating on his sup- 
port, they appointed a committee of sixteen to endeavor to induce 
Congress to declare the constitution ratified and the Eggleston ticket, 
elected, by throwing out the returns from seven of the counties of the 
State, on the ground that the majorities returned therefrom were ob- 
tained by fraud and intimidation. To meet this movement ex-Senator 
A. G. Brown, Jiadge Simrall, and other gentlemen repaired to Wash- 
ington. They were aided by certain of the moderate Eepublicans of 
the State, led by Judge Jeffords, of the High Court of Errors and Ap- 
peals. Their efforts succeeded. The President recommended that the 
constitution should be submitted anew, with the privilege of a sepa- 
rate vote on the prescriptive features. This action was induced by as- 
surances that the people would accept the constitution without diffi- 
culty if such a course should be adopted. Accordingly, Congress so 
enacted, providing at the same time that full tickets of State officers 
and Congressmen should be voted for. 

In their i-esistance to the committee of sixteen, a certain part of the Ee- 
publican party of Mississippi had parted, or " bolted," from the radicals; 
and as the spring and summer of 1S69 passed it became manifest that 
there was an irreparable breach. Tlie more moderate Piepublicans ef- 
fected a separate organization, taking the name of the National Union 
Eepublicans. At their State convention this party declined to make any 
nominations, for the time lieing, for a State ticket; and the leaders of 
the Democratic, or conservative, party began to discuss the advisability 
of cooperating with it in the approaching elections. 



'•' History of Mississippi," Duval, 213. 



164 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

lu their resistance to the committee of sixteen also, ex-Senator 
Brown and his associates had received in Washington quite material 
aid and comfort from Hon. Louis Dent, a Mississippian by adoption 
and brother-in-law of the President. They remembered his labors in 
their behalf gratefully; and when the political forces began to gather, 
Senator Brown, in an open letter, suggested Judge Dent as a man 
available to defeat the radicals. It was supposed that his relationship 
to the President would be influential in his favor. The National 
Union Eepublicans later nominated Judge Dent as their candidate; 
and gave recognition to the Democrats, or conservatives, by offering 
Gen. Eobert Dowry as their candidate for Attorney-general, thus pre- 
senting a fusion ticket. This ticket received the support of the Dem- 
ocrats and conservatives. 

The radicals placed a full ticket in the field, led by James L. Alcorn, 
of Coahoma County, as candidate for Governor. Judge Dent made 
a canvass of the State, holding joint discussions with Gen. Alconi. 
The former in November paid a visit to Prof. Lamar in Oxford, and 
consulted him about his cuurse; but except to advise, Mr. Lamar took 
no part in the campaign. 

The expectation that the President would give moral support to the 
candidacy of Judge Dent was disappointed. Tlie movement in favor 
of liberal Republicanism, as a shield against radicalism, won no enthu- 
siasm. At the elections in December the constitution was ratified by 
an almost unanimous vote, and its proscriptive clauses were rejected in 
the same emphatic manner; but Alcorn was elected by a vote of 7(),- 
186, against Dent's 38,097, while the radicals also elected all of the 
Congi-essmen and three-fourths of the State Legislature. 

The effect upon the State of the establishment in power by this 
election of the radicals, and the effect of the same misfortune upon 
Prof. Lamar's individual history, have been narrated in the preceding 
chapters. He resigned iu June, 1870; and the Iliad of the State's woes 
was continued and made even more tragic. 

Still a further trouble, and one deeply felt, indeed, grew out of the 
Kuklux prosecutions of 1S71 and the following years. 

The Kuklux Klan was an oath-bound, secret organization, first heard 
of iu Tennessee in 1868. The society soon spread into other Southern 
States. Its avowed object was to break up the Loyal Leagues, which 
were oath-bound, secret organizations of the negroes made by the 
"carpetbaggers " for the purpose of keeping up, at fever heat, the sen- 
timent of loyalty to the Republican party, and which were worked 
as political machines from the start. It was proposed in the begin- 
ning to effect this object by working on the superstitious fears of the 
negroes. Grotesque disguises were adopted, the most fantastic lit- 
erature was employed, with ghostly apparitions, etc.; but later, as 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. ' 1G5 

was inevitable, resort was had to violence. The victims of violence 
were either negroes or whites who made themselves obnoxious by acts 
of oppression, or acts considered to be injurious to the local welfare. 
There was no concerted sj-stem. The disturbances were limited to a few 
localities. Their work and misdeeds were disapproved by the great body 
of the Southern people. They were, however, the natural and certain 
offspring of the oppressions of the reconstruction laws, and of the dis- 
turbed social conditions arising from their enforcement. 

In April, 1871, Congress made these offenses punishahle in the Fed- 
eral courts, and authorized the President to suspend the writ of lidheas 
corpus when necessary to the i^reservation of order. Troops were to 
be emijloyed to enforce the law. Apart from the question of the cou- 
stitiitiouality of the law itself, had these measures been wisely and hu- 
manely employed to supress the evil, it would have been well enough; 
but the tremendous enginery put in operation was managed by the same 
reckless and unscrupulous class of aliens, " carpetbaggers and scalawags" 
already described. They perverted it from its just design. In many of 
the judicial districts, instead of using it for the maintenance of g(jod 
order, it was used to rivet still further the shackles upon the people by 
establishing the radicals in power. It was distorted into an instru- 
ment for the gratifying of private enmities and grudges. It was prosti- 
tuded into a money-making machine by hordes of ■ profligate deputy 
marshals, who spied out the land and worked up prosecutions yielding- 
enormous costs. Witnesses found out that the heavy j)er diem fees and 
the large mileage allowed realized pretty sums, and they were not lacking. 
It was not an unknown thing for witnesses to be summoned to the seat 
of a court from long distances under subpoenas which held them from 
term to term, even during the vacations; and so tliey were enabled to 
draw ^Jf>r dlfm compensation during the whole period, while at the same 
time hiring out for wages in the usual manner. The courts were 
thronged with poor people who had been dragged from their homes 
under groundless charges, with their women and children along as wit- 
nesses on expenses; and vacant lots in the court towns were frequently 
covered with the tents which sheltered them. What approval the good 
people of the State would have felt for a proper administration of the 
law was lost in a sense of outrage at beholding a widespread and re- 
lentless persecution, conducted to a great extent by men who were well 
known to be of the most desperate and lawless character, under pretense 
of loyalty to the government. It was commonly asserted, and was cer- 
tainly believed, that much f)f the lawbreaking which was charged to the 
Kuklux was in fact done for political eifect by the Loyal Leagues or 
their emissaries. No adequate description can now be given of the cli- 
ablerie which was carried on by the rulers. The "carpetbaggers and 
scalawags" were beginning to quarrel amongst themselves over the 



166 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAk: 

spoils; aud their mutual crimiuations auJ recrimiuations, their vilifica- 
tions of each other, quite equaled or exceeded in bitterness aud magni- 
tude anything which the Uem<jcrats had said. 

The Wceklij Clarion, of Jackson, the Democratic organ, had this edi- 
torial squib on the 7th of July, which illustrates the character of the 
times and the humor with which the Kuklux ijrosecutious were regarded: 

It is thought strange that two-thirds of tlie jury organized to convict tlie citizens 
arrested by the Federal troops ami detained at Oxford are composed of Loyal Leaguers. 
Never since the reign of judicial tyranny in the days of Jefl'reys were such outrages 
practiced in the name of justice. The radical party has been fruitful in its invention 
of tortures for the people of the South since tliey in good faith accepted the terms of 
surrender. 

Mr. Lamar wrote to a friend in Georgia: "We are grievously perse- 
cuted under the Kuklux law." 

In all of this but little has beeu seen of Col. Lamar; but the times, 
the events, aud himself were slowly ripeuiug for his work. 

Meanwhile he was living through deejj trouble. Although his per- 
sonal affairs were in reasonably satisfactory condition, the state of the 
country weighed upon him most heavily. 

North Street in Oxford is a pleasant little street which runs from the 
public square (and the courthouse in the center of it) northerly to the 
limit of the village, aud merges into the Holly Springs road. LTpon 
either side it is bordered by neat little yards with numerous cozy cot- 
tages, and occasionally a mansion of some pretension. Near the end of 
the street, on its eastern side, was the residence of Col. Lamar — a 
humble but attractive cottage of sis rooms, withdrawn fi-om the thor- 
oughfare some two hundred yards, hidden by a tangle of cedars, hoh 
d'arc, and pear trees, with a long and narrow lot giving entrance from 
the front. 

At this period upon almost any clement evening, late, if one should 
follow the plank walk until the white picket fence which marked the 
premises of Col. Lamar should be reached, there he would be found; 
clad in a drab study-gown, somewhat frayed and stained with ink; rest- 
ing against the fence, leaning as if wounded, with his strong arms flung 
carelessly over it for support, and his head drooping forward; his face 
long, massive, aud sallow; bareheaded, with his long brown hair stirred 
by the breeze; his deep, mysterious eyes fixed upon the yellowing west- 
ern sky, or watching dreamily the waving limbs of the avenue of water 
oaks across the way; abstracted, recognizing the salutations of the pass- 
ers-by with a nod half courteous, half surh', and yet obviously uncon- 
scious of all identities; a countenance solemn, somber, and enigmatical. 
He was never one to give loud voice to the perturbations of his soul, 
but it needed no very skillful physiognomist to see that here was a great 
V heart greatly suffering. In those darkening twilight hours when nature 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 167 

gathers the wandering thoughts of men into the narrow circle of their 
inner selves, what mighty passions wafted him upon their currents! 
What inaudible threnodies of sorrow for those deeply loved and use- 
lessly lost! What mocking, pale-faced visions of blooming hopes and 
vaulting ambitions, now death-stricken forever! AVhat thrills of hot 
hatred, holy in its intense fire if there be such a paradox in the spirit- 
ual world as a hatred at once personal aud sacred, for the vile vampires 
who were drawing the lifeblood from his prostrate State! What sur- 
ging waves of contempt for those friends of old whose venal knees had 
bent before the golden calf of power or pelf, and what pangs in tearing 
out their friendships from his heart! What swirling vortices of pas- 
sionate and generous self-reproach for the tragic past, the dreary pres- 
ent, and the frowning future! What agonized searching of the inscru- 
table mysteries of the coming years! What sickening despair as the 
tortured mind groped for clews that might lead out from this Stygian 
darkness into light! There were loving eyes which watched him nar- 
rowly then — eyes which seeing, yet seemed not to see — and loving hands 
diligently wove bonds of silk to draw him away from the perilous verge 
upon which he stood; for more than one anxious heart interpreted those 
volcanic moods, and trembled lest in some weaker hour a dreadful deed, 
born of fury and despair, should spi'ing like a tiger from its lair, and 
ruin all. 

However, no such calamity ever came, although, as told already, once 
very near. The natural humanity of his disposition, the unfailing 
charity which moved him even involuntarily to look for virtues and re- 
deeming traits in those whom he most disliked, his profound respect 
for the law and its requirements of subordination, the humility and 
long-suffering of his Christian blood and training, all conspired to mod- 
erate the turbulent and fierce elements of his strangely complex char- 
acter; and they produced, in time, their legitimate and necessary i-e- 
sults. Through the stoicism induced by familiarity with painful con- 
ditions, through the unconscious hopefidness of his strong and resil- 
ient nature, the electrical and tlu-eateuing glooms which overshadowed 
his life were, to a great extent, gradually dissipated, and he passed into 
a sunnier mood. But this brighter mood was by no means one of un- 
clouded serenity. There was a large residuum — as indeed there remained 
in a lessening degree throughout his life — of troubled thought, of nerv- 
ous apprehension, of formless dreads about his beloved South. The 
experience of that decade which followed the war left ineffaceable 
scars upon him, and he was never able to cast wholly off the fear of the 
disposition and power of the stalwart wing of the Republican party to 
resume stern measui-es with the people of that section. 

Through a trial so fiery as was that of Col. Lamar no human soul 
ever jaassed unmodified. Either it is blackened and debased, or else it is 



168 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR. 

23urified aud ennobled. Mr. Lamar's sorrows mellowed and strengthened 
him. About this period Mr. Henry Craft, of Memphis, a lawyer of emi- 
nent abilit}', a geutleman of the most amiable and generous character, a 
man of singularly clear perceptions and philosojjhical thought, who had 
been a fi-iend from those days when they slept together iu the trundle- 
bed, wrote to him: 

Do you know that your character has been greatly improved Ijy what you have 
gone through: ^^oftened, rounded, made sympathetic? I tliinli so, and congratulate 
you. 

The enrichment of Col. Lamar's nature by the throes of those teue- 
brious years, interesting as it must be to the student of his life, was by 
no means their only result. He had descended into the shades a sec- 
tionalist; he emerged a nationalist. Like the Apocalyptic, he "saw a 
new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth 
were passed away." The South that was, proud,, self-reliant, masterful, 
persuaded of her right and her power if need were to take place as a 
nation amongst nations, had fallen; all her political tenets bad parted 
like ropes of sand; the fruitage of her ambitions had turned to ashes 
upon her lips. What remained? A future embarrassed and imperiled, 
but still rich in all glorious possibilities. A future, however, in which 
for her neither a separate existence nor a prospering sectionalism was 
any longer a possibility. A future in which reconciliation and oblivion 
were vital; and in which the wide gaze of the statesman could see every- 
thing for her in concord, in discord nothing. To him it became as clear 
as the sun that the one great want of the South was a great national as- 
piration nationally recognized. The very love he bore to his people, 
illuminating a generous and ])atriotic heart, a mind stored with tradi- 
tions of statesmanship, gave him prescience and taught him wisdom. 
And so it was tiiat through the dai-kness he caught gleams of a brighter 
day, and the jxiefs passionate cry became his prayer: 

Harness the impatient years, 
O Time! and yoke them to thy imperial car; 

For throuirh a mist of tears 

The brighter ilay appears. 
Whose early Ijlushes tinge the hills afar. 




LIBERAL REPUBLICAN LEADERS, 1870 75. 



KOHftCE GREELEY 6T Pl». 0. APPLETON i CO 



CHAPTER XIV. 

The Liljeral Republican Movement — Lamar's Letter on Greeley and Brown — Lamar 
for Congress in 1872 — Nomination, Canvass, and Election — Letters — Removal of 
Political Disabilities — Illness— Deliberations, 1873 — Democratic Party Disbanded — 
Supports Alcorn against Ames — Illustrative Letters of November, 1873 — Enters 
Forty-third Congress — Letters to Judge Wharton on Gi-ant — First Speeches: West 
Virginia Contested Election. 

THE American people do not like malice nor cherish it. Any party 
which erects its political structure upon a foundation of ill-will en- 
gendered by events that are over and done with builds an unstable 
structure. All the genius, the dash, the cunning, and zeal of the Radi- 
cal leaders could not long reconcile the Northern people to their pre- 
scriptive and reckless Southern policy, especially when the truth began 
to transpire about the chaotic and disgraceful administration of the 
Southern State governments under their patronage. The clear and cool 
common sense of the Northern mind could not long be deluded into the 
belief that the South was given over wholly to rebellion and hatred of 
the great republic, or that her people were bandits to be held in order 
by the bayonet alone, or her fair territories conquered i^rovinces to be 
plundered at will. The reconstruction measures of 1867 had hardly 
been put into effective operation before a revulsion in the Northern 
opinions began, which was shortly to sweep the Republican party from 
its imperial place. 

There had been an influential element in the Republican party from the first, which, 
although it had supported the party cordially for the sake of the Union, had given its 
support onVy provisionally, with a potential, if not an actual, independence of judg- 
ment. There was another element, too, of " War Democrats," whose allegiance W"as 
still looser, still more openly conditional. These elements, as well as a great many 
earnest, conservative men who accounted themselves wdthout qualification stanch 
Republicans, were very soon seriously alienated from the party liy its extreme meas- 
ures of coercion in the South in support of the constitutional amendments, its con- 
stant military interference there, in spite of the principle of local self-government, the 
arrogant temper of mastery witli which it insisted upon its aggressive jiolicy, and the 
apparent indifference with which it viewed the administrative demoralization which 
so soon became manifest under Gen. Grant. 

So early as 1870 these forces of reaction had produced a " liberal Republican " 
party in Missouri, which, by combining with the Democrats, presently gained complete 
control of the government of the State. By 1872 this " liberal Rejiublican " move- 
ment had greatly spread, assuming even national importance. In May, 1872, a general 
mass meeting of the adherents of the new party gathereil in Cincinnati, and, after 
adopting a thoroughly Democratic i>latform, was led by a singular combination of in- 
fluences to nominate for the Presidency Mr. Horace Greeley, the able, erratic, stridently 
Republican editor of the New York Tribune; and for the Vice Presidency Mr. B. Gratz 
Brown, the Liberal Republican leader of Missouri. The Democratic nominating con- 

(169) 



170 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAIt: 

ventioii ac'i-epted both the platform and the candidates of this meeting. But no Dem- 
ocrat could vote with real heartiness for the ticket* 

In contemplation of this singular political moveinent, and only five 
days after Mr. Greeley's nomination by the liberal Republicans, Col. 
Lamar wrote as follows to Mr. Eeemelin: 

Oxford, Miss., May 6, 1872. 
There is not much enthusiasm for Greeley and Brown. It will require a 
great deal of eloquence on the part of their advocates to get it up. Carl Schurz is the 
only genuinely popular man in the country. The people think him patriotic, disin- 
tereste-l, ami intellectual. They pine for a true man; one true in his principles, lofty 
in his manners, and a real genius. Is Mr. Schurz all this? If he is, and if he has the 
physical strength to «o through the country and make eloquent appeals to the people, 
they will elect his ticket because It is his. The people care nothing about Trumbull or 
Davis or Adams, and very little for Greeley or Brown. But Mr. Schurz has somehow 
touched their hearts. 

The Democratic convention met at Baltimore in July, and accepted 
Greeley and Brown as the candidates of that party also, as told above. 
On the 15th Mr. Lamar wrote again to Mr. Eeemelin: 

Your objection-^ to Greeley are incontrovertible. His election, if it should by pos- 
sibility occur, will not, per se, be the triumph of a single great constitutional principle. 
He has ever been the living embodiment and concentrationof all that we of the South 
and of the Democracy are accustomed to regard sis unsound and pestilent in politics. 
I am carious to see the liiography that his friends will put out. If it would only give a 
faithful account of the sects, schools, and parties with which the hero of the story has 
been connected during his forty years of active but feverish intellectual life, it would 
not be devoid of interest and value, however worthless it might prove as a campaign 
document. But it should be entitled "A History of the Aberrations of Human Rea- 
son, as Illustrated by the Life and Writings of an American Editor." 

But the South— aye! the very sanior pars of its population— will support him; and 
you, my dear sir, must not judge th^m harshly for their course. 

Our people are under the supreme necessity of getting into harmonious relations 
with the Federal Government. They can do nothing, they can say nothing that will 
eflect this result with the jiresent administration and the small politicians who seem 
to control every administration. Its grim despotism glares upon us at every point. 
Spies and secret detectives swarm through the country, dogging the footsteps of our 
best citizens, noting and perverting every chance word, following up with ai'rests, ar- 
bitrary searches, indefinite and unexplained imprisonments, trials 1 lefore vindictive 
and partisan juries packed for the purpose of insuring convictions, and ending, of 
course, in verdicts of "guilty" and sentences of transportation to Northern prisons. 
Tortured to madness, the friends of the victims have sometimes, not often, resorted to 
secret conspiracies and bloody retaliations; which latter bringdown upon our defense- 
less heads still more terrible bolts of Congressional wrath. 

I fear, if this agony is prolonged without hope of relief at some perio<l, the South- 
ern people will feel that death is better than life; and then despair and Nemesis will 
rule the hour. 

Such being the condition, the thought which presses up(jn every aching heart and 
head is not how to restore the constitutional faith of our fathers, liut how to get rid 
of these creatures, defileil by blood, gorged with spoil, cruel, cowardly, faithless, who 
are now ruling the South for no purposes except those of oppression and plunder. 

* " Divi.-iiin :iiiil liouiiion," Wilson, L'SI. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 171 

It is believed — or rather we wisli to believe — that there is a large majority of the 
Northern people, peihaps of the KepubUcan party itself, which, tliougli determined to 
secuie the legitimate results of tlie war, are disposed to treat the South (as far as con- 
sistent with this purpose) with gentleness and justice, and even with magnanimity. 
Now, strange as it may seem, the South is ready to respond to the former, as slie is to 
the latter jihase of tliis sentiment. She was neither embittered nor humiliated by the 
result of tlie late war. Thougli van(|uished, she was conscious that slie had well at- 
tested the sincerity of her convictions liy grand battles, numerous victories, and lieroic 
sacrifices. With a sentiment of increased respect lor tlie martial spirit and military 
power developed by the Nortli in her vindication at the cannon's mouth of the integ- 
rity of the Union, tlie Southerners yielded in good faith and without any mental res- 
ervations. They laid down their arms. Tliey sulimitted to tlie authority of the con- 
stitution with the North's interpretation of it. They abrogated the right of secession 
and wrote the abnegation in their fundamental laws. They acknowledged the ex- 
tinction of slavery and also the political and civil equality of their late slaves with 
themselves. They wiU never disturb the Union again. Since the formal surrender of 
their armies tliere has not been a single instance uiihin the Southern Slates of an insurrectimi 
against the authority of the government, altliough a part of the time the people have been 
without civil magistrates, and nearly all the time liave been writhing under oppres- 
sion, injustice, and violence. 

And yet the administration of President Grant, regarding them as only vile traitors 
to be repressed by the strong hand, has never ceased to treat them with contemptu- 
ous distrust, severity, and vengeant'e. 

Now that the offer comes from the North (in a strange quarter, trae) " to clasp 
hands across the bloody chasm," is it unnatural that our people accept witli joy tlie 
prospect of peace, concord, and forbearance? Accustomed to confide in the ninial and 
intellectual sujieriority of their political leaders, it does not occur to them to doulit the 
sincerity of the offer and the assurances with which it is accompanied. And even if 
they did doubt him (Greeley), they have confidence in the purpose of the party that 
will go into power with him to relieve them of their intolerable condition. In case of 
his defeat the movement will have brought to their support a body of new and valu- 
able allies which they cannot afford to give up. \ 

On the other liand, there exists among many high-sfruhg men here a hopeless 
skepticism of anything sound or valuable in Mr. Greeley^ a dislike of his character, 
and a determined a<lherence to their own political prinoj^des. These, however, are 
not active or stimulating motives, and show tliemselves rattjerin expressions of indif- 
ference to the result of the contest and a want of confidei>ce in the success of the 
movement. 

I have given you, as well as I can, the sentiment, or rather the impulse, which 
prompts our people to support Mr, Greeley. I myself have taken no part in any 
movement. The time has passed with me for looking to political parties. Democratic 
or Republican, as a means of improving piiljlic affairs. 

I have not merely lost confidence in them. They fatigue my contempt. Believing 
that the South can do nothing which will change the tendency of things, I have had 
no advice to give our own people, except to go to work in restoring their material pros- 
perity and establishing their institutions of education. 

As for national politics, it has seemed to me that wisdom, as well as self-respect, 
should restrain those of us who aspired to statesmanship before the Southern over- 
throw from obtruding our counsels and views upon a crisis which we failed to control 
by arms. I remember that you protested against this position during your visit here. 
It made a decided impression upon me, and I have so far deferred to your judgment 
as to be ready to speak whenever any utterance of mine can lie useful. . . . There is 
a strong movement in my district to send me to Washington. I give it no encourage- 



172 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

ment. My aversion to reentering public life inereases. At this partiruliir jiinctnre it 
is especially great. I have been accustomed to regard my political princi|>les with 
})rofound and even awfiil respect. While they are down and under the ban, I feel it to 
be a mixfoHune and a snare to accept promotion. I would miloh prefer to bide my 
time and wait for more auspicious days (even if they come not in my life), when the 
right will raise its honors from the deep and make the true and the brave sharers in 
its triumph. Besides, I have a practice growing every day more lucrative, and am 
loatli to give it up. If there is a genuine and general desire of our people to have me 
go, I shall hardly know how to decline. In case I yield I must bespeak your counsels, 
and especially your generous indulgence to me as a public man. 

Mrs. Lamar sends her thanks and kind remembrances to you. AVe see no pros- 
pect of getting to see you for some time, so closely am I confined by my courts. But 
we hope to see you here. For we all like you. If I do go to Wasliington, won't you 
let one of your daughters spend one or more seasons there with us? I can commend 
Mrs. Lamar as one of the pleasantest and most popular chaperons I ever knew. Then 
besides, she will be with a family that has never had a " skeleton in the house." But 
I am playing the part of the milkmaid. Do write to me. I have no Northern corre- 
spondent. 

The temper with which the Sotitherii people regarded Air. Greeley's 
nomination, the sentiments and hopes with which it inspired them, are 
thus clearly set forth in the intimacy of a private correspondence by 
one who knew every throb of the Southern heart. As an interesting 
side light upon the times, and as illustrative of the irritations to which 
the people were constantly exposed, and of their long-suffering under 
libelous and malicious detraction, ponder over the following exti-act 
from a letter written at that time by Col. Flournoy to the Republican 
State Committee and promptly given circulation in the newspapers, the 
writer being the same man whom his Democratic neighbors had de- 
fended in the year before from the Kuklux with guns and slaughter: 

Alarm the country, for we are stepping over the glowing cinders of the lebellion, 
ready to burst again into a consuming tire. ... A victory for the Democrats, 
through Mr. Greeley, means the repudiation of loyalty by punisliing Gen. Grant. It 
means war with some foreign power, that the rebels may aid it upon the condition of 
guaranteeing to them a separate government. 

The movement to send him back to Congress, of which Mr. Lamar 
spoke in the Reemelin letter, grew apace. It was helped on by the 
newspapers. Communicatitms of the most complimentary nature ap- 
peared now and again, especially in the Clarion, the Democratic organ, 
published at the capital. The principal difficulty lay in the fact that un- 
der the provisions of the fourteenth amendment Col. Lamar was dis- 
qualified to hold office. In view of this obstacle there was much hesita- 
tion about his nomination, even on the part of men who otherwise would 
have been ardent supporters. Nevertheless, the wish for him was so 
strong, the confidence in his abilities and patriotism so great, that when 
the nominating convention met at Tupelo on 21st of August, after a 
number of ballots, extending over two days, in which many prominent 
gentlemen were voted for, he received the unanimous vote of the body. 



///,S' LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 173 

To the last he hesitated about taking the final step. Ou the 2d of 
August, nineteen days before the convention met, he wrote to Mr. 
Keemelin: 

In the struggles of my intellect after the truth, " I have trod the winepress alone." 
But in this thing I was wholly at fault. I know the Anglican character, even the 
German and the Frencli, better than I do the Northern. You are q/'them enough to 
partake of their feelings and purposes, and are yet outside of them enough to see them 
in tlie perspective, and to view them as phenomena. ... I also wanted your ad- 
vice as to whether I should go back and get my mind saturated again with politics. 
I have a good practice, my family are happy as possible, and I have disciplined myself 
to bear final exclusion from official functions and holdings with a serene and self-sus- 
taining mind. Do I really owe it to the South and Mississippi (excuse the limits ; I 
have not yet learned to expand my sense of political duty) to go into public em- 
ployments ? 

After his nomination Col. Lamar arranged for an active canvass of 
his district: the First. His principal opponents were two: Col. R. W. 
Floui-noy, in the interest of the radical party, or Grantites, as they were 
called; and R. M. Brown, the editor and proprietor of the Central, a 
paper published at Water Valley, an independent. A joint canvass was 
appointed, which was carried out with some degree of exactness, and in 
which he made many speeches, described by those who heard them as 
most brilliant. A correspondent of the Clurion writes from TujDelo, 
under date October 7: 

Col. Lamar is making a thorough canvass of the district. He is making the most 
powerful speeches that have been heard in this part of the State for many years. In 
fact, the people say the like was never heard before. He has large crowds to hear 
him, and he leaves a perfect blaze of enthusiasm liehind him wherever he goes. He 
spoke to a large crowd at Fulton to-day. He speaks at Shannon to-morrow, at Ches- 
terville next day, and the next day at Pontotoc. He will beat Flournoy, Brown, 
Adams, and any others that may come out in the interest of Grant or disorganization, 
three to one. 



During this period and in this canvass Col. Lamar was much troubled 
about his political disabilities. He was not only concerned about the 
matter of itself — accepting the nomination with many misgivings as to 
the wisdom of the step — but also the situation was urged by the inde- 
pendent candidate as an argument against his election. There was, 
moreover, an apprehension that if Ct mgress should refuse to remove his 
disabilities, the operation of Section 15, Article 13, " of the Buzzard Eg- 
gleston constitiition " would cause the seating of the minority candi- 
date. The Clarion of September 10 had a leader controverting the 
soundness of this notion as a legal proposition, and denying the probn- 
bility of such action under the Congressional precedents. Col. Flour- 
noy acted handsomely in the matter. Amongst the old papers is a 
crumpled note in which he says, "Col Lamar, I wish to be understood 



174 LUCIVS Q. C. LAMAR: 

distiuctly as sayiug I will not claim a seat should you resign. E. W. 
Flounioy." 

The Filof, the radical organ, published at Jackson, was less magnani- 
mous. It assailed the Colonel fiercely, ending one of its articles with 
the statement tiuit "he committed a great mistake when he decided 
to thrust his case upon Congress." 

A report obtained currency to the effect that he had said in his 
speeches that he would make no dii'ect personal api^lication to Con- 
gress for relief; and this rumor he had to deny and counteract, since 
it threatened to alienate from him the Republican influence which he 
had gained in North Mississippi. 

That Republican backing was one of the most striking facts of this 
portion of his history. Notwithstanding his unswerving Southern 
Democracy and his open and deep resentment of the " carpetbag " dom- 
ination, his hostility was so open and manly, his recognition of any 
kind or honorable or patriotic act, even of those whom he opposed and 
disliked, was so prompt and generous, his bearing toward his antago- 
nists was always so courteous, that most even of those whom he resisted 
publicly, if they knew him personally, liked and admired him in private, 
and were pleased to see him rise. Col. Pierce, the United States Mar- 
shal, supported him against Flournoy and voted for him. His applica- 
tion for the removal of his disabilities received the cordial support of 
Gov. Powers, who, of his own motion, prepared a memorial to Congress 
in that behalf, which was signed by all of the Federal officers at Oxford 
and Holly Springs, besides Republican judges and chancellors. The 
three Republican judges of the Supreme Court presented a similar 
document; and his cause was supported by Auditor Musgrove, by James 
Hill, the colored Secretary of State, and by O. C. French, the Chairman 
of the Repulilican State Committee. A letter from Judge E. A. Hill, 
of date December 1, says: " I have not met with any leading Republi- 
can in the northern part of the State who was not in favor of your re- 
lief specially." 

His reeutrance into politics attracted attention in other States, and 
numerous congratulatory notices appeared in prominent Southern 
journals. 

Prior to tlie election all of his competitors withdrew from the race, 
"except Oh/ Osmicattamie. Flournoy," as the papers called him. The 
Colonel was successful by a majority of nearly five thousand votes. 

On the 4th of November he wrote to Mr. Eeemelin : 

You are somewhat responsible— more than any one person— for the position I am 
in. I was unanimonsly nominated for Congress, and shall probably be elected to- 
morrow. I have discnssed "the condition of the country" with my political opjio- 
nent all over the district. My speeches pleased the people far l)etter than they did 
me. . . . You are aware that I am under disal)ilities, and that it will require a 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 175 

vote of two-thirds to remove them before I can get my seat. The people would have 
me to represent them in spite of the disabilities. They meant no defiance to the gov- 
ernment, but simply wished Congress to know that tlie man of their choice is pro- 
scribed. I think the Reiiuhlicans of the State will favor the bill for my relief. . . . 
You may be assured of one thing: I am a patriot — that is, my heart beats with more 
fidelity to the interest and happiness of the American people, and to the principles of 
public and individual freedom, than it does to my own tramiuillity. If elected to- 
morrow and sent to Congress, 1 will be in one sense a Representative according to the 
standard established in the purer days of the republic. Not a dollar will be spent, ex- 
cept for the i)rinling of tickets, in my district. Such a thing as a. fund or a committee to 
raise money for electioneering purposes is unknown within its limits. There will not 
be a vote bribed, either directly or indirectly ; and no personal influence will, so far as 
I know, be brought to bear upon anybody. No money drawn from any source is ap- 
plied to any jnirpose. What do you think of that? 

To Judge Peyton, of the Supreme Court, he wrote at this time: 

Should I be permitted to take my seat in Congress, my course will be marked by 
moderation and reserve. If I say or do anything, it will be to give to the North the 
as-iurance it wants that the South comprehends its own great necessities, and wishes 
to be no longer the agitating and agitated pendulum of American politics. 

lu December he repaired to Washington in order to press his appli- 
cation for relief. His petition, along with the memorial prepared by 
Gov. Powers, was introduced in the House by Mr. Dawes, of Massa- 
chusetts, on the 5th, and was at once referred to the Judiciary Com- 
mittee. Ou the 9th Mr. Bingham, of Ohio, for the committee, reported 
a bill, and advised the House that it was unanimously recommended. 
He called special attention to the fact that the petition was favorably 
indorsed " by most of the United States officials in the State." There- 
upon the bill was passed, under a suspension of the rules, by a vote of 
111 to 13. On the next day its passage was reported to the Senate, and 
on the 11th that body referred it to the Select Committee on the Ee- 
moval of Political Disabilities. On the same day Mr. Vickers, of Mary- 
land, for the committee, reported it as unanimously approved, stating 
that a large number of Piepublicans had certified that the election at 
which Mr. Lamar was chosen was orderly and fair, and that there could 
be no objection to the removal of his disabilities. The bill was there- 
upon passed by unanimous consent. 

The anxieties and excitement caused by this episode came very near 
costing the Colonel his life. The infirmity to which he was subject 
seemed usually, when it visited him at all, to come immediately after the 
relaxation of some great nervous tension. The bill for his relief had 
no sooner passed than he was seized with a vertigo in its severest form. 
He was taken over to Baltimore, where, at the home of Dr. A. T. Bled- 
soe, his old chief at the university, he was most tenderly and carefully 
nursed through his illness. For several days it looked as if the end 
had come, but his strong constitution finally prevailed, and health 



176 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR.- 

slowly returued. A few daj-s later be was able to return home, although 
ou crutches aud very weak. 

During all of the year 1873 he was pondering most carefully and anx- 
iously over his future course in Congress. How could he best help on- 
ward the caiise to which he had consecrated himself: the ^lerfect recon- 
ciliation of the North and the South'? That was the overwhelming 
problem. He corresponded on the subject with several of the leading 
conservative statesmen of the North — H(ni. M. C Kerr, of Imliaua, and 
others — and the import of his letters was this: knowing the Northern 
mind as i/oii know it, what would you do if you were in in// place? He 
received many valuable sxiggestiuns; the principal value of which, 
however, consisted in their confirmation of his own conceptions, rather 
than in the mai'kiug out of any new lines of thoiight or policy. 

In June a correspondence with Dr. Barnard, of Columbia College, 
which continued at intervals so long as the Doctor lived, was reopened 
by a letter from the Doctor, in which he said: "I have never ceased to 
think of you with affection, as one of the noblest of men and the most 
valued friend I ever knew." 

Mississippi State politics assumed an interesting phase during this 
yeai\ The "carpetbagger" was still abroad in the land: less imperious, 
perhaps, than in years just passed, and with a dawning perception of 
the fact that his title to the State was but a base fee sifter all, yet still 
with his Briarean hands everywhere. A division had occurred in the 
Eei^ublican party. The leaders of the two factious were Senators 
Alcorn and Ames. " Tiie former, a man^of high bearing, wealthy, full 
of courage, proud, aud imperious, had a contempt for the pretensions 
of the latter, aud asserted, in substance, on the floor of the Senate, that 
Ames was a fraud; that his poverty of intellect was only equaled by 
his arrogant assumption of unauthorized powers; that he was not, and 
never had been, a citizen of Mississippi. Ames made the best rejily he 
could, but was no match in di-bate for his opponent. The estrange- 
ment and breach between them culminated in both declaring themselves 
candidates for Governor of the State. A number of white Kepublicans 
advocated the election of Alcorn, while Ames was supported by the ex- 
treme Radicals, who controlled, in a great measure, the negroes." * In 
this condition of affairs the Democratic State Convention, in Septem- 
ber, resolved that "it is inexpedient in the approaching State election 
to nominate a State ticket." The adoption of this course left the race 
to the two Piepulilicaus. The Democrats, as a choice between the two, 
supported Alcorn, for the reason that he was an old citizen of the State, 
largely interested in its material development and welfare, and in every 

*" History of Mississippi," Lowry ami McCnnlle, p. o85. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 177 

respect preferable to Lis oppoueut, whom they regarded as the exponent 
of tyranny and lawless oppression. 

On the l-4th of October Col. Lamar wrote to his friend and quondam 
partner, E. D. Clarke, Esq., of Yicksburg: 

As to politics, I tliink tliis is one of tlie most important elections, perliaps the 
most important, tliat we have had since reconstruction. I am for Alcorn, and perhaps 
it will surprise you to learn that I am as warmly in liis favor at this time as I have 
been in times past opposed to him. In this, if I could talk to you instead of having 
to write, I think I could sliow that I am consistent in purpose, and principle, though I 
have changed my relative position as to men and measures. This is true patriotism 
and statesmanship in my opinion. Consistency in your end and aim ; variety, change, 
and adaptaljiUty in the use of your means. 

Hitherto our gubernatorial contests for election have had one controlling purpose, 
which was somewhat different from tluit now in view. I mean that it was lolalhj differ- 
ent. Heretofore the object has been to have an election that would secure for our peo- 
ple harmoniousand reMored relations with the Federal administration. It looked to the 
deliverance of the State from military thraldom, and to the reiuvestiture of civil 
authority and Federal rights. Our nominations and our platforms were all made with 
a view to these Federal and external relations and exigencies. Hence, both parties in- 
dorsed the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments, and advocated the fifteenth amend- 
ment as proposed. Both sought to get the sympathy and good will of the Federal ad- 
ministration. The Conservatives nominated the brother-in-law of the President as an 
earnest of the good faith in which they proposed to abide and carry out the results of 
the war. The Radicals nominated Alcorn, a Southerner, but one whose jiarty align- 
ment with tlie new cilizem (Northern Radicals and freed negroes) was presented as a surer 
guarantee of harmony witli and support of the administration than the old slavehold- 
ers could give, even wdtli the President's brother-in-law at their head. 

Tlie real oljject of both sides was to secure the good will of the power at AVashing- 
ton. The constituency to which they appealed, and whose ideas they consulted was, 
not the people in Mississipjn, but the President and his cabinet at Washington. The in- 
ternal administration of our affairs was in great measure overlooked in the contest; 
certainly very much subordinated. 

Now, whilst I and you and such as we were willing to support Dent (at the head of 
the original citizens of Mississippi) and abide the amendments for the sake of obtain- 
ing restitution of Federal relations and freedom from military rule, I was opposed 
bitterly and uncompromisingly to reaching such a result through the intervention of 
the negroes and carpetbaggers headed l>y Alcorn. / believed such a result to he fraught 
with more of injury to the Stale than a coniin nance of the military rule. Sulisequent events 
have confirmed my impression. AVhetber they have produced that belief in Alcorn's 
mind or not, is a matter of no question. Having accomplished the restoration of the 
Stiite to her position as a member of the Union, with one or two other objects of a 
personal nature, he is satisfied now that the longer continuance of this Radical party 
headed by Ames in the jiossession of the power of the State government will be a ter- 
rible evil to the State which all good citizens should oppose with all their power. 

I was opposed to the introduction of these people into the government of the State. 
I am ready to cooperate with him in their expulsion. 

He has, from the aggressive and comb.ative qualities of his character, combined 
with the prominence of his position and his senatorial collisions with. Ames, assumed 
the leadership of tbe conservatives in this State. It has been almost forced upon him 
by the stress of events. Whatever may be his personal objects, the public ones, to- 
gether with the bold and somewhat daring manner with which he has thrown him- 
12 



178 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

self into our leadership, entitle him, in my opinion, to that position, and to our cordial 
and unsliidal support. 

Tlie reasons why he should be elected and Ames defeated now are uuich stronger 
than those which made us wish him defeated and Dent elected in the former contest; 
but I will not give them in this letter. 

The " old citizens," however, did not feel the importauce of cooper- 
ation with Gov. Alcorn so deeply as did Mr. Lamar. Tliey gave him 
but a lukewaj-m support. Ames was elected, and the carpetbag domin- 
ion given another, but a final, lease on life. 

Here is a bit of literary genre, which is not without its significance 
and timely color: a letter from F. M. Gear, Esq., a lawyer of Tupelo, 
Miss., one of his law students of old: 

Well, I am not niariied yet; and no hope. I am thinking some, though, of taking 
part in the Cuban war. If Grant still thinks we down here in the rebel country don't 
love tlie "old flag," if he will give us a fair showing, we will show him different. Of 
course I would not like to go into the army as a private soldier, unless it was ab.io- 
lutely nei'essary that I, together with other gentlemen, should go tliat way; but I am 
in earnest. If the government would give me a resjiectable position, I'd go in a min- 
ute, and fight like the devil too. I was thinking to-day tliat if the United States 
should go to war with Spain (which she ought to do) there is nothing that ^^ould 
sooner and more effectually allay the prejudices and bad blood between the North 
and the South than a prompt and liberal response to a call for troops from the South 
of the best and leading young men of the country. I am willing to go. Tell the 
President that if he will appoint me colonel I'll raise him a regiment of " the boys in 
gray." 

We have a very interesting C'ircuit Court in sesr^ion here. Col. Voorhees came to- 
niglit; the Francis Insurance case set for to-morrow. 

This, also, from Mr. Voorhees to Hon. W. E. Niblack, of Indiana: 

Tupelo, Miss., November 25, 1S73. 
... If war should be declared against Spain, the South will fight under the old 
flaa in a way to command the admiration of the world. Of this there is no doubt. 
This is the expression on all hands, and the genuine tone of the press. There are 
three ex-Confederate ofliceis now sitting by me, each with but one arm, and they 
would all tight now for the government in a just cause; and they consider the present 
a just one in behalf of the national honor. 

Mr. Lamar was promptly at hand in December to take his seat as a 
member, from Mississii)pi, of the Forty-third Congress. He found 
Congress to be a very different body from what it was before the war, 
and his place in it even more altered. Coming from a Southern State 
lately in armed hostility to the government, and never since the day of 
secession represented by a man of his political creed or antecedents, 
it will be difficult to conceive adequately of the embarrassment, the deli- 
cacy, and the gravity of his position and his duties. He found that 
sectional animosity was strong and bitter; that the purposes and aspi- 
rations of the Southern people were grossly misrepresented from many 
powerful quarters, and were generally most sadly misunderstood; that, 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 179 

based upon such misrepresentations and misunderstandings, measures 
had been, and constantly were, introduced, which to him and his people 
appeared most hostile and deadly to their happiness, their prosperity, 
and their liberty. 

He was appointed to the Committee on Elections. Soon after his ar- 
rival he made a short speech on a contested election case from ^Vest 
Virginia, which was regarded as " quite a hit," and received a good deal 
of complimentary notice from the press ; but of which he wrote to his 
family: 

The little speech I made attracted for more attention than it deserves. Its only 
merit consisted in presenting the truth of the case disengaged from the irrelevant 
points with which it had been confused. 

A few days later he wrote to Hon. T. J. Wharton, of Jackson, Miss. : 
Washington, D. C, 1418 F. Street, December 25, 1873. 

Hon. Thomas J. Whakton. 

My Dear Friend : . . . There will be very little opportunity for me to say any- 
thing that will strike my own people impressively. I am on a hard-working commit- 
tee, where I can be of some use, though not in an imposing way. It is well under- 
stood here that I have already contriliuted efiective aid to our friends in defeating the 
project of putting in the Republicans from West Virginia. I think, too, I have won 
the confidence and respect of tlie niumViers of my committee. The Chairman of it 
told me that he would rather agree with me in action upon the case than all the 
others. Probably this was flattery, but it shows a desire to secure my coiiperation 
rather than to provoke antagonisms. But a truce to such egotisms. You want to 
know something about Federal politics, don't you? 

Well, I have seen Grant once. I went with Stephens. We were carried into a re- 
ception room, and were told that the President would be in in a few moments. Very 
soon another person came in, whom I took to be one of the upper servants. He said : 
"Good morning, Mr. Stephens." Mr. Stephens, to my utter astonishment, replied: 
" Good morning, Mr. President. Allow me to introduce Col. Lamar, member of Con- 
gress from Mississippi." I had seen his pictures, and had heard A. G. Brown describe 
him, but I was taken by surprise. He is, at first sight, the most ordinary man I ever 

saw in prominent position. He is about the complexion and size of . After 

scannivg him closely you see before you a very strong, self-contained man, full ot pur- 
pose, resolute even to obstinacy, and of infinite sang-froid. He talked freely in a voice 
not very deep, but with a slight rasp in it, such as you sometimes observe in men who 
drink a great deal. He is by no means deficient in conversational power. He talked 
about Cuba, and what he said would have made a very good ten-minute speech in 
the House. He said that, wh.atever might be the real facts as to the " Virgiiiius," she 
was priTMi. facie an American vessel, and must l>e delivered up. " But," added he, " I 
have very much doubted whether the S]ianish Government has the power to give efiect 
to the concession to our demand, however anxious it may be to do so. The [lower of 
Castelar over Cuba is very slight, and hangs by a very uncertain tenure. I shall not 
be surprised if the Spanish party in Culia refuses to comply with the order to deliver 
up the ship." "Then," said Mr. Stephens, " whenever this refusal is made known, I 
hope that you will recommend the repeal of the neutrality laws." "No," said he; "I 
shall not do that. I shall urge the recognition of Cuban independence." He then went 
on to talk about Cuba in a way to show that he had studied the question closely. 

I judge him to be a man of rather a narrow range of ideas, but of clear perception 
within the range of his mental vision, close observation, and accustomed to forming 



180 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR. 

very decided opinions about men and tilings. He does not look at yon when he con- 
verses. There is nothing furtive in his manner. He simply looks straight bij you. 
Once he turned and looked at nie very steadily and sharply all over, and then turned 
his eyes from me and began to talk very freely. I take him to be tlie most ambitious 
man that we have ever had. His schemes are startling. With the machinery of the 
Civil Rights bill transferring to the Federal Courts jurisdiction, civil and criminal, over 
the protection of persons, property, and hberty, in eveiy State, against injuries com- 
mitted on account of race; with the control of telegraph lines and railroads, which 
he is seeking to get; and with all the emissaries, spies, employees, and tools that his 
patronage gives him, there will be no limit to the despotic power which he is ever 
ready to use relentlessly and fearlessly for his own purposes: which purposes are the 
most arbitrary that have ever yet been cherished by a Federal Executive. 

I have an idea, as yet vague, of making a speech on the relation of the Southern 
people (the original citizens) to the reconstruction policy of the government. It is a 
very delicate subject, and it is very difficult to determiiie what not to say. There is, 
however, one phase of it not yet fully understood, and that is the readiness of our 
Mississi|ipi people to conform to tlie policy of the government, as evidenced in our 
offering to place our State government in the hands of a man not only devoted t<j the 
political and personal fortunes of the President, but also a member of his family. 

There were some letters written by Barksd.ale, Harris, and yourself at that time, 
which I would like to read over. There is one sentence in Barksdale's letter, which, 
if I remember its import, will be as valuable as if every word were a diamond. It in- 
dicated that we of the South must settle the question of negro suft'iage in a spirit of 
true regard to the rights, demands, and interests of the negro race; that such an ad- 
justment, fair and honorable, we would have to make, even if it were not forced upon us 
by Federal interventim. If I could get those letters, I would refer to them, and I would 
quote the sentence in the Barksdale letter. I remember it more distinctly than the 
others because it accorded with my own preconceived convictions. Can't you get 
them and send them to me immediately? * 

On the 22d of the following January (1874) the West Virginia case 
was again np for consideration, and Mr. Lamar made another speech 
upon the subject, much more elaborate than that of December, but not 
of any special interest now. 

» Unfortunately the files of the Clarion had been destroyed by Are, and the letters could not he 
found.— E. M. 



CHAPTER XV. 

The Eulogy on Sumner— Preparation— Letter to Eeemelin— Mr. Sumner's Flag Res- 
olution— Memorial Services in the Senate— In the House— Lamar's Oration — Its 
Deliver}'- Its Reception— Letter to Wife— Comments of the Press; Extracts— An- 
ecdote of Thurman— Criticisms—Mr. Blaine on the Eulogy— Effects. 

THE turning point of Mr. Lamar's political career was the Sumner 
eulogy. Indeed, that great speech is believed by his admirers and 
friends to have been the deathblow to sectional animosity, and by cou- ^ 

sequence the turning point of our iiosl helium national history. Through 
it, and through his subsequent labors in pursuance of the spirit which 
it evidenced and of the policy it inaugurated, many claim for him the 
enviable position of the most practically patriotic, the strongest, and the 
most useful mau of our government since the Civil War. 

The last three chapters of this work have been failures unless they 
have conveyed to the reader a clear conception of the fact that the 
course of political history after the war had caused between the masses 
of the North and those of the South a mutual distrust deeper and a 
hostility apparently greater than existed when the Confederacy fell; 
that the rivalry of arms which, although baptized in blood, was yet 
generous, had given place on the one side to suspicions, and on the 
other to sullen oV fierce resentments, which augured but ill for the hap- 
piness, the tranquillity, and the glory of the republic. It was given to 
Mr. Lamar with a noble self-forgetfulness to dare the perilous task of 
throwing himself, like another Curtius, into the widening chasm and 
bidding it to close. With sympathetic hand he touched the freezing 
hearts of North and South, unlocking their latent stores of kindly and 
generous feeling, and kindling anew in them the fast-failing fires of 
love. 

What he did was not the rash or impulsive act of an egotist seeking 
to seize a favorable and dramatic opportunity by which to achieve per- 
sonal reputation and selfish power. Had it been so, he would have 
failed without doubt. Nor was his act the ofl'spring of any cold (al- 
thoLigh impersonal) calculation of sectional policy; had it been so, then 
also had he doubtless failed, for in either case the talismanic power 
of a great love and patriotism had been wanting. His course was the 
achievement of a noble heart and a great mind capable of those broad 
and catholic sympathies which penetrate the veils of differing views, in- 
stinct with a wide patriotism, chastened by mighty and long-continued 
sorrow, and stirred to their profoundest depths by the realizaticm of a 

tremendous national crisis. 

(181) 



/ 



1S2 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

Nor was this speech altogether the result of quick inspiration drawn 
from sudden opportunity. On the contrary, much of it was the flower 
of loug-coutinued soul culture; and an occasion for the in-esentatiou of 
that part of it had been yearned after for years. In the Reemelin let- 
ter of July 15, 1872, quoted in part in the jDreceding chapter, he said: 

As for national politics, it Inis seemed to me that wisdom, as well as self-respect, 
should restrain those of us who aspired to statesmanship before the Southern over- 
throw, from obtruding our counsels and views upon a crisis which we failed to con- 
trol by arms. I remember that you protested against this position during your visit 
here. It made a decided impression on me, and I have so far deferred to your judg- 
ment as to be ready to speak whenever any utterance of mine can be useful. 

But will the North listen to a Southern man with patience and respect? Is it pos- 
sible for a secessionist from the South to convince a Northern audience that there is 
a commonground on which tlie two sections can stand and live in harmony? You 
know what would be the deraamls of such an audience when seeing a secessionist 
before them. Could such a man, with his mind ]iervaded by a deep sense of the im- 
portance, sanctity, and authority of his principles, which are under the ban of that 
audience, speak manfully and candidly, however kindly, and receive patient and con- 
siderate attention? 

Remember that there are as many things to be wisely not said as to be said. For 
instance, the denunciations against Grant (many of them unjust, by the way), which 
Northern speakers launch from the hustings, your people would not brook from a 
Southerner. You know exactly what utterances he ought to make, and where lie 
ought to be silent. But you are not Southern, although ire would be proud to have 
you as our representative, /only know enough to observe that so far the utterances 
of Southern men, whether they be Jefif Davis or Toombs or Stephens on the one 
hand, or Lee on the other, not only fail to conciliate the popular heart of the North, 
but generally inflame their irritated feelings. And yet such conciliation has be- 
come indispensable to the security and tranquillity of Southern society. In my 
opinion the two sections are estranged simply because each is ignorant of the inner 
mind of the other, and it is the policy of the party in power to keep up and exagger- 
ate the mutual misunderstanding. When, for instance, Morton proclaims in the Sen- 
ate, "These men are cast in the mold of reliellion ami cannot bend," the South, tak- 
ing it as the sentiment of that party and of the i>eople it represents, are embittereil, and 
grow reckless and defiant. The North, seeing only the effect and accepting it as con- 
firmation of the truth of Morton's allegations, allows Congress to go on in its mad ca- 
reer of ruthless legislation. 

But is not this an apjialling spectacle? ■ On the one hand a brave, impulsive, 
but too sensitive people full of potent life and patriotic fire, ready— aye, eager— to 
abide with knightly honor the award of the bloody arbitrament to which they ap- 
pealed; and yet, as if dumb, unable to speak intelligibly their thought and pur- 
pose. (!)n the other hand a great and powerful section (I came near saying na- 
tion), flushed with victory and success, liut full of generous and magnanimous feeling 
toward their vanquished brethren; and they too, as if under some malign sjiell, 
speaking only words of bitterness, hate, ami threatenings. 

He indeed would be a patriot and benefactor who could awake them from their 
profound egotism, and say to them with effectual connnand: "IMy countrymen, hiow 
one another." For then nature herself with her mighty voice would exclaim: "Lm'e 
one another." 

Here we have the first foreshadowing of the Sumner speech (so far 
as is known), nearly two years before it was made. 




CHARLES SUMNER. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 183 

Possessed by the conviction expressed in that letter, and animated by 
such longing for full forgiveness and forgetfuluess betvpeeu alienated 
brethren, with what an infinitude of soothing must Mr. Sumner's famous 
resolution of 1872 have fallen uijon him! 

Whereas [it ran] the national unity and good will among fellow-citizens can be as- 
eiired only through oblivion of past difl'erences, and it is contrary to the usages of civ- 
ilized nations to perpetuate the memory of civil war; 

Therefore be it enacted, etc., that the names of battles with fellow-citizens shall 
not be contained in the army register or placed on the regimental colors of the United 
States. 

Mr. Sumner died on the 11th of March, 1874. Being a member of 
the United States Senate, it was customary that appropriate recognition 
of the death should be made by both houses of Congress. The Massa- 
chusetts delegation in the House invited Mr. Lamar to second the usu- 
al resolutions in that body and to deliver a memorial address. Here 
was an opportunity to make his appeal for " peace between the sec- 
tions," and he seized upon it. He seized iipon it all the more gladly be- 
cause his heart was full of kindly feeling toward Mr. Sumner, very 
much softened toward the great scholar and statesman who, at the other 
extreme of the Union, had felt the same generous impulses with himself, 
and had undertaken the same great labor of pacification. It was one 
of those golden and rare occasions when the most exalted feeling runs 
hand in hand with the subtlest worldly wisdom. 

On the 27th of April the Senate suspended business in order that the 
friends and associates of Mr. Sumner might pay fitting tribute to his 
public and private virtues. Mr. Boutwell gave a comprehensive and 
discriminating analysis of his character and career, as also did Mr. 
Sherman; Mr. Thurman spoke with great exaltation of his personal 
character; Mr. Morrill, of Maine, and Mr. Anthony were very tender 
and noble in their eulogies, both of them possessing great felicity upon 
such occasions. 

On the next day (the 28th) the action of the Senate was notified to 
the House. Hon. E. R. Hoar, of Massachusetts, then offered the fol- 
lowing resolution : 

Resolved, That as an additional mark of respect to the memory of Charles Sumner, 
long a Senator from Massachusetts, and in sympathy with the action of the Senate, 
business be now suspended in this House to allow fitting tributes to be paid to his 
public and i«ivate virtues. 

In offering the resolution Mr. Hoar made an address of a lofty and 
appreciative strain. It then came the turn of Mr. Lamar to second the 
resolution. 

It was an occasion thoroughly well calculated to excite public expec- 
tancy, incredulity, criticism. To the lot of Mr. Sumner almost beyond 
any other man it had fallen to antagonize all that the South stood for. 



184 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

It was generally untlerstoud that lier people regarded liim as oue of her 
most uucompromising euemies. At the very time of his demise he was 
pressing most earnestly the Civil Eights Bill, which placed the negro 
on the exact level with the white man in respect to all civil privileges; 
and almost his last words, addressed to Mr. Hoar, were: " Take care of 
my Civil Eights Bill." That a Mississippi Eeijreseutative, a Southron 
of the Southrons, shouhl pronounce a eulogy ujjon him was naturally 
regarded as a curious spectacle of questionable taste. Perhaps no i>ne 
expected aught but a purely jDerfunctory performance, an unwilling- 
tribute to a dead foe exacted by the good breeding of civilization; but 
the generosity of the Southern nature, its chivalric passion which con- 
cedes so much to honesty of purpose and to high-hearted devotion to 
sincere conviction, had not been taken into the account; and Mr. Lamar, 
who so thoroughly embodied the loftiest Southern sentiment, amazed 
the doubters. J3e said: 

J/)-. iSjicid-er; In rising to second the resolutions just offered, I desire to add a few 
remarks which have occurred to me as api)roi)riate to the occasion. I believe tl}at 
they express a sentiment which pervades tlie hearts of all the jieople whose repre- 
sentatives are here assembled. Strange as, in looking back upon the past, the asj^er- 
tion may seem, impo.ssible a>< it would have been ton years ago to make it, it is not 
the less true tliat to-day Mississippi regrets the death of Chai'les Sumner, and sincerely 
unites in paying lionors to his memory. Not because of the splendor of his intellect, 
though in him was extinguished one of the brightest of the lights wdiich have illus- 
trated the councils of the government for neai'ly a quarter of a century ; not because 
of the high culture, the elegant scholarship, and the varied learning wdnch revealed 
themselves so clearly in all his puljlic efforts as to justify the application to him of 
Johnson's felicitous expression, " He touched nothing which he did not adorn ; " not 
this, though these are qualities by no means, it is to be feared, so common in public 
places as to make their disappearance, in even a single instance, a matter of indiffer- 
ence: but because of those peculiar and strongly marked moral tiaits of his character 
which gave the coloring to the whole tenor of his singularly dramatic public career; 
traits which ma<le him for a long period to a large portion of his t'ountrymen the ob- 
ject of as deep and passionate a hostility as to another he was one of enthusiastic 
admiration, and which are not the less the cause that now unites all these parties, 
ever so widely differing, in a common sorrow to-day over his lifeless remains. 

It is of these high moral qualities which I wish to speak; for these have been the 
traits which in after years, as I have considered the successive acts and utterances of 
this remarkable man, fastened most strongly my attention, and impressed themselves 
most forcibly upon my imagination, my sensibilities, my heart. I leave to others to 
.speak of his intellectual superiority, of those rare gifts with which nature had so lav- 
ishly endowed him, and of the ]iower to use them which he had acquired by educa- 
tion. I say nothing of his vast and varied stores of historical knowledge, or of the 
wide extent of his reading in the elegant literature of ancient and modern times, or 
of his wonderful power of retaining what he had read, or of his readiness in drawing 
upon these fertile resources to illustrate his own arguments. I say nothing of his elo- 
quence as an orator, of his skill as a logician, or of his powers of fascination in the 
unrestrained freedom of the social circle, which last it was my misfortime not to have 
experienced. These, indeed, were the qualities which gave him eminence not only in 
our country, liut throughout the wnild; and wliicli have made the name of Charles 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 185 

Sumner an integral part of our nation's glory. They were the qualities which gave 
to those moral traits of which I have spoken the power to impress themselves upon 
the history of tlie age and of civilization itself; and without which those traits, how- 
ever intensely ileveloped, woulil have exerted no influence beyond the personal circle 
inmiediately surrounding their possessor. More eloquent tongues than mine will do 
theui justice. Let me speak of the charai teristics which brought the illustrious Sen- 
ator who lias just passed away into direct and bitter antagonism for years with my 
own State and her sister States of the South. 

Charles Sumner w'as born with an instinctive love of freedom, and was educated from 
his earliest infancy to the belief that freedom is the natural and indefeasible right of 
every intelligent being having the outward form of man. In him, in f[ict, this creed 
seems to have been something more than a doctrine imbibed from teachers, or a re- 
sult of education. To him it was a grand intuitive trutli, inscribed in blazing letters 
upon the tablet of his inner consciousness, to deny which would have been for him 
to deny that he himself existed. And along with this all-controlling love of freedom 
he possessed a moral sensibility keenly intense and vivid, a conscientiousness which 
would never jiermit him to swerve by the breadth of a hair from what he pictured to 
himself as the path of duty. Thus were combined in liiui the characteristics which 
have in all ages given to religion her martyrs, and to patriotism her self-sacrificing 
heroes. 

To a man thorouglily permeated and imlnied with such a creed, and animated and 
constantly actuated by such a spirit of devotion, to behold a human being or a race 
of human beings restrained of their natural right to liberty, for no crime by him or 
them committed, was to feel all the belligerent instincts of his nature roused to combat. 
The fact was to him a wrong which no logic could justify. It mattered not how 
humble in the scale of rational existence the sul)ject of this restraint might be, how 
dark his skin, or how dense liis ignorance. Behind all that lay for him the great 
principle that liberty is the birthright of all humanity, and that every individual of 
every race who has a soul to save is entitled to the freedom which may enable him 
to work out his salvation. It mattered not that the slave might be contented with his 
lot; that his actual condition might be immeasurably more desirable than that from 
wdiich it had transplanted him ; that it gave him physical comfort, mental and moral 
elevation, and religious culture not possessed by his race in any other condition; that 
his bonds had not been placed upon liis hands by the living generation ; that the mixed 
social system of which he formed an element had been regarded l:iy the fathers of the 
republic, and by the ablest statesmen who had risen up after them, as too comi>licated 
to be broken up without danger to society itself, or even to civilization ; or, finally, that 
the actual state of things had been recognized and explicitly sanctioned by the very or- 
ganic law of the republic. Weighty as these considerations might be, formidable as 
were the difficulties in the way of the practical enforcement of his great principle, be 
held none the less that it must sooner or later be enforced, though institutions and con- 
stitutions should have to give way alike before it. But here let me do this great man 
the justice which, amid the excitement of the struggle between the sections— now 
past— I may have been disposed to deny him. In this fiery zeal, and this earnest 
warfare against the wrong, as he viewed it, there entered no enduring personal ani- 
mosity toward the men whose lot it was to be born to the system which he de- 
nounced. 

It has been the kindness of the sympathy which in these later years he has dis- 
played toward the impoverislied and suffering people of the Southern States that has 
unveiled to me the generous and tender heart which beat beneath the bosom of the 
zealot, and has forced me to yield him the tril)ute of my respect— I might even say of 
my admiration. Nor in the manifestation of this has there been anything wbicli a 
proud and sensitive people, smarting under a sense of recent discomfiture and present 



186 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

suflfering, might not frankly accept, or which would give them just cause to suspect 
iti sincerity. For though he raised his voice, as soon as he believed the momentous 
issues of this great military conflict were decided, in behalf of amnesty to the van- 
quished; and though he stood forward, ready to welcome liack as brothers, and to re- 
establish in their rights as citizens, those whose valor had nearly riven asunder the 
Union which he loved ; yet ho always insisted that the most ample protection and 
the largest safeguards sliould be thrown around the liberties of the newly enfran- 
chised African race. Though he knew very well that of hi:* conquered fellow-citizens 
of the South by far the larger portion, even those who most heartily acquiesced in 
and desired the abolition of slavery, seriously questioned the expediency of investing, 
in a single day, and without any preliminary tutelage, so vast a body of inexperi- 
enced an<l uninstructed men with the full rights of freemen and voters, he would tol- 
erate no halfway measures upon a point to him so vital. 

Indeed, immediately after the war, while other minds were occupying themselves 
with different theories of reconstruction, he did not hesitate to impress most emphat- 
ically upon the adnunistration, not only in puldic, but in tlie coniidence of private in- 
tercourse, his uncompromising resolution to oppose to the last any and every scheme 
which should fail to provide the surest guarantees for the personal freedom and po- 
litical rights of the race whicli he had undertaken to protect. Whether his measures 
to secure this result showed him to be a practical statesman or a theoretical enthusi- 
ast, is a question on which any decision we may pronounce to-day must await the in- 
evitable revision of posterity. Tiie spirit of magnanimity, therefore, which breathes 
in his utterances and manifests itself in all las acts affecting the South during the last 
two years of his life, was as evidently honest as it was grateful to the feelings of those 
toward whom it was displayed. 

It was certainly a gracious act toward the South — though unhappily it jarred upon 
the sensibilities of the people at the other extreme of the Union, and estranged from 
him the great body of his political friends — to propose to erase from the banners of 
the national army the mementos of the bloody internecine struggle, which might be 
regarded as assailing the pride or wounding the sensibilities of the Southern ]ieople. 
That proposal will never be forgotten by that people so long as the name of Charles 
Sumner lives in the memory of man. But, while it touched the heart of the South, 
and elicited iier profound gratitude, her people would not have asked of the North 
such an act of self-renunciation. 

Conscious that they themselves were animated l)y devotion to constitutional lib- 
erty, anil that the brightest pages of history are replete with evidences of the depth 
and sincerity of that devotion, they cannot but cherish the recollections of sacrifices 
endured, the battles fought, and the victories won in defense of their hapless cause. 
And respecting, as all true and brave men must respect, the martial spirit with which 
the men of the North vimiicated the integrity of the Union, and their devotion to the 
principles of human freedom, they do not ask, they do not wish tlie North to strike 
the mementos of her heroism and victory from either records or monuments or bat- 
tle flags. Tliey would rather that both sections should gather up the glories won by 
each section: not envious, but proud of each other, ami regard them a common her- 
itage of American valor. 

Let us hope that future generations, when they remember the deeds of heroism 
and devotion done on both sides, will speak not of Northern jirowess and Southern 
courage, but of the heroism, fortitude, and courage of Americans in a war of ideas; a 
war in which each section signalized its consecration to the principles, as each under- 
stood them, of American liberty and of the constitution received from their fathers. 

It was my misfortune, perhaps my fault, personally never to have known this em- 
inent pbilantbriiiiist and statesman. The in:pulse was often strong upon me to go to 
him and ollbr him my hand, and my heart with it, and to express to him my thanks 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 187 

for his kind and considerate course toward the people with wliom I am idontil'ied. 
If I did not yield to that impulse, it was because the thouL'lit occurred tliat 
other days were coining in which such a demonstration might lie more opportune, 
and less liable to misconstruction. Suddenly, and without premoniti(m, a day has 
come at last to which, for such a purpose, there is no to-morrow. My i-egret is there- 
fore intensified by the thought that I failed to speak to him out of the fullness of my 
heart while there was yet time. 

How often is it that death thus brings unavailingly back to our remembrance op- 
portunities unimproved: in which generous overtures, prompted by the heart, 
remain unofTered; frank avowals which rose to the lips remain janspoken; and the 
injustice and wrong of bitter resentments remain unrej)aired![_Charles Sumner, in \ 
life, believed that all occasion for strife and distrust between the North and South had 
pas-ed away]and that there no longer remained any cause for continued estrangement 
between these two sectiojis of our common country. Are there not many of ua who 
believe the same thing?,_Is not that tlie common sentiment — or if it is not, ought it 
not to be — of the great mass of our peojjle. North and South?_ Bound to each other 
by a common constitution, destined to live togetlier under a conimon government, 
forming unitedly but a single member of the great family of nations, shall W'e not now 
at last endeavor to grow toward each other jcyice more in heart, as we are already indis- 
solubly linked to each other in fortunes? j__Shall we not, over the honored remains oTj 
this great champion of human liberty, this feeling sympathizer with human sorrow, 
(this earnest pleader for the exercise of human tenderness and charity, lay aside tlie 
concealments which serve only to perj^etuate misunderstandings and distrust, and 
frankly confess that on both sides we most earnestly desire to be oiiw one not meiely 
in community of language and literature and traditions and country; but more, and 
better than all that, one also in feeling and in hear^^ Am I mistaken in this? 

Do the concealments of which I speak still cover animosities which neither time 
nor reflection nor the march of events have yet sufficed to subdue? I cannot be- 
lieve it. Since I have been here I have watched with anxious scrutiny your senti- 
ments as expressed not merely in public debate, but in the abandon of personal con- 
fidence. I know well the sentiments of these, my Southern brothers, whose hearts 
are so infolded that the feeling of each is the feeling of all ; an d I s ee on both sides 
only the seeming of a constraint, whicli each apparently hesitates to dismiss. Tlie 
South — jirostrate, exhausted, drained of her lifeblood, as well as of her material re- 
sources, yet still honorable and true — accepts the liitter award of the bloody arbitra- 
ment without reservation, resolutely determined to abide the result with chivalrous 
fidelity; yet, as if struck dumb by the magnitude of her reverses, she suffers on in 
silence. The North, exultant in her triumph, and elated by success, still cherishes, as 
we are assured, a heart full of magnanimous emotions toward her disarmed and discom- 
fited antagonist; and yet, as if mastered by some mysterious spell, silencing her bet- 
ter impulses, her words and acts are the words and acts of suspicion and distrust. 

Would that the spirit of the illustrious dead whom we lament to-day could speak 
from the grave to both parties to this deplorable discord in tones which should reach 
each and every heart throughout tliis_broad territory: "My countrj'inen! know one 
another, and yon will lore one another. " \ 

When Mr. Lamar arose to deliver this address he confronted an au- 
dience of the most distinguislied and intellectual men in the nation. 
The galleries were crowded with visitors, amongst whom were immbeved 
members of brilliant diplomatic corps from all over the enlightened 
world. The House itself was thronged: on the one side friends, full of 
on the other, opponents, cold, curious, critical. The 



^ 



188 LUCIUS Q. C LAMAR: 

speaker was a "fire eater" of the long ago. The odor of "rebellion" 
hnug about him. A secession Democrat, he yet stood there by a suf- 
frfige in which both negro and Republican votes participated. It was 
an epic in itself — his presence there, and on such an occasion. He was 
iu the prime of life, full ot sigor and physical power; but the illness 
of the year before had aged him somewhat in appearance. His dark, 
/ abundant hair was combed back from his broad, high forehead; his 
great gray eyes, with pupils so distended as to produce the impression 
of coal-blackness, burned with suppressed passion; his mouth was hid- 
den by a long, brown, luxuriant mustache and goatee. His voice was 
full and clear — although it was evident that ill health had robbed it of 
some of its richer tones — well modidated, and jiitched to suit the gravity 
of the occasion. He spoke simply, with but little use of the arts of the 
/ orator. 

As he proceeded with the address, it was evident that something un- 
usual was going on. The House became hushed and reverent. The 
faces of the members and of the vast auditory were turned, rapt and 
attentive, upon the speaker, as he stood, iu an attitude of easy grace, iu 
the first aisle beyond the center, on the left of the chamber. The still- 
ness of the House and galleries became oppressive. The Speaker, Mr. 
Blaine, sat motionless, his face turned away, with tears stealing down 
his cheeks. On both sides of the House members wept. The scarred 
veterans of a hundred fields, and the callous actors in a hundred de- 
bates, Democrats and Republicans alike, melted into tears. Said one 
spectator afterwards: " Those who listened sometimes forgot to respect 
Sumner in respecting Lamar." When he closed all seemed to hold 
their breath, as if ti) prolong a sjjell; and then a spontaneous burst of 
^ applause broke out from all the floor and all the galleries, coming uj) 
heartily and warmly, especially from the Republican side. Such a 
thing as Democrats and Republicans uniting in a hearty and sympa- 
thetic applause of the same speech had never been heard of before; 
and the Speaker, gavel in hand, did not attempt to check it. " My 
God!" exclaimed Lyman Tremaine, of New York, rushing up to Mr. 
Kelly, of Pennsylvania, with tears in his eyes; "what a speech! and 
how it will ring through the country! " 

And so it was that Mr. Lamar, before distinguished, now leaped into 
fame. On the next day he wrote to his wife: 

I never in all my life opened my lips with a puipose more single to the interests 
of our Southern people than when I made this speech. 1 wanted to seize an op])or- 
tunity, when universal attention could he arrested, and directed to what I was saying, 
to speak to the North in behalf of my own people. I succeeded fully, but not more 
fully than I anticipated. I will send you letters which will show you what a tre- 
mrndons revolution of feeling it has wrought in Boston and New York toward the 
South. I did not aim at rhetorical or personal success, so earnest and engrossing was 
my other object; but the rhetorical triumpli was as ])rodigious as it was unexpected. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 18'J 

. . . One of the most gnitifying features of the occasion was that xuy son was in 
tlie gallery, and witnessed the greatest triumph his father ever won. 

Tremaine was right. The speech did " ring through the country." 
It was a marked tribute to it that, amoug all those delivered in the two 
houses by members rejjreseutiug the various sections of the Union, this 
alone was sent to all parts of the country by telegraph. The newsjja- 
'pers were full of it. "How suddenly," said the iJeiiijihis Appeal, " L. 
Q. C. Lamar has become famous — famous above all American orators 
and statesmen! His fuueral eulogium upon Charles Sumner has been 
printed in every newspaper in America, and has now gone into the ' pat- 
ent outside,' and passes thence into the school readers." 

Let us see, by a few examples of the numberless comments, what 
were the things which the papers were saying about it: 

Tlie Boston Daily Advertiser (Republican): " Of the eulogies of Senator Siiraner pro- 
nounced in Congress, Monday, none will give more gratification to the people of New 
England than that of the Hon. Lucius Q. C. Lamar, of Mississippi. . . . The man- 
ner of the act comported with its magnanimous spirit. There is no sentence in Mr. 
Lamar's speech that breathes of any motive inconsistent with chivalrous honor. The 
pathos of it is its sincerity. It cdutains no lament for the irrecoverable past. It is in- 
stinct with the patriot's pride and faith. In the remarkable passage concerning Sen- 
ator Sumner's battle flag resolution he exhibits a charity and nobleness which we 
shall not justly appreciate unless we can imagine ourselves in the position of the van- 
quished. It is no disparagement to any one to say that Mi'. Lamar's sjieech is the 
most significant and hopeful utterance that has been heard from the South since the 
war. Were the North assured that such a temper prevailed throughout that section, 
our reconciliation would lack no element of completeness." 

The Boston Tramcripi: "The tone and spirit, not the letter, of the remarks of the 
ex-Confederate officer of the rebel army, now a member of Congress, indicate the 
mistakes made by party politicians in some of the features of the adopted plans for 
reconstruction, in which they lost sight of principles, in their eagerness to secure im- 
mediate pacification and power, at the e.xpense of permanent and prosperous quiet. 
Too late to change the past it may be; but it is not too late for public men to return, 
in their policy for the future, to the recognition of the sountl philosophical views of 
government that will stand the test of time." 

The Boston Herald: "This extreme 'fire eater,' whose admittance to Congress had 
been deemed dangerous, grasps the outstretched hand of the extreme abolitionist 
who was not spoiled by victory, and teaches us all a lesson in reconstruction. John 
A. Andrew advocated the reconstruction of the Southern States by and through the 
ruling class in that section: the men of intelligence and character, the men who had 
been faithful to their opinions with their lives and fortunes. But counsels le.ss wise 
prevailed, and the Southern State governments were thrown into the hands of scal- 
awags ' and ' carpetbaggers.' Even Sumner was not wise in time." 

The Boston Globe: "As an evidence of the real restoration of the Vnion in the 
South, despite the disturbances in some quarters, tliis speech must certainly attract 
much attention in Europe, and wherever our institutions are studied. . . . We 
do not know of any parallel in history to a recognition like this. The appreciation, 
by a leader of the vanquished, so soon after our great civil strife, not only of the iden- 
tity of interest between the two sections, but of the motives of the most determined 
assailant of slavery, is something to excite gratification and wonder; the more so as 
it is accompanied by a reiteration of a belief in the justice of the Southern cause." 



190 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: ■ 

The Springjidd (Mass.) Republican: " Wlien such a Southerner of the Southern- 
ers as Mr. Lamar, of Mississippi, stands up in the House of Kepresentatixes to 
pronounce such a generous and tender eulogy ujjon Charles Sumner as this 
which the wires bring us this morning, it must begin to dawn upon even the most 
inveterate rel_>el haters in Congress, and the press, that the war is indeed over, and 
that universal amnesty is in order." 

The Xew York Commercial Advtrtiner : " Yesterday the full glory of a generous South- 
ern manhood shone forth upon Congress and the nation, when Mr. Lamar . . . ex- 
claimed: ' My countrymen! know one another, and you will love one another.' . . . 
Mr. Lamar's speech was grave and tender; but it rose to impassioned earnestness at 
the close, and swept the House in a tumult of applause." 

The Philadelplda Press (Forney's): "What a manly speech Mr. Lamar, of Mississ- 
ippi pronounced on Charles Sumner last Monday. . . . How careful every Nortliern 
man should 1)6 to cherish tliis (Sumner's) great example of magnanim ity to our defeated 
brethren ! It is well to recollect in the liour of victory, and always as we live in the 
midst of the enjoyment of the blessings rescued and secured to us liy the overthrow 
of the rebellion, that perhaps if we had been reared near the institution of slavery 
we miglit ourselves have been forced into the revolt against the goverilment. . . . 
What man of the North went so far as Charles Sumner in support of tlie Union cause? 
. . . But, that war closed, his first great work was to obliterate all traces of triinnph 
over our kindred, and, while demanding the comjilete and exceptionless enfranchise- 
ment of the slave, he insisted upon the complete and exceptionless forgiveness of the 
Confederate. Tliis sliould be the platform of the whole American people." 

The Petersburg (Vii.) Jndev and Appeal: " Si)eaking of the eulogj' upon Senator 
Sumner pronounced last Monday week in the House of Representatives by Col. La- 
mar, of Mississippi, the Snoannah Advertiser-Republican says: ' The etfort speaks for 
itself, and we do not desire by comment to say more than the press of the country 
has said: that it was the sjieech of the occasion. But as Mr. Lamar is a Georgian 
born and bred, it affords us a pleasure to indorse every word, every line, and every 
sentiment of his eilbrt.' We adopt the language of our Georgian contemporary, and 
add our testimony to the eloquence, power and pathos of Col. Lamar's great s|ieecli." 

The Richmond Enquirer : " It was a bold, brave, eloquent appeal to the old fraternal 
feelings between the Nortliern and Southern people. . . . And after that speech 
the Northern man who says that the Soutli is ojjposed to reconciliation must admit 
that he denies and defies the facts that confront him." 

The Louisville Courier-Journal: "We point to Mr. Lamar's speech with pride and 
confidence. It speaks for itself. It is a manly, earnest, and eloquent plea for recon- 
ciliation. ' My countrymen ! ' says he, ' know each other, and you will love each other.' 
It is strong witliout being clumsy, and possesses polish without weakness. It is a 
vigorous truth. ... It was an appeal to two sections of a hemisphere to bury their 
mutual animosities in the grave ojiened for the recejition of a courageous and often 
misguided, but a generous and honest lieart. It was an invocation to the country to 
bury the evil that has been done by all whom Sumner had led, with his bones, and 
the expression of a patriotic and fervent hojie that the good might live after him. It 
represented the feelings of the entire Soutli, and nothing but a blind partisan bigotry 
will pretend to deny the fact." 

The Cincinnati Commercial: " The speech of the day, however, the one which evi- 
dently made the deepest impression and elicited the highest praises, was the one de- 
livered by Mr. Lamar. . . . Tliere were many wlio, in the bitterness and heat of 
partisan strife, had grown apparently callous and insensible to good professions from 
those whom they liave foutrht and distrusted as traitors, who were moved to tears by 
the simple, manly appeal to their better nature. The speech will live, and will have 
a marked and beneficent efi'ect in the future." 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. lUl 

The Memphis Appeal: " The South is pioud of L. Q. C. Lamar. His name has sliot 
across the sky lil^e a blazini; meteor. He is now the cynosure of all eyes. From one end 
of the Union to the other the press teems with praises of the brilliant iNIississippian. 
All concur in the opinion that no finer oration has ever been pronounced over the 
grave of the dead than that which Col. Lamar delivered in commemorating the great 
career of Charles Sumner. It was a touching, graceful tribute, and has done more 
toward breaking down the barriers that have so long divided the Union than any 
event since the war." 

The New Orleans Times spoke of "the honor that Lamar gained to himself by his 
noble speech. ... Its mission is to reveal to the people of all sections their com- 
mon humanity and their common patriotism, and to inspire them with a common as- 
piration for the welfare of the whole country." 

The Jiickson Chirlon: "The address abounds in noble and generous sentiments, and 
will do much toward bridging the bloody chasm which has separated the two sec- 
tions, and which self-seekers in both sections have endeavored to keep open after 
the causes that produced it had ceased to exist. ... By a proper word at the gold- 
en moment he has dispelled the mists of prejudice and hatred founded on error, 
which have l^linded the eyes of those who have used us despitefully ; and that, too, 
while ' reiterating his belief in the justice of the Southern cause.' "... 

The foregoing extracts from papers published at the extremes of the 
Union are taken almost at random. They might be greatly mnltiplied, 
but enough have been given to indicate the reception with which tjje 
Sumner speech met and the effect of it. 

Enormous' numbers of letters of congratulation and of sympathy 
potired in upon him from all parts of the nation. 

In later years he used to tell with much relish an anecdote to this 
effect: A- day or two after the speech he went to a circus with Senator 
A. G. Thurman. One of the features of the show was a woman on 
the flying trapeze. In the midst of her performance she uttered a 
wild scream and, having apparently lost her hold, flew across the ring 
as if falling from her great height; but in the midst of her flight she 
caught another trapeze, and skillfully and gracefully resumed her i)er- 
formauce. It was a trick to startle the spectators. When it ended so 
well his friend, turning to Mr. Lamar, said: "Lamar, that reminds me 
of you." "How so?" said the Colonel. "About your speech, you 
know. You caught all right; but if you bad missed, you'd have broken 
your neck." 

Mr. Lamar's speech, however, did not bring him roses only. Thorns 
came also, and they gave him many a bad quarter-hour. Letters of re- 
monstrance and criticism from friends dearly loved and greatly honored 
were there; and some of the Southern papers, misunderstanding his 
speech, assailed him fiercely on the idea that he had surrendered South- 
ern principle and honor. Prominent amongst these in his own State i 
were the Cohniibits Democrat, the Canton Mail, and the Meridian Merciiri). : 
Eelative to those assaults and other things he wrote as follows to his 
wife on the 5th of May: 

My eulogy has given me a reputation that I have never had before. The whole world 



192 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

is my audience. No one here tliinks I lowered tlie Southern flag, but the Southern 
press is down on rue. Th:it is unfortunate, for what they say will be copied by the 
Kiidical press of the North as evidence that the South still cherishes schemes of seces- 
sion and slavery. I do not blame Soulhern editors. Many of them are men of lim- 
ited views and strong passions. Our people have suffered so much, have been be- 
trayed so often by those in whom they ha<l the strongest reason to conflile, that it is 
but natural that they should be suspicious of any word or act of overture to the North 
by a Southern man. I know for once that I have done her good, that I have won 
friends to her side who were bitter enemies, that I have awakened sympathies where 
before existed animosities. If she condemns me, while I i^hall not be indifl'erent to 
her disapprobation, I shall not be cast down or mortified or resentful. I shall be 
cheered and consoled by the thought that I have done a wise and beneficial thing for 
her. It is tinre for a pulilic man to try to wrve the South, and not to subserve her ir- 
ritated feelings, natural and just as those feelings are. I shall serve no other interests 
than hers, and will calmly and silently retire to private life if her people do not ap- 
prove me. 

Ab, but they did approve of him ; no doubt about that. Their approval 
was sealed with a signet that cannot be challenged. There was no re- 
tirement to private life. From that time forth the people denied to him 
nothing. Every honor within their gift they bestowed iipon him at his 
asking, and bestowed at the first opportunity. They delighted to ele- 
vate him upon their shields. 

Criticism and objection are usually, perhaps always, more obtrusive 
and noisy than approval; and in the first reading of the popular mind 
Mr. Lamar overestimated the force of the protest from the South. In 
fact, that protest amounted to so little in practical result that it hardly 
needed to be noticed in this work, except with a view to a full and faitli- 
f ul presentation of facts, and iu order to show in what a noble spirit he 
met it and by what lofty motives his life was held. 

Ten years later Mr. Blaine, in his work, "Twenty Years of Congress," 
said this of the Sumner eulogy: 

A singular interest was added to the formal eulogies of ]VIr. Sumner by the speech 
of Mr. Lamar, of Mississippi, who lunl just returned to the House of Representatives 
which he left thirteen years before to join his State in secession. It was a mark of 
positive genius in a Southern representative to pronounce a fervid and discrimina- 
ting eulogy upon Mr. Sumner, and skillfully to interweave with it a defense of that 
which Mr. Sumner, like John Wesley, believed to be the sum of all villainies. Only 
a man of Mr. Lamar's peculiar mental type could have accomplished the task. He 
pleased the Radical antislavery sentiment of New England. He did not displease the 
Radical proslavery sentiment of the South. 

It is of course impossible to trace either fully or certainly the efi'ects 
of this speech. Very rarely indeed does it happen that one so com- 
pletely achieves a wish of a nature so far-reaching, long-brooded over, 
and altogether unselfish as did Mr. Lamar in this utterance to the North- 
ern people iu behalf of his section; and the consciousness of success in 
that patriotic aspiration was like a benediction to him. It went far to 
console him for the troubled jiast, and made him a happier man, or 
rather one less unhappy. To the Southern people, speaking generally, 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AXD SPEECHES. 193 

the speech was uot only a surprise, but also after the first startled self- 
esamiuation a revelatiou of themselves; and through it they rose to the 
consciousness of their power aud their duty to brush away the resent- 
ments which hung over their hearts like mephitic vapors of the night, 
aud to admit ouce more the brighter aud sweeter iuiluences of a new 
life. To the Northern people, whether it should have been so or not, 
it was also a disclosure of the South iu its nobler and stronger feelings; a 
disclosure which went far to confirm the desire then already widely felt 
amongst them that the hostility of the administration to the Southern 
section should be stayed, and that its people should be left free, within 
constitutional limits, to work out their own destinies in the Union. 
The great Democratic "tidal wave " of 1874 came six months later, aud 
that coutirmatiou contributed to that result, and materially. 

It is impossible to present here the evidences which sustain the fore- 
going proposition. They are too many and voluminous. Many of them 
will be found all through this volume. In truth, as years passed by 
and the growing prominence of Mr. Lamar caused him to become more 
and more a man of mark, and to be more and more discussed, and as 
the bearings aud origin of political events became clearer because of 
the perspective of distance, it came to be very commonly conceded by 
both parties that the Sumner eulogy was greatly influential in the recon- 
ciliation of the sections. 

Under the inspiration o£ that effort Hon. S. J. Eandall, then Chair- 
man of the Congressional Democratic Executive Committee, wrote to 
the editor of the Jack f on (Miss.) Clarion: 

Dear Sir: Lamar has jui^t finished his Sumner speech. It was a wonderful success. 
He said exactly what ought to have been said. The House was electritied. All par- 
ties are pleased, because it liindled a sentiment that rises higher than party passion. 
It will do us a great deal of good. 

Fourteen years later (on the 7th of January, 1S88), Senator Stewart, 
of Nevada, in his open letter to one of his constituents giving the rea- 
sons why he, a Eepublican, would vote against his party and support 
Mr. Lamar for Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, as 
related hereafter, said this of the eulogy: 

When a member of the Senate in the year lS7-t my attention, with tliat of many* 
oilier Senators, was attracted to Mr. Lamar by his eulogy on Charles Sumner, which 
thrilled both Houses of Congress and the country with admiration for its eloquence, its 
exalted sentiments, and its appeals for the restoration of that lofty and enlarged pa- 
triotism which embraces both sections of the country. Those who were most enthu- 
siastic in the praise of that speech were then the most ardent of Republicans, and I 
distinctly call to mind a tribute paid by Hon. George F. Hoar, then member of the 
House of Representatives and now Senator from ]\Ias>^achusetts. I have it before me 
in the North American Review for January and February, 1878, Volume 126. It is as 
follows : 

" The elor|uent words of Mr. Lamar, of Mississippi, so touched the hearts of the peo- 

13 



194" LUCirS Q. C. LAMAR. 

pie of the North that they may fairly be said to liave been of themselves an impor- 
tant influence in mitigating the estrangements of a generation." 

After Mr. Lamar's death the Illustrated American, in commenting 
upon his life and services, said: 

The House listened entranced. The country read with awe and admiration a trib- 
ute so earnest, so graceful, so truthful, so imbued with fraternal appreciation, so tinctured 
with lofty sentiment that, insen.sibly, the soul of the man lost seemed to be found in 
the man that perpetuated his memory. The heart of the land went out to Lamar. 
The "bloody shirt" became a byword and scorn. The warriors of peace that had 
traded upon tlie agonies of war were discredited, and discredited forever. Lamar had 
closed the gaping cliasm of civil war. 

Never in the history of civil convulsions was the single voice of honor so potent; 
never was the magnanimous impulse of manhood so generously accepted, so univer- 
sally understood. From the hour of the Sumner eulogy until the hour of his death La- 
mar meant to the South the voice that had stilled faction, restored constitutional right; 
to the North the intellect that had penetrated the darkness of Northern doubt. This 
surely was a great rAle to play : to bring distrusting, self-destroying millions together ; to 
make the mulctuary covenant of the Appomattox apple tree the broad charter of a reu- 
nited peo|)le. Lamar's single speech did that, for, though the jjowers of partisan dark- 
ness held sway a little longer, the heart of the North had been too deeply touched; 
and in 1S74 the miscreant regime of carpetbag anarchy in the South began to topple, 
and fell with a crash in 187G. 

It is, therefore, as the inspired pacificator that Lamar will stand out unique, almost 
incomprehensible, to other times than those that knew the incredible baseness of the 
policies that followed the war. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Speech on Misrule in the Soutliern States— Radical Rule in Louisiana— JIcEnery and 
Kellogg — Judge Durell's Extraordinary Order— Kellogg Installed — Jlr. Lamar's 
Speech — Its Reception — Incorrect Newspaper Personals— Further Events in Louisf- 
ana — Conflict of September 14, 1874 — Kellogg again Installed liy United States 
Troops — Mr. Lamar's Canvass of 1874 — The " Landslide " — Critical Era in the South 
— Course of Events in Louisiana — DeTrobriand Purges the Legislature — (Jen. P. H. 
Sheridan's " Banditti " Dispatch — Excitement in the North — Debates in Congress — 
Correspondence on Southern Policy — Lamar's Remarks on Civil Ritrhts Bill — Tlie 
Force Bill — Filibustering — Letter to New York Herald on Affairs in the South — Its 
Reception — Canvass and Speech in New Hampshire — Press Comments — Inter- 
viewed by Henry Grady — Correspondence. 

BY the Sumner eulogy Mr. Lamar secured a hearing from the North- 
ern members and their constituents. It is believed that from that 
time forth he never spoke to inattentive ears. It was not long before 
he availed himself of the advantage gained to i-aise his voice in behalf 
of his section and of a sounder and safer national administration. His 
speech on the Louisiana contested election, or " Misrule in the South- 
ern States," was delivered on the 8th of June. 

Perhaps in no State did the evils attendant upon the reconstruction 
assume a form so aggravated and malignant as in Louisiana. The great 
staples of that commonwealth (cotton, sugar, and rice) poured immense 
annual wealth into her places of business and her treasury. The city 
of New Orleans was a great commercial emporium, drawing its client- 
age from three or four States. There was the carcass, and thither did 
the vultures flock. All forms of perfidy, all phases of corruiatiou, ftU 
aspects of crime, reveled in that high carnival. The body jjolitic was 
rotten in every branch and through its pettiest ramifications. 

So firm was the hold the radicals had upon the State that they could 
afford to quarrel amongst themselves, and they did. The State officials 
constituted one faction, and the Federal officeholders the other: this led 
by Packard, the United States Marshal, and Casey, the Collector of the 
Port (brother-in-law of President Grant); that by the Governor, War- 
mouth. President Grant gave his personal favor and substantial aid to 
the Packard-Casey party. Between those factions, in the years 1871 and 
1872, there were violent struggles: over the control of the Kepiiblican 
State Convention, in which the Customhouse wing succeeded by a lib- 
eral use of LTnited States troops and Deputy United States Marshals; 
over the presidency of the State Senate, the Warmouth party winning 
in this instance; over the speakership of the House, in which the Fed- 
eral wing dared to arrest the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, four 

(195) 



196 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAIi: 

Senators, and eighteen members of the House by writs from the United 
States Court, charging conspiracy to resist the execution of tlie laws of 
the United States, thus securing an advantage, which, however, was soon 
lost. The Warmouth party prevailed for the time being. 

At the general elections in November, 1872, the Warmouth faction 
and the Democrats put out a fusion ticket, with John McEnery as can- 
didate for Governor; while the Customhouse faction supjjorted Wil- 
liam P. Kellogg for the office. Pinchback, the colored Lieutenant Gov- 
ernor, deserted Warmouth and went over to the other party. 

The result of that election was afterwards canvassed three times. 
First, by a body known as the " DeFeriet EetiTiming Board," a board 
whose duty it was under the law to canvass the returns and declare the 
result. Again by the " Forman Board," appointed by the Senate of 
what came to be known as the McEnery Legislature. Again, with the 
original returns before them, by a committee of the Senate of the 
United States, not one member of which was a Democrat. Those three 
canvasses all ended iiip substantially the same result: the Fusion State 
officers had been elected by majorities ranging from nine to fifteen thou- 
sand, with conservative or Fusion majorities of thirty-nine members in 
the House and of eleven members in the Senate. 

Another board, called the "Lynch Board," dealt with this matter in 
the interest of the Badical party. Senator Carpenter, of Wisconsin, in 
his exhaustive speech on these transactions, demonstrated that this 
board was not only without legal i^ower to count these returns, but also 
had not even a color of authority. The Senate Committee itself said in 
its report that 

There is notliing in all the comedy of blunders and frauds under consideration 
more indefensible than the pretended canvass of this board. 

The Legislature was to meet on the 9th of December. Before the 
meeting, and before the promulgation of the returns of the election, 
Kellogg filed in the Circuit Court of the United States a bill, the object 
of which, as it appeared in the bill, was to jjerjietuate testimony: simply 
to preserve what he claimed to be the returns of the election and the 
evidences by which they were accompanied. It was more than qiies- 
tionable whether the court had any jurisdiction. To many legal minds 
it seemed perfectly clear that it had not. But if it had, that jurisdic- 
tion was only preservative: only to preserve the returns and the accom- 
panying evidences. It could go no further. The bill did not even 
pray for anything further. 

On the 3d of December a telegram came to the United States Marshal 
from the Attorney General of the United States to the effect that the 
Marshal was to enforce the decrees and mandates of the United States 
courts, no matter by whom resisted; and that Gen. Emory would fur- 
nish him with all troops necessary for that purpose. On the night of 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 107 

the 5tli, Judge Durell, not sitting in court, without any motiou by 
either party to the case, at luichiight, closeted with the Marshal and the 
plaintiff's attorneys, himself drew up or dictated an order directing the 
Marshal to take possession of the Statehouse and to permit no one to en- 
ter it except certain persons described iu tlie order. No process was is- 
sued; but yet before two o'clock in the morning- the Statehouse was seized 
by the troops of the United States under that order, and batteries 
were planted around it for the purpose of liolding it for the Kellogg 
Legislature. Tiie Fusion Legislature met in the City Hall. It jjeti- 
tioned the President to withdraw the military force which had taken 
possession of the State capitol for the purpose of awing and restraining 
the action of the Governor, but the President refused to grant their pe- 
tition. In effect, he assumed the responsibility for the overthrow of the 
State government by his subordinates. 

The Packard ( Kellogg) Legislature met iu the Capitol on the 9th of 
December, 1872, although the 1st of January was the day fixed in the 
constitution. Pinchback, the President of the (old) Senate, claimed to 
hold over in that capacity. The House, Lowell, the postmaster, pre- 
siding as Speaker, immediately proceded to im23each Gov. Warmouth for 
"high crimes and misdemeanors," and thereupon Pinchback assumed 
the office of Governor.* 

Later the House of Representatives of the United States resolved to 
Impeach Judge Durell for his conduct in this matter, and he resigned 
under charges. The Senatorial Committee reported that 

It is the opinion of your committee that but for the unjustifiable interference of 
Judge DureU, whose orders were executed by United States troops, tlie canvass 
made by the DeFei-iet Board and promulirated by the Governor, declaring ]\IcEnery to 
have been elected Governor, etc., and also declaring who had been elected to the 
Legislature, would have been acquiesced in by the people, and that government would 
have entered quietly upon the exercise of the sovereign power of the State. But the 
proceedings of Judge Durell and the support given to him by the United States troops 
resulted in establishing the authority de facto of Kellogg and his associates in State 
offices, and of the persons declared by the Lynch Board to be elected to the Legisla- 
ture. We have already seen that the proceedings of that board cannot be sustained 
without disregarding all the principles of law applicable to the subject and ignoring 
the distinction between good faith and fraud. 

Your committee are therefore led to the conclusion that, if the election held in 
November, 1872, be not absolutely void for frauds committed therein, ^IcEnery and 
his associates in State otBces, and the persons certified as members of the Legislature 
by the DeFeriet Board, ought to be recognized as the legal government of the State. 
Considering all the facts established before your committee, there seems no escape 
from the alternative that the McEnery government must be recognized by Congress, 
or Congress must provide for a new election. 

However, Congress did neither. It did not recognize the McEuery 
government, nor did it order a new election. The Kellogg government 
remained in power. 

* " Three Decades of Federal Legislation," c^^x. )•. r>i;'J. 



198 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

This introductory sketch, although wholly insufficieut as a picture of 
that marvelous history, will serve to render the speech of Mr. Lamar 
intelligiljle. That speech was made upon the occasion of a contested 
seat in Congress, the claimants being Pinchback, the ex-Lieutenant Gov- 
ernor, and G. A. Sheridan, and in oijposition to the majority report of 
the Committee on Elections, which pronounced the evidence insufficient 
to entitle either contestant to the seat, and in advocacy (jf Sheridan's 
right. Its opening portion involves oidy matters of detail altogether 
special and local, and is omitted. The residue of the speech will be 
fouild to contain a masterly and fascinating presentation of the subject 
of which it treats: the misrule in the Southern States.* 

In this great argument Mr. Lamar took occasion to settle at once and 
forever, so far as any distinct annunciation could do so, the question 
about which agitators in Congi-ess had had so much to say: the attitude 
of the Southern jjeople toward secession and slavery. He said: 

Sir, the Southern people believe tluit conquei^t has shifted the Union from the ba- 
sis of compact and consent to that of force. They fuUy recognize the fact that every 
claim to the right of secession from this Union is extinguished and eliminated from 
the American system, and no longer constitutes a part of the apparatus of the Ameri- 
can Government. They believe that the institution of slavery, with all its incidents 
and atiinities, is dead, extinguished, sunk into a sea that gives not up its dead. They 
cherish no aspirations nor schemes for its resuscitation. "With their opininns on the 
rightfulness of slavery unchanged by the events of the war, yet as an enlightened 
people accepting what is inevitable, they would not, if they could, again iilentify their 
destiny as a people with an institution that stands antagonizeil so utterly by all the 
sentiments and living forces of modern civilization. In a word they regard the new 
amendments to the Constitution, which secure to the black race freedom, citizenship, 
and suffrage, to be not less sacred and inviolable than the original charter as it came 
from the hands of the fathers. They owe allegiance to the latter; they have pledged 
their parole of honor to keep the former, and it is the parole of honor of a soldier 
race. 

As to Mr. Lamar's strictures in this speech ujdou the connection of 
the President with these lawless measures, Senator Beck, of Kentucky, 
is authority for the statement that, " though listened to by all the Ke- 
publicau leaders, they were neither answered nor contradicted and 
could not be, because the facts were indisputable." f 

The reception with which this sijeech met will appear from the fol- 
lowing quotations from the newspapers of the day, again taken almost 
at random: 

The Boston Advo-tiser (Republican) : " Mr. Lamar, of Mississippi, made in the House, 
Monday, another of tliose stirring and eloquent speeches which are sure to strike a 
sympathetic chord in the hearts of all generous people. . . . The generous tem- 
per, the nobility of sentiment, and the moving eloiiuence of the present representa- 
tive from Mississippi are doing more than anything else could to dispel the un- 

*Ai)i)emlix, No. 9. f IJeok to Editor Kentuvky YeomaUy October 8, 1S74. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 199 

pleasant feeling, . . . and to promote good offices between sections of the Union 
no longer divided." 

The iVew York World (Democratic): "Mr. Lamar, of Mississippi, again distinguished 
himself to-day as an able and eloquent representative of the South, and a real states- 
man, by delivering a prepared speech on the jire-eiit political cunditiun of the South. 
It was the tirt<t full and fair statement of the attitude of the white people of the South 
toward tlie general govei-nmenf, anil also the State governments of the South, that 
has lieen made upon the floor of Congress. . . . The speech was a sei|uel to INIr. 
Lamar's oration on Sumner, and was listened to by every member of the House 
present." 

The New York Tribune ; " Mr. Lamar, of Mississippi, made another great sjieech in 
the House to-day, which will, not less for its noble tone and sentiments than for its 
eloquence and sincerity, no doubt receive as much praise and attention as liis former 
speech on the character of Charles Sumner." 

The Neiv York Herald : " Lamar's speech attracted general attention for it-^ earnest- 
ness and its allusions to the Civil War and its results. He was peculiarly happy in 
accepting the i^olitical situation made for the South by the amendments to the consti- 
tution. His exordium and peroration were alike characterized by pithy and pertinent 
illustrations." 

The Louisville Courier-Journal: "This is is the first time since tlie war that tlie case 
of the South has been adequately and fully presented by one of her own song, and it 
was done to-day in a style to which even Northern Republicans could take no excep- 
tions: . . . what many deem the ablest and most statesmanlike speech of the ses- 
sion. Nearly the whole House gathered around him at the close." 

The Wilmington (N. C.) Journal (Conservative): "Among those who have been in- 
strtunental in Iweaking down the harrier between Northern ami Southern representa- 
tives, no one occupies a more pronnnent position than Col. Lamar, of Mississippi. 
. . . The kindly words that were withheld from the living were given to the dead. 
That they were grandly given no one who knows Lamar needs to be told; and with 
what result, if the testimony of men from all sections of the country and of every shade 
of political opinion is to be relied on, those kindly words then spoken have borne, and 
will continue to bear, fruit for which a grateful South will in due time make fitting re- 
turn to her gallant and gifted son." 

The Anderson (S. C.) Intelligencer : "Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar, of Mississippi, has won 
greater rejjutation in a short time than any Southern Congressman since the war. 
. . . Last week he made a speecli upon the Louisiana tripubles which attracted 
much attention for its earnestness and its frank allusions to the results of the Civil 
War. The members crowded arnunrl him during the delivery of his pithy and perti- 
nent defense of the South, and listened witli absorbing interest to his graphic illustra- 
tions of the gross caricatures upon republican government now existing in this sec- 
tion of the Union." 

The Jackson (Miss.) Clarion.: "It was a most triumphant vindication of a wronged 
people, executed in a style so knightly as to disarm opposition and compel attention 
and respect. All bear testimony to tlie invaluable service he has rendered." 

The Syracuse Journal : " If Congressman Lamar, of Mississiiipi, be not more reticent 
in his utterances, he will be looked after as a candidate for the second ]ilace on the 
Presidential ticket two years hence." 

On the 16th of June Mr. Lamar wrote his sister, Mrs. Ross, of 
Georgia: 

No man has worked harder than I have this session. My work has been unob- 
trusive, but faithful. Jly speech was listened to attentively and respectfully by the 
Northern members. It never would have been heard or read by the North had I not 



200 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

made tlie Sumner speech. I heard Mr. . Tliere was but one Northern man who 

listened to it: Judge Thurman, of Ohio. The Kepuljlican side was nearly empty, and 
those present were writing. 

Upon the adjourumeut o£ Congress the Hernando (Miss.) Press 
bad this to say : 

The first session of the Forty-third Congress has closed. To Mississippians it is 
chiefiy remarkable as being the first Congress in which they have been represented 
since 1861. Certainly we have reason to be proud of this, our first representative in 
thirteen years. . . . With singular skill and good judgment he made the contested 
election case from Louisiana the occasion of a somewhat elaborate inquiry into, and 
exposure of, the ills that atfect the Southern States. It is by far the ablest, most philo- 
sophical, and statesmanlike presentation of our unhappy section that has been given 
to the world since the surrender. There has been no such speech made in Congress 
by a Southern man since the days when Davis and Benjamin and Hunter spoke their 
farewell speeches to the old Senate. Of Jlr. Lamar's speech in eulog}' of Charles Sum- 
ner, it is nut too much to say that it is the most notaljle speech delivered in the Amer- 
ican Congress since Lee's surrender. It attracted a wider, more instantaneous, and 
universal applause than any single speech within our memory. 

Mr. Lamar possesses, in an eminent degree, two qualities not often combined, and 
which, when they meet, must always produce a first-class orator; he has great beauty 
and power of expression, and a mind deeply philosophical and analytical. Not so 
philosiiiihical as Mr. Calhoun, nor so philosophical Isic] as Mr. Webster, he perhaps 
unites more of the gifts of lioth than any man now in public life. Certainly tlie 
South has had no such promise of a great statesman in very many yeai'S. May she 
have the good sense and the good fortune long to cherish and honor him ! 

Said the Winona (Miss.) Arlmncc: 

There is no name in tlie Tnited States in so many minds, in connection with the 
Vice Presidency in 1876, as Lamar's. 

Like all persons who achieve distinction, Mr. Lamar now came to be 
much annoyed by that class of scribblers for the newspapers who make 
free with the names of public men, often producing narratives without 
foundation in fact, or grossly perverted, and articles in which are attrib- 
uted feelings and motives of wholly inadequate, or even low, character, 
supplied altogether by the imaginations of the writers. Such a com- 
munication, which appeared about this time in a Georgia paper, was 
promptly exposed by a cousin, Mr. John C. Butler, of Macou, and in a 
letter of acknowledgment Mr. Lamar said: 

His statement about my money matters, which I saw in the Xev York Herald, is a 
pure lie— not even an element of truth in it. I do not think that I ever consented to 
go upon a bond in my life. I know that I have repeatedly refused to do so. I formed, 
in early life, two purposes to which I have inflexibly adhered, under some very strong 
pressure from warm personal friends. They were, first, never to be a second in a duel ; 
and, second, never to go security for another man's debts. The year that I lived in 
IVIacon I was more straitened in my circumstances tlian ever before or since, for I got 
a very small practice ; but I left Macon without owins: any man anything. 

As to never speaking on any occasion without committing my speech to memory: 
I am now forty-eight yeai-s old, an<l have not done such a thing butonce or twice (on 
literary occasions) since I was twenty-one. I cannot vrite a speech. Tlie pen is an ex- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 201 

tiii^'iiisher upon my mind and a torture to my nerves. I am tlie most habitual extem- 
poraneous speaker that I have ever known. Whenever I get the opportunity I pre- 
pare my argument with great labor of thought, for my mind is rather a slow one in 
constructing its plan or theory of an argument. But ray friends all tell me that my 
offhand speeches are by far more vivid than my prepared efforts. 

My recent speeches have not been prompted by self-seeking motives. It was neces- 
sary that some Southern man should say and do wliat I said and did. I knew that if 
I did it I would run the risk of losing the confidence of the Southern people, and that 
if that confidence were once lost it could never be fully recovered. Keenly as I would 
feel such a loss (and no man would feel it more keenly), yet I loved my people more 
than I did their approval. I saw a chance to convert their enemies into friends, and 
to change bitter animosities into sympathy and regard. If I had let the opportunity 
pass without doing what I have, I would never have got over the feeling of self- 
reproach. If the people of the Soutli could only have seen my heart when I made my 
Sumner speech, they would have seen that love for them, and anxiety for their fate, 
throbbed in every sentence that my lips uttered. 

In the month of September further notable events occurred in Lou- 
isiana. They were the sequence of the history given in this chapter 
and in Mr. Lamar's Louisiana speech. 

It will be remembered that in the contest in the early winter of 1873, 
growing out of the election of 1872, President Grant had virtually 
refused to receive the committee of one hundred appointed by the tax- 
payers' meeting; that the Kellogg government was established in power 
by the Federal administration and was uijheld by military forces. On 
the 14th of January, 1873, two State governments were inaugurated 
amid great excitement, and two Legislatures organized. The United 
States Senate appointed an investigating committee, which reported as al- 
ready described in this chapter. President Grant then continued to up- 
hokl the Kellogg government. This organization passed stringent laws 
for the collection of taxes, more than two millions of which were al- 
leged to be in arrears, in which provision was made for calling out the 
militia to aid the taxgatherers. There were riots and bloodshed aud 
arrests of members of the McEnery Legislature, who were marched out 
of their hall between files of soldiers and taken to the guardhouse. 

The result of this contest was that Mr. McEnery, because of the in- 
tervention of the Federal authorities in support of the Kellogg faction, 
issued an address to the people, and abandoned, for the time being, all 
effort to assert his authority, and the Federal troops were withdrawn. 

Matters, however, continued in a most disturbed condition. There 
were riots in various parishes, originating in some instances in the at- 
tempt of Kellogg to collect the onerous and obnoxious back taxes. In 
Grant Parish the very negroes revolted, and resisted with arms. So 
matters progressed until the 14th of September, 1874. On that day a 
mass meeting of citizens assembled on Canal Street. They adopted res- 
olutions reciting that Kellogg aud his Lieutenant Governor, although 
defeated in 1872, had seized the executive chair by fraud aud violence; 



202 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

that, ill order to control the result of the approaching electiou, Kellogg 
had, under an act passed by his Legislature for that purpose, secured 
to himself and his partisans the power of denying registration to butia 
fide citizens, whose ai)plications for nKindiniius to compel registration 
•were refused — the law, indeed, punishing the courts themselves if they 
dared to entertain such appeals; that Kellogg was a mere usurper, 
whose government was arbitrary, unjust, and oppressive, and could 
only maintain itself by Federal intervention; that the election laws 
under which the coming electiou was being conducted were designed 
to perpetuate his usurpation, by depriving the people of their right to 
vote. These resolutions concluded by demanding Kellogg's immediate 
abdication. A committee of five was then appointed to wait iipon him 
witli this demand. He did not see the committee, but through a sub- 
ordinate conveyed his refusal. The communication of this refusal led 
to an immediate appeal to arms. Gov. McEuery was absent from the 
State. The Lieutenant Governor, D. B. Penn, issued a proclamation, 
calling upon the militia of the State, " without regard to color or pre- 
vious condition, to arm and assemble under the respective ofhcei's, for 
the purpose of driving the usurpers from power." That afternoon a con- 
flict took place between the Penn militia, variously stated at from seven 
hundred to fifteen liundred, and six hundred of the metropolitan police, 
the latter having artillery. The police were defeated, with a loss of four- 
teen killed and about thirty wounded; the militia losing twelve killed 
and thirteen wounded, some of the latter mortally. Next morning the 
police laid down their arms, and the capitol, with all of the State projD- 
erty and records, was taken possession of by the militia for Lieut. Gov. 
Penn; the negroes in the streets, many of them, cheering the victors. 

Mr. Penn sent a dispatch to President Grant, briefly informing him of what liad 
been done, and the reasons for it, and declarini; tlie unswerving loyalty of the people. 
All he asked for was that the President should " withhold any aid or protection from 
our enemies, and the enemies of republican rights and of the peace and liberty of the 
people." 

Kellogg also sent on his version of the affair to the President, who rei^ponded 
promptly and energetically in a jiroclamation dated Septemlier V>, in whicli lie com- 
manded the "turbulent and disorderly persons" to di.-perse and retire peacefully to 
their respective homes within five days, and to submit themselves thereafter to tlie 
laws and constituted authorities of the State. 

Thus wei-e the people of Louisiana again put under the yoke which Senators Car- 
penter, Logan, Alcorn, and Anthony declared to have been originally imposed by 
fraud and violence.* 

The President made good his i)roc]amatiou by sending troops and 
men of w^ar to New Orleans to enforce it. No resistance whatever was 
made to the United States authorities. Gov. McEnery stating that he 
had neither power nor disposition to resist, and only making a protest. 

*"TluTe DoiMiles of Fedenil Lfgi>huinii," Cox, pii. 5B3-5G8. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 203 

Mr. BaDuing, member of Congress from Ohio, a few mouths hiter said 
of this eveut that it "ilhistrates with striking force two facts: the 
first is the conservative feeling that animates this sorely tried and 
downtrodden people; the other, the fearfully despotic power that has 
grown up since tiie war at this national capital." * 

These stirring events naturally excited the greatest interest through- 
out the entire South; but it was feared that they woi^ld have an injuri- 
ous effect upon the approaching elections for Congressmen. 

During the months of October and November of this year (1874) Mr. 
Lamar made a most energetic canvass of his district, speaking at great 
length and with wonderful effect at many of the chief towns, espe- 
cially in the eastern part. In this canvass he rendered an account of 
his doings in Congress; discussed the Sumner eulogy and the Louisi- 
ana speech — answering objections and criticisms which had been made 
in respect to them — besides the current State and national questions of 
the day. There was no election pending in Mississippi, as there was in 
nearly every other State in the Union; since the Legislature had tiiat 
year passed an act fixing the time for the election of Congressmen in 
the year 1875 and biennially thereafter. But the whole country was 
burning with the fever of politics, and the influence of the excitement 
was deeply felt in Mississippi as well. 

When the fateful day of November 3d came, and the news was 
flashed over the country of the great " landslide," by which the House 
was given over to the Democratic party by an overwhelming majority, 
and all further purely imrtisau legislation was soon to become impossi- 
ble, a great wave of jubilation swept over the South. It was thought 
that the long and dark days of subjugation were over; and hope, which 
through so many years had sickened and paled in the Southern heart, 
sprang into vigor and flower, as suddenly and as fully as the magical 
tree of the Eastern juggler. But in the very immensity of this joy, in 
the vastness of the release from long depi'ession, lay a danger, new, 
but of the gravest character— the danger that the Southern people 
would misunderstand the significance and just limits of the great po- 
litical revolution; and, misunderstanding, should seek to use it for ends 
which the Northern people neither had intended nor would tolerate; 
and thereby that the condition of the South might finally become 
worse and more hopeless than ever before. 

With what admirable courage and magnanimity had the people of 
the Southern States, proud as they were, self-acquitted of wrong as they 
were, plundered and repressed as they were, borne their tremendous 
calamities! It remained to be seen whether they could with equal, or 
even comparable, self-control bear a return of their prosperity. Might 

* Congressional Record, Vol. III., Part 2, p. 113'.). 



204 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAI!: 

it uut well happen that the ship which had gallantly breasted so many 
raging storms should even yet strike some sunken reef, and go down 
hopelessly and iuglorioasly under the clear sunlight and on a summer 
sea? Gen. Walthall wrote to Mr. Lamar: "We are in great danger of 
sijoiling everything in Mississippi, I fear." 

There were, however, jjleuty of cool heads which thought and of eyes 
which saw, and they perceived that the vote of 1874 did not necessarily 
relieve the South of the repressive hand of Federal power in case she 
proved herself unworthy of confidence. The indictment against the 
Republican party on which the verdict had been rendered had included, 
it is true, a "count" upon "Southern wrongs." The Northern people 
had been willing to hear, and had heard, proof upon that point. The 
Ijroofs had been strong. It was a great thing that the adminis- 
tration had been distinctly arraigned for bringing disgrace ujjon the 
American name by its course in that matter; but after all it was doubt- 
ful if the decision had been rendered altogether, or even mainly, on 
that issue. The true gain for the Southern States in the result of 1874 
was not a final judgment in their favor, but an oiiportunity to be heard 
before the great Areopagus of the American people, and heard through 
their representation in Cougress, sti-engtheued in numbers and im- 
proved in abilities and character. 

Views akin to the foregoing Col. Lamar earnestly and elaborately 
advanced in his speeches of this period. Naught remains of those ad- 
dresses except a few newspaper notices of the briefest, and fragmentary 
notes. He had great audiences everywhere, largely composed of ladies. 
His speeches were listened to " In'eathlessly," except when " interrupted 
by long and loud apjilause; " and he was always warmly seconded by lo- 
cal speakers. The l)urdeu of his exhortation was a loyal adherence to the 
amendments, and of all that they, legitimately interpreted, imported. 

Let it be distinctly understood [he urged] tliat we have a hearing under limitations. 
It is not a hearing on the validity of the amendments. They are fixed in tlie constitu- 
tion as immovably as are those provisions whii'h guarantee to each State an equal repre- 
sentation in the Senate. Now is the time of the South's probation and her trial. Her 
trial will be within the limits of the constitution as it now stands. Her patriotism 
and intelligence are invited to aid in working out a most difficult problem affecting 
the whole country. Force from no quarter is to be applied to either race. The Re- 
publicans failed to make party eapital out of the Louisiana affair only because the 
striking and memoral)le action of those people showed that there was no plan there 
looking to the overthrow of national authority, no aspiration not bounded by the ho- 
rizon of the Union, no purpose to disturb the settlement of the franchise. 

Upon the opening of Congress in December Mr. Lamar retnrned to 
Washington, and thence on the 11th wrote to his wife as follows: 

Nearly all the papers in New England liave come out for me as Speaker, but there 
is nothing in this beyond the expression of kind feeling. The party does not want a 
Southern man, nor should a Southern man permit liimself to want that office. 

I am very often spoken of, or rather spoken to, about the 'Vice Presidency. That 



» 



HIS LIFE. TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 205 

would be comfortable, would it not? It would give four years of rest and a jrood in- 
come, and Gussie and Jennie such a fine time. I found myself tliinking tliis way about 
it, and tlien I considered that in these thoughts 1 was considering my own advance- 
ment and happiness, and tliat there was no thouglit of what benefit it would be to 
our poor people in Mississijjpi. So I have given up all further thoughts about it. . . . 

As was natural, the knowledge that their control of the House was 
about to eud, and by consequence their power to shape the policy of the 
government, caused the leaders of the Eadical party to assume at this 
the last session o£ this Congress a very aggressive attitude. If their 
policy was to be incorporated into the positive law, it was necessary to 
act at once. By such prompt action whatever of additional power 
might be conferred upon the Executive became of course irrevocable, 
even by a Democratic house. The Civil Rights Bill was pressed with 
great vigor, and finally passed, while a Force Bill was also introduced and 
urged with great insistence. Affairs took such a turn that investiga- 
ting committees upon " Southern outrages " were again sent out, and de- 
bates of the most exciting and irritating character upim Southern mat- 
ters consumed much of the time of Congress. 

The temper and purpose of the Executive received a most startling 
disclosure and ominous illustration by the further course of events in 
Louisiana. In that State the oppression of the people had gone beyond 
endurance. The i:)ublic funds had been wasted and embezzled. Pub- 
lic debts had been piled up until the values of proi:)erty were destroyed 
by excessive taxation. The November elections resulted again in a Con- 
servative victory by a majority of about six thousand votes, many negroes 
voting that ticket. The Radical party, however, still had the Returning 
Board. By throwing out the votes of some parishes altogether, by cut- 
ting off some of the vote in these, and by adding to the vote of those— 
all under pretext of intimidation of voters, this board reversed the pop- 
ular verdict, and announced a Radical victory as to the State Treasurer 
(the only State officer voted for) and a majority in the Legislature. This 
action the investigating subcommittee of Congress itself declared a 
few weeks later to have been on the whole arbitrary, unjust, and illegal; 
and the committee further said that that action alone prevented the re- 
turn of a majority of Conservative members to the Lower House. 

On the 25th of December Mr. McEnery published a manifesto to the 
effect that the wrong just perpetrated by the Returning Board vitally 
threatened the safety and integrity of republican institutions in the 
United States, and would not be submitted to by any free people; but 
that " resistance to national authority, represented here by a large por- 
tion of the army and the navalfieet sustaining the usurpation and stifling 
the voice of the people, has never been meditated." Said the .Taclson 
(Miss.) Clarion: "This is the wisest course. If the oppressed people 
were to resist the national administration, which is pledged to uphold 



206 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

the Kellogg usurpatiou, they would play into the hands of the usurpers, 
insure defeat for themselves ultimately, and imperil the success of the 
political revolution in the Northern States with its promises of relief." 

On the 4th of January, 1875, the Legislature was to assemble in the 
Statehouse and organize. It did so assemble at 12 M. The Statehouse 
was surrounded by armed forces, amongst them eighteen hundred troops 
of the United States, the latter being placed there by Gen. Emory on 
the requisition of acting Gov. Kellogg. The Legislatui-e assembled 
without any disturbance. The Clerk of the late House, Mr. Vigers, 
called the body to order. He called the roll of members furnished 
by the Returning Boai'd. One hundred and two members answered to 
their names, of whom fifty-two were Itepublicans and fifty were Con- 
servatives. While the result was being announced one of the Conserv- 
ative members nominated for temporary Speaker Mr. J. A. Wiltz. The 
Clerk declai'ed the motion out of order; but the move)' put the motion 
himself, and announced that it was carried. 

Mr. Wiltz took possession of the chair, and amid much coufiisiou a 
clerk and sergeaut-at-arms were nominated, voted for, and declared 
elected. A resolution was then ofi'ered to seat five gentlemen, named, 
as members of the House. The status of those persons was this: They 
had been declared elected by the commissioners of election in their re- 
spective parishes, but the radical Ileturning Board had declined to pass 
on the elections in the parishes which the}- claimed to represent, and 
had exjjressly referred their claims to the Legislature itself, thus direct- 
ly recognizing the possibility of their election. No adverse claimants 
contested any of their seats. The resolulitm was put to the House, de- 
clared carried, and the five members were sworn in. The House then 
jDroceeded to a permanent organization. Seventy-one members were 
present; fifty-seven voted— a legal quorum — and Mr. Wiltz, receiving 
fifty-five votes, was declared elected. He was then sworn in, and, the roll 
being called, the members were sworn in by him at the Speaker's stand — 
ainongst them five Republicans who had participated in the proceedings, 
one of them being Mr. Hahn, the Repiiblican caucus nominee f(U- Speak- 
er. Other permanent officers were then elected, and the House declared 
ready for business. A committee of seven on elections was appointed. 

At this stage considerable disturbance arose in the lobby. The ser- 
geant-at-arms was iinable to stop it, and Speaker Wiltz sent for Gen. 
DeTrobriand, who was in command of the detachment of I'nited States 
troops which occupied the Statehouse, and requested him to speak to the 
disorderly persons in the lobby, in ordei' tiiat a confiict might be pre- 
vented. The General did so, and order was restored. 

The House then proceeded with its business. The Committee ou 
Elections then reported, and on its report eight other claimants of seats 
were received and sworn in as members. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 207 

Meanwhile, ■wlieu the temporary orgatiizatiou of the House was ef- 
fected, most of the Republicans left in a body, with Mr. Vigers, who 
took with him the original roll as furnished by the Secretary of State. 
All of the fifty-two Republicans then imited in a petition to the act- 
ing Governor, setting forth their grievances and asking his aid; where- 
upon he requested the commanding general to assist him in restoring 
order, and in enabling the members "legally returned" to organize the 
House " according to law." 

Thereupon, at three o'clock in the aftei-noon. Gen. DeTrobriand, in full 
uniform, with his sword by his side, accompanied by two members of his 
staff and by Mr. Vigers, entered the hall where the Legislature was in 
session, and exhibited to Speaker Wiltz a communication from Kellogg 
as Governor, requesting that he should " immediately clear the hall and 
Statehouse of all persons not returned as legal members of the House 
of Representatives by the Returning Board of the State." The five 
members first seated, as above described, were those intended. They 
declined to go out. A file of United States soldiers was theji brought 
into action. They entered the hall with fixed bayonets, seized the five 
members, and, against their protests, ejected them from their seats and 
the hall by force. AVheu that had been done, the Conservative mem- 
bers left in a body with solemn protest. The soldiery kept possession 
of the hall; and then, ander their protection, the Republican members 
organized the Legislature to suit themselves. 

One other feature is necessary to complete the jiicture. 
On the 2J:th of December preceding, the Secretary of War, for the 
President, had instructed Gen. P. H. Sheridan, then at Chicago, to visit 
Louisiana and Mississippi, in order to ascertain personally the general 
condition of ati'airs there, and to make to the President such suggt'stions 
as he should deem advisable and judicious. Gen. Sheridan was em- 
powered to assume command of the military divisinnof the South, if he 
should see proper to do so. It was directed that the trip should ajjpear 
to be one as much of pleasure as of business ; " for," it was said, " the 
fact of your mere presence in the localities referred to will have, it is 
presiimed, a beneficial effect." 

On this "pleasure trip," then, Gen. Sheridan reached New Orleans on 
the 1st of January. On the 4tli (the day the Legislature met), by a gen- 
eral order made at nine o'clock in the evening, he assumed control of 
the Department of the Gulf, consisting of Louisiana, Mississippi, etc., 
announcing the fact to the Secretary of War by a telegram, in which he 
stated that a spirit of defiance to all lawful authority was rife in the 
State; that lawlessness and murder were so regarded as to give impu- 
nity to all who chose to indulge in either; and that the civil govern- 
ment appeared powerless to punish, or even to arrest. On the next 
morning he sent to the Secretary his celebrated dispatch that 



208 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

I think tliat the terroi-ism now exiftin,i; in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arliansas 
could be entirely removed, and confidence and fair dealing established, by the arrest 
and trial of the ringleaders of the armed white leai;ues. If Congress would pass a bill 
declaring them banditti, they could be tried by a military commission. The ringlead- 
ers of this banditti, who murdered men here on the 14th of last September, and also 
more recently at Vicksburg, Miss., should, in justice to law and order, and the peace 
and prosperity of this southern part of the country, be punished. It is possible that 
if the President would issue a proclamation declaring them banditti, no further action 
need be taken except that which would devolve upon me. 

The tidings of these remarkable proceedings flew through the coun- 
try like lightning. At the North, as well as at the South, the greatest 
excitement, not unmixed with consternation, prevailed. Liberal Eepub- 
licans and Northern Democrats alike participated in these feelings and 
the demonstrations to which they led. Mass meetings were held in Cin- 
cinnati, New York, and other Northern cities, denouncing the action of 
the administration and the dispatches of Sheridan. To the Chair- 
man of the former meeting, Hon. George Hoadly (then a Republican, 
and afterwards Governor) wrote that: "I regard tlie administration as 
having been engaged now for three years in a conspiracy to deprive the 
people of Louisiana of their just right to goverji themselves, and an ef- 
fort by force and fraud to substitute a State government which has 
never been chosen by that people for that of their own selection." Hon. 
W. S. Groesbeck, who had defended the impeachment of President 
Johnson, wrote that: " I think that such a meeting will be very proper. 
. . Thetransactions to which you refer . . . have no precedent 
in our iiast, and should not be allowed to become a precedent for our 
future. Bayonets are out of place in legislative halls." And Gov. Al- 
len, a Democrat, wrote that: "A few of the Eepublicau politicians may, 
but the Eepublican masses will not, stand passively by and see any man 
assuage his thirst for power in the blood of the people." Hon. George 
H. Pendleton addressed the meeting, praising the Louisiana people for 
their "wonderful self-control " under circumstances so trying, and for 
their acceptance of and submission to the results of the war. Piesolu- 
tions were adopted, denouncing the invasion of the Legislature, con- 
demning the suggestion of Sheridan as a gross insult to the people of 
the whole country, demanding the reduction of military offices, and es- 
pecially the abolition of the office of lieutenant general, the rank held 
by Sheridan. 

A "monster meeting" was held in New York, on the 11th of January, 
at Cooper Institute, in which William Cullen Bryant, Peter Cooper, 
William M. Evarts, Charles A. Dana, and many others of similar sort, 
took part. Mr. Evarts spoke at length, to the effect that the effort to 
control the Legislature struck at its very existence; that such abuses of 
power, if sustained by the Republican party, would destroy it; that the 
])eoi)le should teach their riilers that they were to act only in accord- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 209 

ance with the law; that these were not Southeru or Northern questions, 
nor Republican or Democratic, but American questions, since Louisiana 
was as much a State of the Union as was New York. Mr. Bryant spoke 
in similar strain, saying also that the President had no authority to in- 
terfere with Siate matters, except in so far as the constitution empow- 
ered him to do so; that no such power was given him by that instru- 
ment as to set himself up for a judge of elections and purger of Legis- 
latures ; that he might as well disperse electoral colleges which should 
refuse to him their votes, and might as well send another Sheridan to 
pull out from the executive chair the man whom the people of New 
York had recently elected for their Governor. 

Many of the leading newspapers expressed similar views. The Cin- 
cinnati Coiniiicrcial (Republican) said that, "If it is made a party test 
to sustatu Sheridan's Louisiana literature, there is an end of the Repub- 
lican party." The Pliihidelphid Ledger (Independent) spoke of it as a 
"humiliating sight to American eyes to see an oihcer of the United 
States ordered to enter a legislative chamber at the head of a platoon 
of soldiers, and at the dictation of the Governor whose own case is in- 
volved," etc. The Neic York Times (Republican) declared that, " There 
is no power in the President to ' proclaim ' certain men ' banditti ' ; and 
there is none in Congress to outlaw a class who, whatever their offenses 
(and they ai'e many and grave), have thus far shown a profound re- 
spect for the authorities of the United States." The Philadelphia In- 
quirer, which Mr. Schurz, in this connection, asserted to be " about as 
Republican as most Republican papers are nowadays all over the coun- 
try," said: 

Unless the Republican party is content to be swept out of existence by the storm 
of indignant protests arising against the wrongs of Louisiana from all portions of the 
country, it will see that this most shameful outrage is redressed wholly and at once; 
for if it is rig!-t for the Federal soldiery to pack the Legislature of one State in the 
manner the Attorney-general declares it shall be packed, or if it can be done, it is right 
and can be done in any other State. It is a matter that concerns Massachusetts, Cali- 
fornia, and Pennsylvania equally with Louisiana ; for it is an act of Federal usurpa- 
tion, which, if not revoked and condemned by Congress, will lead inevitably to the 
destruction of the whole fabric of our government— 

Which is just what Mr. Lamar said seven montlis before in the con- 
clusion of liis Louisiana speech in respect to the Federal establishment 
of Kellogg as Governor. 

The agitation indicated in the preceding paragraphs was felt in Con- 
gress no less deeply than in the country. On the 5th of January, the 
next day after Gen. DeTrobriand's invasion of the Legislature, and 
probably while Gen. Sheridan's banditti telegram was in course of 
transmission. Senator Thurman, of Ohio, offered a resolution request- 
ing the President to inform the Senate whether any portion of the army 
had interfered with the organization of the Loitisiana Legislature, and 
14 



210 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

if so, by what authority. This resohition and the message from the 
President which it finally elicited brought on a most acrimonious de- 
bate, which lasted throughout the entire month. Senators Thurman, 
Schurz of Missouri, Bayard and Saulsbury of Delaware, Tipton of 
Nebraska, and Hamilton of Maryland, took the lead in assailing the 
course of the President and of Gen. Siieridau; while Logan of Illinois, 
Morton of Indiana, Sherman of Ohio, Conkling of New York, Ed- 
munds and Morrill of Vermont, Frelinglmysen of New Jersey, Howe 
of Wisconsin, AVest of Louisiana, Clayton of Arkansas, and others, 
came to the defense; Senator Gordon, of Georgia, contenting himself 
with vindicating the people of the South from the assaults made upon 
them. 

The defense of the administration proceeded mainly upon two dis- 
tinct lines: first, that the parties with whom the military interfered, and 
the other Conservatives, were organizing the Legislature in a turbulent 
manner, and in contravention of the proper rules for organization; sec- 
ondly, a fierce counter assault npou the Southei'n people, and especially 
upon the people of Louisiana. The points made of the first class. Sen- 
ator Thurman, in his manly closing argument, characterized as nothing 
more than a sticking in the bark. The gravest feature of the dispute 
was the rancor of the renewed assault upon the South. 

Let one or two examples suffice: 

In his si:)eech of the Mth Mr. Logan said: "Before the abolition of 
slavery who ever heard of a white man T>eiug punished for shooting a ne- 
gro? Nobody. If he shot a negro down, he would be liable to an action of 
trespass for the amount the negro was worth, the same as if the man had 
shot a horse. He paid the owner of the negro his value, and that ended 
it. The habit grew so strong that men down there think they have the 
same right now to murder negroes that they thought they had then." 

In his si)eech of the 5th Mr. Morton said: "I am glad that we have 
now come to the point where the ten thousand lies which have been sys- 
tematically sent from Louisiana as an ai^ology and an excuse for the 
numerous murders that have been committed there can no longer blind ' 
the people and i^revent them from seeing the exact condition of things. 
Sir, there has been a system of lying in regard to affairs in Louisiana 
that has had no parallel in this or any other country." 

In his speech of January 22 Mr. Sherman said: "All these outrages 
are committed in the name of and for the benefit of the Democratic 
party. If that day should come to which many of you look forward 
with hope, when the Democratic party shall be in power in this govern- 
ment, then one of two things will be true: either the blacks of the South 
will be turned over to the tender mercies of these men [/. e., Sheridan's 
banditti], or you will have again the fires of rebellion kindled in our 
midst." 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 211 

Before this spectacle of a prostrated State, under the heat of these 
cousumiug passions, the hopes which the November election had in- 
spired in Mr. Lamar began to wither. On the 15th of February he 
wrote to his wife: 

I think the future of Mississippi is very dark. Ames has it dead. Tliere can be 
no escape from his rule. His negro regiments are nothing. He will get them killed 
up, and then Grant will take possession for him. May God help us! 

But notwithstanding his hopeless and gloomy frame of mind, Mr. 
Lamar demeaned himself with great forbearance and dignity. Mr. 
Eaudall, of Pennsylvania, however, who was hampered by no such de- 
terrents as controlled him, felt justified in saying to the Republican 
side of the House (in his speech of February 1): 

Instead of this legislation which you propose, prompted by the meanest passions 
and aimed to crush out a race, we have told you to come to your legitimate duties of 
legislation; pass your appropriation bills, reducing the amount as far as jjussible; re- 
vive the industry of the country, and again be a happy and prosperous [leople 
throughout the length and breadth of tliis land, whether in the North or in tlie South. 
When, in the name of Heaven, is this crusade against the South to end? AVhcn will 
you get over your mean purposes against these people? Tliey surrendered their arms 
as brave men at Appomattox Courthouse, and if the policy of Gen. Sherman there 
stated had run througli your legislation from that time to this hour we should have 
now a people reposing in tranquillity and peace, the terror of all other nations. 

This policy of the Eepiiblican party, coupled with the startling course 
of events iu Louisiana (especially the latter), excited again great dis- 
content and uneasiness in the South. A prominent lawyer of Missis- 
sippi wrote to Col. Lamar a long and insistent letter, from which the 
following extracts are taken: 

. . . Everybody counsels moderation. This, of course, is right, and no people 
under the sun have ever been more temperate and forbearing under wrong and op- 
pression than the people of the South. . . . It is the privilege of our representa- 
tives in Congress, few though they be, to denounce and expose the villainy and cor- 
ruption of our rulers, and, in the name of the constitution of our country, solemnly 
to protest against these outrages upon our rights and liberties. . . . It is feared by 
some of yom- friends that you are almost too slow in availing yourself of the oppor- 
tunity and occasion, that you are inclined to temporize too much. Your past course 
in Congress has established the impression with our oppressors that you are not an 
extremist, or radical, fire-eating disloyalist ; now, then, take the benefit of it to expose 
their villainy, and pul)lish the unprecedented wrongs of our people to the worhi. . . . 

To this letter Mr. Lamar replied, under date of January 18, 1875: 
... I do not think you fully understand the situation here, or what I am doing. 
Federal intervention in Louisiana and the Southern States has a tw^ofold aspect: 
one which involves the prosperity and self-government of the Southern people. 
About this there is very little interest felt at the North, beyond a general desire to 
have the troubles cease. They w'ould be gratified to see the South prosperous ; but 
they would not take the trouble to put Grant or any other Republican out, and to put 
a Democrat in as President, to accomplish this object. 

But the other aspect of the case involves the existence of liberty and constitutional 



212 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

government at the North ; and the demonstrations Ijy the Northern people, in view 
of this danger to their own free institutions, give me more hope of ultimate justice to 
our ])eople than I have had for some weeks past. Tlie questions have not, as yet, been 
formally introduced into the House; at least not in such a way as to make debate 
projier or possible. When the occasion comes, as it must when the reports of the in- 
vestigating committees are made, I presume, though I am not certain of the fact, that 
the Southern representatives will be heard from. They generally concur as to the 
most effective mode of defense. Their protests should be firm and manly ; their ex- 
posure of the corruptions and wrongs which the governments of those States have 
been guilty of should be unsparing. But their animadversion upon the President of 
the United States should be marked by dignified moderation. The Northern people 
have more pride in Gen. Grant than they have in any living man. They have a 
strong feeling of admiration for Sheridan. They will tolerate no abuse of him by 
Southern representatives. The Radical party would raise a purse of fifty thousand 
dollars to pay prominent Southern men to denounce him in the style which you sug- 
gest as the proper course for me. I could not please these enemies better, or help 
them more, than by calling Gen. Grant a " besotted tyrant " and Sheridan a " brigand." 

The Northern people are alarmed at the rapid strides of executive usurpation, but 
it is for themselves. With all their jealousy of arbitrary government, they are still 
more jealous of the ascendency in Federal politics, which they fear tlie South will ac- 
quire by throwing a consolidated vote of one hundred and thirty-eight electoral votes 
for President, which, with two or three Northern States, would elect him. 

As to the fear of " some of my friends " that I am " almost too slow in availing my- 
self of the opportunity and occasion, that I am inclined to temporize too much," allow 
me to say, in perfect good feeling, that it arises from their being unwilling or unable, 
from their lack of knowledge of the situation here, to understand the position occu- 
pied by us Southern rei^resentatives in Congress. Whatever else may be said of a 
man who follows the counsels of his own mind as to what his duty to the interests of 
his people requires, regardless of consequences to himself, he is no temporizer. My 
course has been anything else but temporizing. 

You say in your letter : " I know that you are fully capable of taking care of yourself" 
Well, yes! I lielieve I am; but I am not attempting that just now. AMule events of 
such magnitude are passing before his eyes, a man who did not forget himself would 
deserve to be forgotten. I have thought of nothing but the situation of my country. 
At any rate, I have not sought eclat at home by attempting imjiosing displays of pas- 
sionate invective against a party which has even yet the power to inflict upon our 
defenseless people any suflfering or oppression which awakened resentments may in- 
vent. The strength and energy and will of Southern Radicals are underestimated. 
The programme which they are attempting to force upon their party is as bloody and 
vigorous as that of the French Jacobins, and they are backed up by Grant. A few 
inflammatory speeches from our side would do their work for them. Never was 
there a more critical period in oui' history than the present. The only course I, in 
comnion with other Southern representiitivos, have to follow, is to do what we can to 
allay excitement between the sections, and to bring about peace and reconciliation. 
That will be the foundation upon which we may establish a constitutional govern- 
ment for the wliole country, and local self-government for the South. 

It was this determination of Mr. Lamar to indulge in no tiseless and 
nuprofitable declamatiou, but, on the contrary, to work constantly for 
harmony, which dictated his course in respect to the Civil Eights Bill. 
His remarks of the 3d of February were: 

Mr.Sjieaker: I have no hope that any argument of mine will avail to prevent the 
passage of this bill or one similar to it in its essential provisions. It is evident that 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 213 

in the opinion of the majority of this House no light can be tliruwn upon the subject 
which will control its action. This chamber is empty. Were I to speak, I would 
have to address vacant chairs. . . . But, sir-, as a representative of a portion of 
the (leople on wliom tliis proposed legislation is to operate, I feel it my duty to pro- 
test against this measure in any of its forms, as not only violative of the constitution, 
but irreu-ievably disastrous to the peace, ijrosperity, and happiness of that jieople. 

In regard to this very feature of his character as a public man, tiie 
New York World liad sometliiug to say iu tliis month: 

Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar is winning for himself the respect of both sides of the House. 
His speeches hitlierto during this teini liave been distinguished Ijy their pertinency. 
There is no more valuable reputation for a legislator to have, and none more sure to 
command " the ear of the House," than the reputation of never speaking except when 
he has something to say. This Mr. Lamar lias fairly earned. His speeches on the 
new rule and on the Civil Riglits bill have been true, timely, and pointed. ... In 
the hot debates of the last three days he has done more to vindicate the Southern 
people from the imputiUions recklessly put upon them than almost any other mem- 
ber of Congress. The Southern people could do themselves no greater service than 
by sending more such meu as Mr. Lamar to represent them. 

As the session drew to its close the last great struggle for many 
years over Scmtheni afl'airs came on; and the flames of partisan pas- 
sion, which leaped so high and so fiercely iu the Senate during the 
mouth of January, now raged in the House. The Civil Eights Bill 
was passed through that body and done with. It was then before the 
Senate, and so certain of passage that discussion of it had ceased, and 
the irritations incident to its discussion were subsiding. On the 18th 
of February, however, Mr. Coburn, Chairman of the committee which 
had been appointed to investigate the condition of political affairs in 
Alabama, reported to the House for its action the measure known as 
the "Force Bill." This step had been determined uj^on in a caucus of 
the llepublican members. It was a purely party measure, avowedly 
designed to secure Republican ascendency iu the States to be specially 
affected by it. The consideration of the bill, and the great struggle 
over its passage or defeat, came on Wednesday, the 24th of February. 
Two days later, in the Natiomil li'epiihlicaii, the presidential organ at 
Washington, appeared an editorial upon the pending bill, which closed, 
in large capitals, as follows: 

THE PASSAGE OF THE BILL IS REQUIRED TO PRESERVE TO THE RE- 
PUBLICAN PARTY THE ELECTORAL VOTES OF THE SOUTHERN STATES. 

REMEMBER THAT IF THE DEMOCRATS CARRY ALL THE SOUTHERN 
STATES, AS THEY WILL IF THE WHITE LEAGUE USURPATION IN SOME 
OF THEM IS NOT SUPPRESSEn, IT WILL REQUIRE ONLY FIFTY DEMO- 
CRATIC ELECTORAL VOTES FROM THE NORTHERN STATES TO ELECT A 
DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT. THIS IS A LIBERAL ESTIMATE. 

Of this editorial Mr. Hawley, of Connecticut — himself a Republican 
of the stanchest, but who, in common with several others of aim- 



214 LUCIUS Q. C. LA MA 11: 

ilar sort in the House, could not be persuaded that it was proper to 
pass the bill — could saj-, by way of apology, only this: 

The writer honestly thinks that Hberty, tliat justice, equahty, and fraternity will 
be trampled in the dust iftlje Republican party does not succeed. He thinks that it 
will be a wise iiolicy to go to the very verge of constitutional power — even under his 
own acknowledgment — to peipetuate that party in power. I cannot say that. 

As before stated, it was ou Wednesday, the 24th of February, that 
the Force Bill was called ujj for consideration. Only seven more 
working days remained to the Republicans before the adjournment of 
Congress would be forced by lapse of time. To the opponents of the 
bill delay meant everything. It was their sole refuge. If only time 
could be consumed until it should be too late for the bill, when passed 
by the House, to be also considered and passed by the Senate, then it 
could be defeated; otherwise not. Therefore they began to filibuster, 
under the admirable leadership of Mr. Eandall; and the session of this 
day in the House affords a most remarkable example of that species of 
legislative tactics. The morning session, with the exception of a slight 
skirmish over the "order of business," was devoted to a consideration 
of approiDriations, etc. ; but the opening of the evening session, at half 
past seven o'clock, witnessed the beginning in earnest of the battle. 
The opponents of the bill, contesting again the order of business, 
showered down all sorts of admissible dilatoi-y motions and demands — 
motions to adjourn, questions of quorum, questions of contempt, dis- 
putes over preferences, divisions, and calls for the yeas and nays, ap- 
peals from the Chair — until the head swims to read them. The result 
was that the night of the 'i4th passed away; the noon of the 25th came 
and passed; and it was only at 4: 10 p.m. of Thursday that the House, 
utterly worn-out and famishing from a session of over twenty-nine 
hours, adjourned until Friday, the 2Gth. 

Thus the opiionents of the bill had gained two j^recious days. Only 
five remained, but in the meantime they had exhausted all of their re- 
sources. Delays could be obtained only rinder limitations imposed by 
certain parliamentary rules; and, working skillfully under those rules, 
the Republican phalanx had steadily and inexorably, although slowly, 
pressed on to its final end; and when the long session adjourned the 
bill was reached. The morning of Friday would probably witness its 
call and pas.sage under the previous question. Sufficient time had not 
been gained, and matters looked very dark indeed for the Southern 
members. 

Mr. Lamar, with the others, was in des]iair. He regarded the pas- 
sage of the Force Bill not only as an indignity and an humiliation to the 
South, but also as an unmeasurable calamity to the nation. It meant 
the tearing open of old wounds and the perpetuation of bayonet rule. 
It was the undoing of tlie mission of the peacemaker. To him person- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AXD SPEECHES. 215 

ally it signified the blasting of his one great hope, the toppling over 
into irretrievable rniu of the whole structure of his later life. 

Mr. Lamar's noble course in Congress stood the South in good stead 
then. Through it, and through the kindly feeling which it had engen- 
dered for him, he was enabled to accomplish in this emergency what prob- 
ably no other Democrat could have done. He found the way out of the 
trouble. 

He had not taken an active part in the filibustering; bat after the 
adjournmeut, late at night, contemplating the fateful morrow, and des- 
perate about the hapless prospect, he visited the Speaker at his resi- 
dence. He impressed upon Mr. Blaine, who was understood not to be 
ill sympathy with the bill, the disasters with which its passage threat- 
ened the South. He appealed to him, with the wonderful power which 
he had to reach the better and higher natures of men when he wished, 
to extricate the South, if possible, from the toils closing around her; 
and there he received from the Speaker a hint which was used to good 
purpose on the following day. 

When the House convened at eleven o'clock the clerk began to read 
the minutes of the previous session. Mr. Storm, of Pennsylvania, in- 
terrupted, raising the jjoint of order that the clerk was not reading the 
names of the persons voting in the negative and the affirmative on the 
several votes. This was Mr. Blaine's hint to Mr. Lamar. The yeas 
and nays and the roll of the House had been called forty times; and to 
read those names would alone consume several hours. The Speaker 
asked: "Does the gentleman insist on their being read?" Said Mr. 
Storm: "I do." This brief colloquy settled the great issue. Mr. 
Hurlburt then oifered a compromise resolution to the effect that by 
unanimous consent the sundry civil bill should have the day until five 
o'clock; that at half past seven the Force Bill should be taken up for 
debate only, the previous question to be afterwards called upon the 
same whenever the House should so order. This, being agreed to, won 
all of Friday for the defense. 

On Saturday the bill was passed, but not until midnight. When it 
went into the Senate on Monday it was too late to pass it under the 
rules of that body, and so it was abandoned after a feeble effort. 

For his friendly service in this matter Mr. Lamar ever entertained 
the greatest gratitude to Mr. Blaine. He spoke of it frequently; and 
in the heated Presidential campaign of 1884, when Mr. Blaine was sub- 
jected to much severe criticism and abuse, in his public speeches Mr. 
Lamar refused to make any personal assaults upon him, saying that he 
could never forget what he had done for the South in 1875. 



During the sitting of Congress, on the 9th of January, Mr. Lamar, in 



21G LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

response to a request from the editor of the Xew York Herald, wrote an 
open communication on the Southern questions, which is as follows: 

To THE Editor of the Herald. 

Sir: In reply to your request that I shall state to you " what socially and politically 
would be the result in your [my] State if the Federal Government should at once and 
entirely cease to interfere in the affairs of your State, and leave Mississippi to go\crn 
itself and its people to manage their own local aflairs just as the people of New York 
or Pennsylvania manage their own," I answer: 

1. The rights of personal security aud of property would be under the changed cir- 
cumstances referred to as secure as they are in any community on earth. The dis- 
turbances there now are purely of a political nature. Public opinion in that State le- 
gards any white man as ignoble and cowardly who w-ould cheat a negro or take ad- 
vantage of him in a 'trade or who would wantonly do him a personal injury. A jury, 
if it should incline in its sympathies either way, would favor the weaker man in an 
appeal to the laws. 

2. As to political rights, I presunae that your question points to those rights which 
the Northern peoiile have insisted upon being secured to the black race— to wit, the 
rights of sulTrage, of service on juries, and legal eligibility to office. I do not believe 
that any serious movement would be made in my State to injure or abridge any of 
those rights. In the exercise of them there might be some slight occasional disturb- 
ances. They would, however, 1 le the mere transient incidents of the resumption by our 
people of local self-government to which they have been unused by ten years of le- 
pression, and would entirely cease in a very short time. 

As to the political complexion of the State if the people are allowed to rule their 
own local affairs as those of the Northern States are, it cannot be doubted that with 
us, as with you, lirains, intelligence, and moral strength will ultimately rule; and it 
is certain that, as the negro population is for the most part poor and ignorant, it will 
fall under the influence in a great degree, as the same element does everywhere, of its 
employers; an influence which it will be to the employers' interest to increase by 
kind treatment ami protection. This cannot be helped. It is the natural course in a 
free State, and it will have in our case the great advantage of obliterating the color 
line and ranging men in parties without regard to race, which can never be done 
while the present system of Federal interference continues. Let me not be misunder 
stood. There is among the whites in our State no color line organization in the sense 
usually attached to that term. The history of political combinations since the war in 
Mississippi shows a constant but fruitless effort to break down a political barrier which 
Federal power has erected, and which Federal power can alone maintain. The white 
man is made by the direct action of the Federal Government the political antipathy 
of the black, and is pointed out to the latter as the common enemy, and as the enemy 
of Ijoth himself and the government. By constituting itself as the negro's sole pro- 
tector in the State it drives him to trust only its agents and partisans, often men of 
the vilest character, and rarely men who have any material relation to the State or to 
society among us. The negro is thus isolated from the white people among whom he 
lives, and the Federal power thus makes him an alien in our society, though invested 
with the highest political prerogatives, thus forcing him into an attitude which tends 
also to force the white race into a similar jiosition toward him. Here is the true 
cause of the dist\irbances of whii'h you in the North have greatly exaggerated ac- 
counts. I repeat, they are invariably political. Witlidraw the disturbing force, leave 
our ])opulation tc> tlie responsiliility of local self government and to the natural opera- 
tion of social and industrial forces, and all that is now deranged and disorderly will 
certiiinly and permanently arrange itself; not perhaps at first without friction, but 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 217 

with, I am confident, ;in immediate decrease of friction and a L'radually but surely 
lessening amount of disorder. At tlie very worst it will be as nothing in comparison 
with the strife and intestine commotion witli wliich our land is now cursed. 

Is there not statesmanship enough among our rulers to perceive that smli govern- 
ments as we now liave in some of the .Southern States must be constantly running 
down, and that these appeals to the United States army and this use of it whii'h is 
now startling the country must continue a constantly recurring evil, or rather must 
tend toward becoming a fixed and permanent element in our system of government? 

Of this letter the Jackson Clarion said: 

The Republicans cannot gainsay, and the Democrats and Conservatives of Missis- 
sippi will unhesitatingly indorse, the declarations contained in the letter of our distin- 
guished representative to the \ew York Herald. 

The .lackson Pihii (Republican organ) said that "the Democratic papers of this State 
ai'e perfectly furious with Mr. Lamar . . . because in a recent letter to the New 
York Herald that gentleman confessed that the ' recent disturbances in his State were 
of a purely political nature.' "... 

This statement the Clarion reproduced and denied, and a few days 
later said editorially: 

We replied that this was a misrepresentation ; that out of the forty or fifty Demo- 
cratic papers in the State the Pilot could not name two that were " furious with Mr. 
Lamar " on account of his letter to the New York Herald. The Pilot rejoins by citing 
four that have made some complaints about his course, but none of them seems to 
have specified this particular letter. Of these four papers one is out of existence, and 
the other three, according to the Pilot's logic, constitute " the Democratic press of this 
State." 

The obvious comment upon this letter and tliis controversy of the Pi- 
lot's springing is that Mr. Lamar's expression of a "purely jjolitical 
nature " was wrested from its true signification. What he meant was 
that the disturbances alluded to grew out of the maladministration and 
corruption of the government imposed upon the State against the will 
of the people, and not that they arose from any effort or disposition on 
the part of the whites to deny to the blacks the civil and political rights 
to which they were entitled by law. This makes a difference, but it 
suited the purpose of the Pilot to place the latter construction upon the 
phrase for obvious reasons. The object of introducing this tilt between 
the papers is to show that, in fact, Mr. Lamar's letter was indorsed by 
the Democratic press of the State. 



The elections for State officers and Congressmen were to be held in 
New Hampshire on the 9th of March, and Mr. Lamar and Senator Gor- 
don, of Georgia, were invited by the Democratic State Executive Com- 
mittee to make speeches in that State in the interest of the party. 
Yielding to that invitation and the earnest i-equest of the Democratic 
Senators and members from the North, Mr. Lamar consented to go. 
Senator Gordon also went. Mr. Lamar's address at Nashua, in which 



218 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

he presented the defense of the Soiith, is thus reported and printed iu 

the Boston Advertiser: 

Nashua, N. H., March 7. 

Representative Lamar, of Mississippi, spolce to tlie citizens of Nasliua last evening 
on tlie condition of liis people at the South. Though the hall was engaged by the 
Democratic Committee, and he was invited by it to speak, it was by no means a party 
gathering that assembled. Republicans and Democrats, attracted by the reputation 
which he bears for eloquence, ability, and worth, crowded the large hall till they filled 
it to overflowing. His address was exactly suited to the mixed character of his audi- 
ience. It was remarkaljly nonpartisan, consisting merely of a statement of facts 
braced by tlie reports of Congressional investigation and a logical tracing of the causes 
which have led to whatever turbulence and disquietude exist; containing scarcely an 
allusion to either of the two jiolitical parties, and none whatever to the approaching 
election. He spoke for about two hours, not concluding till neaily eleven o'clock, and 
retained the closest attention to the last ; and then, as several times before, there were 
loud calls for him to continue. The address was earnest and forcible, and made a deep 
impression upon those who listened to it. Mr. Lamar was pi-eceded by Col. F. W. 
Parker, of Manchester, a lifelong Republican, who made a very earnest and powerful 
speech in which he, with sadness, gave as his reason for voting the Democratic ticket 
the fact that he could not express his sentiments through the leaders of his own 
party. He did not believe the Democratic victories were owing to the good that that 
party had done. 

Representative Lamar was received with great applause. When it had snlisided 
he said : 

"■ Fellow-dlizens of New Hampshire : I cannot realize in words the idea I have of what 
would be appropriate for me to say upon this, my first appearance before the people 
of this grand old Commonwealth. I don't know that I can better attest my high ap- 
preciation of the honor you have conferred upon me by inviting me here and of the 
cordial greeting that you have given me than by speaking to you from the depths of 
my heart my honest thoughts. I have come under the persuasion that the citizens of 
this State, as indeed the people all over this country, desire that the era of sectional 
discord and alienation and strife from which the country has Tjeen so long suH'ering 
shall be brought to a close; and that a new one shall be inaugurated which shall be 
illustrious as an era of cordial reunion between the sections, of harmonious fraternity 
between the people. There is but one impediment, I apprehend, in the way of that 
cordial understanding. I don't believe that there exists on the part of the people of 
the North any desire to ojipress our people or to continue the system of Federal inter- 
ference in our local aflairs. The only obstacle, therefore, in the way of harmony in 
this country is the apprehension in the minds of many honest jieople that such is the 
condition of art'airs in Southern States, such the temper of the Southern people, that 
local self-government in that section will not give the guarantee of personal security, 
of personal liberty, of prosperity, and of political rights to which American citizens 
of all classes and of all races are entitled. 

"I propo.se this evening to lay before you calmly and dispassionately the condition 
of the South, the attitude of her people, their intentions, their purposes, their aspira- 
tions. I would have preferred to have come among you upon some other occasion 
than that of a political canvass. Coming to plead the cause of one people to another, 
the very sanctity and dignity of my mission naturally lift me above the petty passion 
and ambitions of party strife, and my only motix'es are my final judges: God, con- 
science, truth, country, posterity. [Applause.] And if among my motives there 
lurked one less pure than truth, if there were in my heart a glancing thought of party 
profit oi- party advantage at any ajsproaching election, I should feel that I was trifling 
with sacred interests. [Applause.] 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 219 

" It has been represented to you, fellow-citizens of New Hampsliire, that upon the 
part of the native wliite population of the South there is a determined scheme to obtain 
supremacy and control, if necessary by organized fraud, violence, murder, for the pur- 
pose of subjecting the newly enfranchised race of that section to a servitude something 
akin to their former bondage, and to defeat the results -wliich you have achieved by the 
war that you closed in 1865. If you will give me your attention, I think I can satisfy 
you that no sucli purpose exists. That there do exist in some of the Southern 
States a disquietude in reference to political affairs, and disorder amounting sometimes 
to Ijloody conflicts, wliich do not exist to the same extent in the Northern States or 
in the other Southern States, and which ought to be unknown in the working of 
American institutions, I do not deny. I make this statement in all candor ; and I want 
to show you that these disorders are referable to no ambition for political supremacy, 
to no party passion. Those motives existed in the South befoi-e the war far more 
powerfully than they do at this time. Then, when the people of the North were 
engaged in the pursuits of literature and science and mechanic arts and manufactur- 
ing and commerce, regarding the science of government as the highest of all sciences, 
the Southern people looked upon political celebrity as the highest object of a noble 
ambition. Hence paities were equally divided as AVhigs and Democrats, Know-noth- 
ings and auti-Know-nothings, and they struggled fiercely for supremacy, with alter- 
nate success and defeat: and yet the tranquillity of society was not disturbed. At 
this time one of the great evils in the South is the disposition among the masses of 
the intelligent people of that country to withdraw from all action in political struggles, 
from all particiiiation in the responsibility of government, as a task too arduous, too 
hopeless, too thankless. Nor are these disorders owing to any lurking discontent with 
the operation of the amendments to the constitution, nor to any antagonism of races 
in that section. AVhenever these conflicts have occurred a carefid analysis of the facts 
will show you that they have grown out of a condition of things which neither race 
bad any agency in producing. Amid the shade around those striking and memoruljle 
events in Louisiana, through the glooni which surrounds the dark tragedy at Vicks- 
burg, this fact, as if by a flash of light, has been revealed: tliat in all the agitation in 
that section there has been no tendency to conflict with national authority, no aspira- 
tion not bounded by the horizon of the Union, no purpose to disturb the settlement 
of elective franchise. [Applause.] The people of the South regard the amendments 
to the constitution as an integral part of tliat instrument. The amendments which 
gave emancii^ation to the black man, which gave him citizenship and suffrage, they 
regard as indelibly fixed upon that instrument, embodied in it, as sound and invinla- 
ble as the original charter which came from the hands of their fathens. [Applause.] 

" What then is the cause or combination of causes which, not existing in the North, 
not existing in far the greater portion of the South, and not existing in the disturbed 
localities before the war, has proiluced this deplorable state of things? The President 
of the United States in his annual message uses the following remarkable language. 
Speaking of the people among whom these disturbances exist, he says: ' I sympathize 
with their prostrate condition, acknowledging [Fellow-citizens, that is a remarkable 
expression for the President of the United States to use in communicating informa- 
tion to Congress] that in some instances they have had most trying governments 
to live under, jind very oppressive ones in the way of taxation for nominal improve- 
ments, not giving benefits equal to the liardships imjiosed.' Have you not here re- 
vealed an adequate cause for discontent and disturbance? In what age of the world, 
in what country, have not such efiects followed from oppressive governments, impos- 
ing burdens of taxation, with no corresponding benefit, upon a prostrate people? 
Why, my fellow-citizens, what is the use of Congressional investigation, what is the 
use of appealing to passion and hatred, when you have liere from the Executive 
himself causes which in all ages have produced disorder, violence, and bloodshed? 



220 LUCIVS Q. a LAMAR: 

'Oppressive government!' What does that signify? It means the sway of corrup- 
tion, cupidity and craft, peculation and embezzlement, intimidation of voters, bribery, 
waste of public treasure, loss of public credit, false Returning Boards, fraudulent ballot- 
ing, intimidation by tiie Federal military, taxation in all its grinding and diversified 
forms. 'Piostrate condition!' What does that mean? It means a people reduced 
to Ijankruptcy and wretchedness, agriculture prostrated, commerce, trade, mechanics, 
arts, all broken down, enterprise paralyzed, the resources of industry drunk up, and 
the iieople with hearts broken by the spoliation and oppression and plunder and im- 
purity of their rulers. [Applause.] 

" But, fellow-citizens, on this point I have higher authority than that of the Presi- 
dent of the Nation, high and exalted as his position is. In view of these terrible and 
harrowing stories of outrages and murders in the South, a committee was appointed 
upon Southern aSairs, ordered by a Republican House of Representatives, appointed 
by a Republican Speaker. They sent a subcommittee, the majority of which were 
Republicans: Messrs. Phelps and Foster and Potter. Mr. Foster is a Republican ot 
the most decided character, representing a radical district, ardent and uncompromis- 
ing in his tendencies. In the session before, he had won reimtation for faithfulness 
as an investigator and for his adherence to the conclusions to which his investigations 
conducted him. Mr. Phelps was also a Repal)!ican of decided tendencies, but a man 
of lofty patriotism wliicli raised him above party following, and made him in the 
midst of great events act with sole reference to the welfare of the wliole country. 
Mr. Potter, of New York, was a Democrat, but one whose reputation for integrity, 
honor, and ability was too high to allow him to peril it by signing his name to a par- 
tisan 01- unfair report. I speak of these facts to show you that they repaired to this 
disturbed district looking at the same events and condition of tilings with minds 
somewluit diverse. Yet, after a long and laljorious investigation, they make a unani- 
mous reijort. I will read from that report to you. Sjieaking of tlie charge that there 
had l)een intiuiidation of colored voters, the committee say that it was not borne out by 
the facts Ijefore tliem. ' No general intimiilation of Republican voters can be estab- 
lished; no colored man was produced who had been threatened or assaulteil by any 
Conservative because of political opinion, or discharged from employment or refused 
employment. Of all those [This is a report, gentlemen, a unanimous report, of a com- 
mittee, two of whom are Republicans and one a Democrat] who testified to intimida- 
tion, there was hardly any one who of his own knowledge could specify a reliable in- 
stance of such act. Of tlie white men who were produced to testify generally on this 
subject, very nearly all, if not every single one, was the holder of an office. Through- 
out the rural districts of the State the number of white Republicans are very few ; it 
hardly extends beyond those holding office and those connected with them. No wit- 
ness, we believe, succeeded in naming in any jtarish five Republicans who supported 
the Kellogg government who were not themselves officeholders or related to office- 
holders, or themselves having official employment.' You remember, fellow-citizens, 
that the Returning Board, a Republican Returning Board, in New Orleans ejected 
enough Democrats to make the Republicans have a majority in the Legislature. 
They were turned out of the Legislature by the power of the Federal military. 
Here is what the committee say upon that suliject: 'Without now referring to the 
other instances, we are constrained to declare tliat the action of the Returning Board 
on tlie whole was arbitrary, unjust, and in our opinion illegal ; and that this arbitrary, 
• unjust, and illegal action alone prevented tlie returning by the board of a majority of 
Conservative members to the Lower House.' They iro on to declare that there is a 
fearful despotism in that country, that is taking all the substance of tlie people, taxing 
property in New Orleans an annual amount exceeding the rents of the jiroperty, tax- 
ing some of the rural parishes to the amount of eight per cent. 

" So much for that. When this report, unanimous, came to Congress, it struck the 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 221 

people with astonishment; the Republican members were silent in their amazement, 
and at once the other portion of the committee repaired to New Orleans for the pur- 
pose of making a different report. Messrs. Hoar of Massachusetts, Wheeler of New 
York, Frye of Maine, with Mr. Marshall, Democrat, from Illinois, repaired to New 
Orleans for the purpose of taking testimony, and making a report which might coun- 
teract the effect of this unanimous report of the subcommittee, which showed tliat 
the people of Louisiana were writhing under all the oppression which a government 
corrupt, incompetent, and tyrannical could inflict. [Applause.] Well, the character 
of that last committee — especially of its Chairman, Mr. George F. Hoar — was such 
as to lead to no expectation that there would be any indulgence shown to the people 
of the South, or any very harsh criticism of his own party. By inheritance, by train- 
ing, by political association, he was intensely anti-Southern. His manners toward 
Southern men, so bitter are his feelings, are often cold and reserved; and nothing but 
his instinct and refinement as a gentleman, which he is in every respect, saved him 
from sometimes being supercilious; acute in intellect, cultured, trained to the high- 
est expansion of his powers, quick in his resentments and coml)ative in temperament, 
we certainly exjiected no quarter from his hands. But benenth all this there were 
genuine truth and manhood in Hoar that lifted him above the sordid feeling of ma- 
lignant passion. He went, then, to that country, and he made a report; and, while 
there is much in it that saddened my heart, while there is much which I say is un- 
wise and unjust in his observations, there are some things, fellow-citizens, which you 
people of the North should hark to bear in mind, while you are coming to your con- 
clusions witli reference to the relations which you intend to sustain to the prostrate 
people in m\' section. Here, fellow-citizens, is what Mr. Hoar says in reference to the 
South : ' We don't overlook the causes which tended to excite deep feeling and discon- 
tent in the white population of Louisiana [I must read these extracts to you becausea 
people's interest, a peo))le's destiny, hang largely upon the action of the people of New 
Hampshire and other Northern States]. There has been great maladministration ; 
puljlic funds have been wasted [That means public funds have been emliezzled, appro- 
priated by these governments that are sucking the blood, the lifeblood, from a 
people already impoverished by four years of calamitous war] ; public lands have 
been wasted, public credit imjiaired.' Now, [fellow-citizens, that is the testimony of 
one of the most uncompromising Republicans in this country. Mr. Frye, who is can- 
vassing this State, has his name signed to that statement, but I don't hold liim re- 
sponsilsle for it; perhaps the sentiment of the report was not his, and that he simjjly 
joined in the resolutions which were recommended by the committee. I don't wish 
to misrepresent the views of any gentleman. He goes on, speaking of some of the 
causes which have led to discontent and turbulence in Louisiana. Among them is the 
fact that the administration party of Louisiana is made up by massing together the 
whole negro vote with a few whites, largely from other States; the fact that there has 
been great maladministration by Republican officers, much dishonesty, much corrup- 
tion, in State and local administration. 

"I will give you one more evidence, fellow-citizens, upon this subject. Mr. Hale, 
of Maine, has testified, and let us hear what his testimony is: ' For the last four years 
the infamy and disgrace of certain Southern governments [O, you are now hearing 
about outrages on the Southern people, speaking of these Re|>ublican governments in 
Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, and South Carolina] have been 
heard of in Congress. There have been corrupt electors and corrupt elections. There 
have been corrupt legislators and corrupt legislation [Mark it, fellow-citizens, this 
language is not that of a red-hot Democrat in New Hampshire ; it is not the utterance 
of a rebel; it is the language of the loyal Eugene Hale, from Maine, speaking of Re- 
publican governments in the Southern States] ; there have been double Legislatures, 
double Governors, double Representatives in this House, and double Senators, year 



22'2 LUCIUS Q. C. LA MAE: 

by year, in many States; there have been bad men in these States, wlio have bouglit 
power Ijy wliolesale bribery, and have enriched themselves at the expense of the 
people by pei-ulation and underhanded robbing. Corruption and anarchy have occu- 
pied tliese States.' 

" But, fellow-citizens, another committee was sent to Arkansas. It was said that 
the banditti and marauders and the murderers of Arkansas had ovei'lurned the work 
of reconstruction, had usurjted the government, and reduced (or were about to reduce) 
the Ijlack population of that country to a condition worse than their former bondage 
in slavery. That committee was composed of Mr. Poland of Vermont, Mr. Sayler, 
and ancitlier gentleman whose name I do not recall, but a Republican. There were 
three Republicans and two Democrats. Mr. Poland, an able jurist, examines into the 
condition of things there. He reports that the government now established in Arkan- 
sas is the I'epresentative of the majority of the people of that State, white and black; 
that it is the result of the spontaneous vote, and that peace and order and tranquillity 
prevail in tliat State, under tlds new government in the hands of the people, as great 
as has ever prevailed there. This committee was unanimous, save one. I wish to say, 
fellow-citizens, in respect to this charge of the public press that the black men hold 
no oliice in that government (I have the authority of a Republican memlier from Ar- 
kansas for saying it), that there are three hundred black men in that government at 
this time. In that Conservative government of Arkansas there are three hundred of- 
ficeholders who are men of color. That is the way in which they are oppressed. 
Why, we in Mississippi have often voted for colored men for office. The Conserva- 
tives of Mississippi voted for the adoption of the fifteenth amendment in 1869. Don't 
misunderstand me. They didn't vote to abide by it after it was adojited ; they didn't 
vote to acquiesce in it; they voted for it, at the ballot box, in the Legislature. The 
Conservative men of Mississippi voted for the incorporation into the constitution of 
the fifteenth amendment. How can they be charged with being hostile to an 
amendment whicli they themselves voted to incorporate into the law? [Applause.] 

"Now I api^eal to you, men of New Hampshire, if from this record of lacts, given 
by Congressmen who were on the spot, you have not a cause adequate to exjilain all 
the disorders in that country, without attributing to it any antagonism of races, or to 
unholy ambition for political supremacy? I ask you, fellow-citizens, if it is not nat- 
ural tliat such governments, such officers as these, should excite discontent and dis- 
turbance among our people? Is it possible for an intelligent people and a virtuous 
people to reganl with reverence and awe and obedience a government whose rulers 
are embezzlers, rogues, and lawbreakers? Would you do it? [Cries of 'No!'] 
Why, fellow-citizens, the w'orld over, 'oppressive governments,' 'prostrate people,' 
' burdens of taxation,' have always been accompanied either by tuibulence, by discon- 
tent, by resistance on the jiart of the people, or by abject and degrading submission." 

Speaking of the character of the people of the South, Mr. Lamar read from the mes- 
sage of tlie President, in which he says that there is a disposition among them to be 
law-abiding; and from the reportof Mr. Hoar, in which he says that tlicy possess cour- 
age, that they are truthful, hospitalile, and genei'ous. When he read these latter words, 
which the jiower of proof had drawn fi'om that adamantine nature, he felt something 
of the ejnotion which he experienced as a boy when he read of the waters that 
gushed from the rock under the Heaven-inspired rod of Moses. [Applause.] Accord- 
ing to the testimony of all these men, of the President, of the committees, of Jlr. Hale, 
these were corrupt governments, oppressive governments, bearing down on a trener- 
ous, brave, truthful, magnanimous people. The question was, wliether or not these 
measures of reconstruction wliich had been proposed were just. In this connection 
he spoke strongly against the Force Bill and all other measures of Federal interfer- 
ence. He charged the drawing of the color line upon the Federal Government. The 
two races were attached to each other bv bonds of aflection. There was not a 



mS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 223 

negro in the whole South who was not dear and endeared to some white man, 
woman, or child. The government interfered, and broke asunder their relations, the 
first lesson it taught the negro being dietrust. He wislied it distinctly to be under- 
stood that the capacity of the negro lace for freedom and for the duties of citizenship 
should not be determined by the government, or by any of the occurrences that have 
taken place. Negro freedom and negro citizenship and negro suffrage had not had a 
fair opportunity for favorable development at the Soutli. They had been continually 
in the control of agents of the Federal Government. It would be unjust to tliem to 
form any estimate of tlieir capacity to use tlie demands of tlieir liigh position by the 
events of the last ten years. If Ids heareis wished to see Southern society reorgan- 
ized, the best market in the world reestablished, they slmuld give to the South those 
institutions whicli were established two hundred and thirty years ago in the hills of 
New Hampshire — local self-government. [Applause.] 

In closing, after giving illustrations to show that the reports of outrages and dis- 
turbances at the South had been exaggerated, he said: " I assure you that there is no 
antagonism to the Union in that Southern country. If you were to attempt to confer 
a separate nationality ujion them, they would not accept it as a boon. They all be- 
lieve and feel, in their shattered condition, that their hope and the hope of the Amer- 
ican people is the preservation of the Union. [Applause.] They are actually hun- 
gering and thirsting after a government which they can love and revere. [Apijlause.] 
They are ready to I'ally around your old flag, which fur the last ten years has been 
to them not an emldem of protection, but an emblem of force. Just vouchsafe to 
them the tienefits of government as you enjo}' them yourselves; give them the right 
of local self-government; that is all they ask, and they will teach their children to 
lisp: ' Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable.' " 

The speeches of Lamar and Gordon were made in a district which at 
the last election had gone Republican by a large majority, and in which 
the outlook for the Democrats was darkest. It is stated that " the Rad- 
ical managers raised a great howl over tlie visit of ' the rebel soldiers.' " 
The result of the election as a whole was unfavora:ble, the Republican 
majority being increased; but, on the other hand, the Democrats gained 
a Congressman. 

The Phikidiijihla Times said: "The election returns show that wherever Gens. 
Gordon and Lamar spoke the Democrats made unprecedented gains." 

The Washington City //eroW (Democratic) : " If the sincere and eloquent words of these 
honest and earne.st men, pleading for peace and good will between the sections, could 
have been listened to by every voter in the Granite State, the result might have l>een, 
as we firmly believe, an overwhelming conservative triumph. In the district where 
their addresses were made a Democratic Congressman was chosen, although it has 
hitherto been re])resented by a Republican." 

The Springfiiid (Mass.) Republican: "That 1 hey m.ade votes for the Democratic can- 
didates is probable;" and then proceeds to argue that they did a higher work in re- 
moving false impressions which had been made on the Northern mind by political 
partisans who live on the sectional agitation which is kept up at the expense of the 
South. 

Returning to Washington, Messrs. Lamar and CJ-ordon stopped for a 
few hours in Boston, where they were entertained by the ]\[arshfield 
Club, at the Somerset Clubhouse, on Beacon street. The invitation 
was accepted with the understanding that the gathering should be in- 



224 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

formal, as both were greatly fatigued. President Harvey rose and 
gave the usual toast, which is always remembered when members of 
that club meet, to " the memory of Daniel Webster, the defender and 
expounder of the constitution." He then briefly addressed the guests,, 
stating that the club was organized and sustained by men who believed 
in the doctrines that Mr. Webster taught. He gave some interesting 
reminiscences of the great statesman, and closed by proposing Gen. 
Gordon's health. The Senator was then received with prolonged and 
hearty applause, and spoke earnestly and eloquently for half an hour 
about the condition and feelings of the people of his State. He was 
frequently interrupted liy enthusiastic applause. 

The President then proposed the health of Representative Lamar, of 
Mississippi, who responded by a speech of half an hour in behalf of 
the suffering South: 

He was glad to be the guest of men who aimed to follow the precepts taught by 
the immortal AVebster. In his boyhood he had imbibed the doctrines of John C. 
Calhoun ; but now that the war had settled the issues upon which Calhoun and Web- 
ster most disagreed, he could see that upon all points bearing upon the questions 
which agitate the country to-day the views of Webster and Calhoun were substan- 
tially the same. Each, in his day, was considered the defender and expounder of 
the constitution. They were both binding up the sheaves in the great field where 
the seeds of liberty had been sown. They both held to the supremacy of the law and 
the constitution. They simply differed as to its interpretation. Were tliey alive 
now, they would stand, hand in hand and shouldei- to shoulder, in opposition to the 
usurpations and violations of the constitutional rights of the States that had been 
practiced during the later years. All the teachings of both these men were opposed 
to the idea of executive interference with the domestic concerns of the States. They 
were opposed to everything that bore a Beml)lance of absolutism in government. 
They did not believe tliat the constituti.m was a thing that could be lightly set aside. 
Mr. Lamar then gave a number of incidents in th-e lives of the two great statesmen 
which proved how entirely they were in accord on these points. If they had been 
living in 1860, they could have settled the difficulties that provoked the late war in a 
single hour, had the questions at issue been sulmutted to them. There was no real 
difference in regard to the form of the government. The people of the Noith and of 
the South were agreed on that point. It was a war for the vindication of the inter- 
pretation of the constitution, to which each side adhered, as represented by Webster 
and Calhoun. 

Hon. Henry W. Paine, ex-Go v. Gardner, and Hon. Leverett Salton- 
stall spoke briefly in response to the sentiments of their distinguished 
guests, and the pleasant party was broken up by the arrival of the hour 
of departure for New York. 

On his way home Mr. Lamar passed through Atlanta, where he was 
interviewed by the afterwards celebrated journalist, Henry W. Grady, 
in the interest of the Afhnita Herald. The interview is here given in 
part, with extracts from an editorial by which it was prefaced. 

The very high character for statesmanship and patriotic devotion to the South 
which Mr. Lamar has borne through a long career of public life should give his utter- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 225 

ances more than oiiUnary signiticauce. There are few men in the country to whom 
the appeUation of" statesman " can be more justly applied, and none to whom the much- 
abused adjective of " eloquent " more properly belongs. We regard his last speech 
in the Federal Congress, made in April, 1860, on the slavery question, the most phil- 
osophical and niagniflcent defense of the Southern jjeople ever uttered, and no South- 
ern man can read it, even at this <lay, without a feeling of proud satisfaction. For 
our part, we are willing to have our connection with the institution of slavery go 
down to history on that speech. . . . The country is in peril, and those who 
value constitutional government must look to such men as Mr. Lamar to save our in- 
stitutions from destruction. One thing is beyond controversy: the restoration of this 
country to constitutional government can only be accomplished by arousing the pa- 
triotism of "the people, and this can only be done by men who are patriots. Of such 
we think Mr. Lamar is one pure and imselfish. 

Hearing that Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar, of Mississippi, Ijy all odds the leading Southern 
member of the House in Congress, and a man famous and beloved in all the country, 
was at the Kimball House, a repr^sentiitive of the Herald called on him to get his 
views on the political situation. 

We found ex-Senator H. V. M. Miller, Gen. A. H. Colquitt, Capt. E. T. Paine, and 
Col. R. A. Alston in the room, the latter of whom presented us to Mr. Lamar. 

Mr. Lamar has all the physical characteristics of his knightly and illustrious family: 
that peculiar swarthy complexion, pale but clear; the si>lendid gray eyes; the high 
cheek bones; the dark-brown hair; the firm and fixed mouth; the face thoroughly 
hauglity and reserved when in repose, and yet full of snap and fire and magnetism 
when in action ; all these were there. 

Added to these was that indefinable something which all great men carry about 
them, and which hangs about even small men who have been for a long time in very 
high position. It was apparent at a glance that Mr. Lamar was no ordinary Congress- 
man, and that there was nothing accidental or fortuitous in the national reputation 
which he has achieved. His record is truly a brilliant one. What Gordon is in the 
Senate, Lamar is in the House. And these two Southerners stand ahead, in the spirit 
of nobility, at least, of all their colleagues. Lamar is a finer talker tlian Gordon. If I 
am not mistaken, he is a better scholar than Gordon; by this I mean a man of more 
classical aptness and of broader culture. Indeed, after he consented, with a modesty 
most felicitous and a reluctance that I barely dared to disregard, to give me "an in- 
terview," I was not long in disco\'ering that I had stru<'k a conversational " bonanza." 
Such a wealth of haj^py sayings, of pregnant epigram, of wise utterances, of eloquent 
burst, of humorous touches, of political axioms, of brilliant sarcasm, of earnest states- 
manship, and of decorous anecdote, it has never been my fortune to look in upon 
— that is, not since Col. Tom Howard has forsworn Burgundy and tamed his splen- 
did tongue. 

The substance of the interview we shall present to our readers. Its matchless 
phrase, its subtle flavor, and the cliarming grace with which it fell from his lips, are 
gone; and could hardly be pinned down to paper if they were yet in my mind. 

Reporter: " You canvassed New Hampshire before the late election. What do you 
think of its result? " 

Mr. Lamar: " I see nothing in it discouraging to the Democrats — that is, I see 
nothing of the anticonservative reaction which the friends of the administration 
assert is taking place. I do not even think it implies that the Republicans can carry 
the State in a general Presidential canvass." 

Reporter: "You say that you think it possible that New Hampshire will go to the 
Democracy in the next election. Do you think it likely that the Democrats will elect 
their next President? " 

Mr. Lamar: " I know it to be quite certain that there is an overwhelming majority 
15 



226 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

against the administration in the country. I do not imagine, though, that this ma- 
jority is within the ranks of tlie Democratic party. It exists under iliflferent names, 
as separate elements, and is controlled l;y distinct influences. On tlie one issue of 
opposition to the present administration— its centralizing tendencies, its corrupt prac- 
tices, and its incompetent rule— the majority is agreed. On other issues it is divided 
into elements more or less antagonistic. If this loose and diverse majority can be 
harmonized, if, in other words, the elements can be brought to believe that the points 
of union are more essential than the points of difference, the administration will be 
swept from power on the tide of a humiliating defeat." 

Reporter: " AVhat do you think of the Democratic tidal wave of last year? Won't 
that be strong enough to sweep the administration from power?" 

Mr. Lamar: "Certainly, if the union 'of parties which produced that result can be 
kept unbroken. The victories of last fall were not strictly Democratic victories. They 
were antiadministration victories. They were not achieved by the Democratic party 
as a party, but by Democrats, Conservatives, Liljeral Republicans, and antiadminis- 
tration men, fighting for.the time under the Democratic flag, just as the Democrats in 
the Oreeley campaign fought under the Liberal Republican flag. They were allies of 
the Democratic party, not converts to its doctrines. It is all-important for us to 
realize that it was a triumph achieved by cooperation, not by conversion. These 
allies, though friendly still to the Democratic party, and hostile to the present admin- 
istration, are not bound iildissolubly, or even securely, oui'S. If they are content to 
flght the next battle witli us, we will whip it. If tliey are driven off, we will lose it." 

Reporter: " Do you think that this harmony will be maintained?" 

Mr. Lamar: "I am hardly prepared to answer that question. The great Liberal 
and Conservative elements would like to see the Democrats in power, I think, pro- 
vided they would show some deference to Liberal opinions and some appreciation of 
Liberal leaders. There is a pungent apprehension through the minds of the whole 
Lilieral or Conservative party, that as soon as the Democrats get into power they will 
inaugurate ' reactionary ' legislation, and will throw the Liberal leaders overboard. I 
have already heard a point made on the defeat of Scluirz." 

Reporter: " Is Schurz disaflected on account of his defeat? " 

Mr. Lamar: "No; I have no idea that he is, but his friemls will bo. It will nat- 
urally repel them to see their ablest leaders thus thrown contemptuously aside as soon 
as the canvass is over and the victory won. They insist upon lieing respected as well 
as respectable. But really the strongest fear that may prevent an absolute union of all 
the antiadministration elements with the Democrats is the fear that w hen the Demo- 
crats get in power they will reopen the question of the amendments, attempt to undo 
the results of the war, demand pay for the Southern slaves, etc. The proper remedy 
for this is for the Democrats to plant themselves on a firm but prudent platform, and 
say to the people exactly what they propose to do. Let there be no misunderstand- 
ing about it and no chance for the Radicals to raise doulits by which they can mis- 
lead the jjeople. ... I tliink we will find that all parties have enough self-abne- 
gation to lead them to lay aside all minor convictions and wish to accomplisli that 
which nuist be accomplished if we would perpetuate the institutions of our fathers 
and save the republic." 

Reporter: "This harmony being secured, do you think the Democrats can carry 
the country? " 

Mr. Lamar: " I think they can elect Charles Francis Adams, or Judgfe Davis of 
the Supreme Court; either of them with a large degree of certainty. Either of these 
men can consolidate the whole opposition vote." . 

Ri>porter: "Do you think a straight and pronounced Democrat can be elected?" 

Air. Lamar: "It is possible that Thurman, Hendricks, or Bayard might be elected. 
These gentlemen have the entire confidence of the Democracy of this country. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 227 

Either of them would develop its fullest strength. If they can carry the Liberals, there 
would be no doubt of it. This might be well done by a proper platform. In this 
matter of the platform we have a Scylla and Charybdis to steer between. We nmst 
have no more O'Connor movements. On the other hand, we must not, by trotting 
out dead issues, drive off our allies.— I want you to understand (warming up as he 
said this) that I have a thorough and genuine appreciation of the Liberal Republi- 
cans who have rebelled against the power of party in behalf of my people. Take the 
case of old man Poland, tlie man who saved Arkansas. He absolutely put behind 
him a lifelong ambition when he made his protest against Grant's interference. He 
had for all his life cherished the hoiie tliat he might get a certain judgeship. Just 
before he made his report on Arkansas affairs he became aware that his ambition was 
about to be realized. He knew that if he made that antiadministration report it 
would crush his hopes forever. It was his pride and his anil)ition against his convic- 
tions. I shall never forget how the gray-haired old hero rose and spoke that which 
unspoken would have realized the proudest dream of his life. He was just leaving 
public life, and knew that he was destroying his last hope. Yet, with a stern and un- 
faltering hand, he buried his hope and saved a State. And then, too, remember the 
splendid way in which Blaine checked and controlled the impassioned majority that 
attempted on the last night of the session to override and crush the minority. Tliat 
was the finest scene of intellectual energy and power that I ever saw. The man ab- 
solutely coruscated. He stood pale and yet determined through the weary and 
and eventful hours with a marvelous calmness and strength. It was like one man 
controlling a host of lunatics; now warily fencing them off, now meeting them eye 
to eye and dropping them with a single blow, now raising his lash and pouring it 
down over the back of some howling fellow till he had whipped him back to his ken- 
nel; and all the time honest and impartial, standing like a dauntless knight between 
the minority and the mad mob that raged and roared Ijeyond him. I appi-eciate 
these men. They have done much for us, and [without very much selfishness in his 
tone] they can do much more fiir us. "With all the elements of opposition combined, 
we have a certain victory; without that, I am afraid that the Democratic party is 
not strong enough to carry things." 

Reporter: '-You seem to lie very certain that victory will be the result of a combi- 
nation of all of the elements of opposition to Grant? " 

Mr. Lamar: " I am. Look at the auspices under which we go into the canvass. In 
the last canvass we had as a nominee a man whose nomination disappointed Schurz 
and the other Liberal leaders, and who excited a revolt in the Democratic camp. 
Then every department of the Federal Government was in the hands of the enemy. 
Not only this; an overwhelming majority of the State governments were in their 
hands. Now we find the new canvass o]iening with a vast majority of all the ollicers 
directly dependent upon the elective principle under control. We have carried over 
two-thirds of the States, and in a decided majority of them have control of lioth the 
executive and legislative departments. The revolution has gone further: we have 
a large majority in the only branch of the Federal Government that is directly re- 
spondent to the elective principle. The House of Representatives, the only channel 
through which the popidar life of this country is poured into the Federal Govern- 
ment, is Democratic, and is completely in our hands. Now, if nothing is done to dis- 
turl> the alliance under which these victories were won, they can be repeated, and 
repeated witli an emphasis that will startle the most sanguine. AVith the matter 
otherwise, it is impossible to predict the result." 

Reporter: " Do you think tliat Grant will try a third term?" 

Mr. Lamar: "I do. I think th.at he is now a candidate for renomination. An im- 
mense effort will be made to defeat him in the nominating convention, but this I 



228 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR. 

have no idea can be done. We may count pretty certainly on having Grant to run 
against in the Centennial canvass." 

We feel it proper to say, after this hurried interview has been put to paper, that it 
does nothing more than merely express the substance of the brilliant talk that fell 
carelessly and yet superbly fi'om his lips. 

Mr. Lamar returns to Mississippi to enter the Congressional canvass. There is 
surely _no doubt but that his district will return him without opposition. He is des- 
tined to fill a very large place in American history. 

On the 1st of April Mr. Grady wrote to Col. Lamar: 

. . . The interview was with one voice approved — i. «., the views expressed in the 
talk. It has been copied in all the leading papers of the country. . . . ^My opinion 
is that it has done you much good. I am certain it has done the Democratic party 
good. • 

On the 1st of March, just before leaving Washington for New 
Hampshire, Mr. Lamar wrote to his wife: 

I have given no vote that was not as pure as truth and as unselfish as love of coun- 
try could make it. I have gained in influence and reputation; but it is all vanity, 
vanity. Would that I could live in peace and obscurity the rest of my life with 
my dear wife and my children. 



CHAPTER XYII. 

The Question of Reelection— Rescue of the State from Radicalism — Mississippi and 
Louisiana— Gov. Ames' Administration— The Taxpayers' Convention of 1875— The 
Viclcsbm-g Riot— Congressional Investigation— Ames' Message — Address of the 
Legislators— Invidious Police Laws— The Color Line— Lamar's Growing Fame— 
Renominated— Reorganization of the Democratic Party of the State— County Mass 
Meetings— Speech at Falkner's Station— The Color Line Again— The State Demo- 
cratic Convention of 1875- Lamar's Speech — Democratic Platform — The Press on 
Lamar's Renomination and Speech— Address of tlie State Democratic Executive 
Committee— Campaign of 1875- CJeorge's Letter on the Black Code— Riots at Clin- 
ton and Yazoo City — Gov. Ames Calls for Federal Troops — Democrats Triumph and 
the State is Rescued — Impeachment of Ames, Davis, and Cardozo. 

WHEN Mr. Lamar returned home in March, 1875, after the ad- 
journment of the Forty-third Congress, there were two great 
things for him to do. One was to secure his renomination to Congress; 
the other was to assist his State in ridding herself of the Badical domi- 
nation. 

His own renomination was not desired by him because of any impulse 
of selfishness. The discouragements, the labors, and the responsibili- 
ties of public life at Washington for a Southern man at that time, were 
so many and heavy that he was lieartily di.sgusted with it all. He was 
tired of it, and longed for the retirement, the ease, and the felicity of 
his own home and family; but his return to Congress had risen into the 
dignity of a national question. By his speeches and course — notably 
by the Sumner eulogy and the Louisiana speech — he had placed in pawn 
the sentiment and principles of the Southern j^eople. Widespread and 
enthusiastic as had been the plaudits which he had personally received 
and the approval which had been expressed of his utterances, there still 
was a dissent in the South, and a question in the North as to how far he 
represented the real feeling of the South. Had he retired from public 
life, this query in the Nortliern mind would have remained unanswered, 
and his olive branch would have withered. Had he been defeated, the 
pledge he had made would have been understood to be recalled; and 
the South would have been regarded as declaring anew for hostility. 
Mr. Lamar's whole course in the Forty-third Congress was concentrated 
on one thought: reunion and reconciliation. By that thought, then, 
was he to stand or fall; and that thought, it was now imperatively de- 
manded, should be brought to the fiual and only indubitable test: the 
ballot box. 

As to the other object, the rescue of the State: In the domestic his- 
tory of Mississippi the year 1875 is the su])plement of 1861. It is the 
year of redemption, the year in which a great political revolution re- 

(229) 



230 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

claimed the prize of State sovereignty which had practically been lost, 
and in which the shackles of bondage were thrown otf. To this great 
work all of the leading men of the State earnestly addressed themselves. 
Mr. Lamar in this field was only one of a host, but he devoted to it all 
of his ability and all of his energies. 

To understand fully the status of affairs in Mississippi at this junc- 
ture, it is necessary to hold in mind three principal matters: the recent 
occurrences in the State <jf Louisiana, the recent administration of Gov. 
Ames in Mississippi, and the rise and development of the color line. 

The ties which bind Mississipjji to Louisiana are much closer than 
those which ordinarily arise between States because of mere juxtaposi- 
tion. The city of New Orleans, which is the metropolis of the latter, is 
no less the commercial emporium of the former. Thither leads the 
great Father of Waters, which forms the western boundary of Missis- 
sippi ; and the great system of railroads ( now merged into the Illinois 
Central) which bisects Mississippi from end to end finds there its south- 
ern terminus. The subtle and close sympathies engendered by a daily, 
extensive, and mutual trade, are reenforced by the pervasive power of 
the press; for the daily papers of New Orleans furnish the current 
news to, and contribute to the political thought of, nearly all Mississippi. 
The social attractions also of that seductive city, where frost is barely 
known (the mardi ipvx, the French opera, and similar winter gayeties), 
yearly draw throngs of pleasure seekers to the delights of almost a for- 
eign tour. Added to these links are the fascination of a romantic histo- 
ry and the picpiancy of a cosmopolitan life which i-ender Louisiana 
unique amongst the States, and which, for the reasons just given, appeal 
with special power to Mississippians. Twenty years ago these consid- 
erations were of even greater force than they are now; for since that 
time the active competition of the growing city of Memphis, the im- 
provement in general railway service, and the practice of Northern and 
foreign spinners of buying their cotton in the interior towns — have all 
tended to reduce somewhat in Mississijipi the sti'ength of the Crescent 
City. So that then, more than now, from those causes the daily histo- 
ry of Louisiana met quick and full recognition in ^lississippi, and the 
agitations of her pulse found a prompt and sympathetic response. The 
usurpations of the Kellogg faction, the purging of the Legislature by 
DeTrobriand, the dispatches of Sheridan, were regarded with the 
strongest indignation; and the action of the Federal administration in 
upholding such conduct was contemplated .with the greatest uneasiness 
and foreboding. 

The course of Gov. Ames' administration of Mississippi affairs, and 
that of the Radical party, of which he was the chief, were such as to con- 
vert that uneasiness into positive alarm. 



ins LIFE, TIMES, ASV SPEECHES. 231 

Gov. Ames, it will be remembered, as the nominee of the Radical 
party had, in 1873, defeated ex-Gov. Alcorn, the common candidate of 
the Liberal Republicans, the Conservatives, and the Democrats. He 
was installed in January, 1874. His administration was but little im- 
provement on his career as Military Governor. Ignorant and corrupt 
officials were set up over the people, and were supported in their mal- 
administrations and oppressions. The people were constantly threat- 
ened with military forces, State and Federal. Their burdens grew 
daily. Those burdens were imposed and progressively increased, not 
only with a reckless disregard of seemliness and right, but also with 
contempt and insult. 

On the 4th of January, 1875, a Taxpayers' Convention met in the city 
of Jackson for the purpose of considering the financial situation and of 
devising some way to lessen taxation. The convention was called, and 
was organized, without respect of party or color. Some of the most 
prominent Republicans in the State participated in it — for instance, 
Henry Musgrove, the former Auditor of Public Accounts, and J. L. 
Morphis, ex-Congressman and, later. United States Marshal, besides 
others. This body adopted an address to the Legislature in which 
many suggestions were made in respect to a more economical manage- 
ment of the State government, as well as of county affairs, from which 
the following remarks are extracted: 

Every day the people have grown poorer, lands have diminished in value, wages 
have grown less, and all industries have become more and more paralyzed. It is daily 
harder and liarder for the people even to live, and many hearts are saddened to-day, 
burdened with the dread lest the little home, only shelter for the wife and children, 
shall be sold away by the taxgatherer 

To show the extraordinary and rapid increase of taxation imposed on this impov- 
erished people we will cite these paiticulars — viz. : 

In 1869 the State levy was ten cents on the hundred dollars of assessed value of lands. 

For the year 1871 it was four times as great; for 1872 it was eighl ami a half 
times as great; for the year 187.3 it was twelve and a half times as great; for the year 
1874 it was fourteen times as great as it was in 18i>9. The tax levy of 1874 was the 
largest State tax ever levied in Mississippi, and to-day the people are poorer than ever 
before. 

Thus as the peo]ile become poorer are their tax burdens increased. 

In many cases the increase in the county levies in the same period has been still 
greater. 

But this is not all. A careful estimate shows that during those years of increasing 
and most extravagant tax levies tlie iniblie debt was increased, on an average, annually, 
over $664,000 ; a sum of itself sufficient to defray the entire expenses of the government 
economically administered. 

To this "appeal" the Legislature paid no attention whatever. Gov. 
Ames, in that same month, in his testimony before the Congressional 
Committee on the Vicksburg matter, spoke in a most contemptuous 
manner " of those who are howling about the taxes." * 

* See on this general subject Appendix, No. 10 



232 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

lu uo portion of the State were the distress and the grievance thus 
clearly depicted more deeply felt tliau in the county of Warren, espe- 
cially in the city of Vicksburg. Rather, jjerhaps, in no other part of 
the State were all of the evils attendant upon the "carpetbag" domi- 
nation so fully and brazenly illustrated. There, the negroes, profiting 
by the years of drill which they had received from their white mana- 
gers in political looting, party management, and ring organization, had 
revolted from those managers and assumed the whole official regalia, 
from diadem to sandals. In 1874, the sheriff, the Circuit Clerk, the 
Chancery Clerk (who was also clerk of the county supervisors), and 
four of the five supervisors, were negroes. The debts of the county and 
city, which in 1869 were but little over S>13,000, had been run up until 
that of the city alone, the total jDopulation of which was only eleven 
thousand, more than half being negroes, had reached §1,400,000. 

In the month of December, 1874, the State and county taxes, amount- 
ing to five per cent on the value of property, were about to fall due. 
The sheriff was ex officio tax collector. He was to collect about S160,- 
000. His bonds, as sheriff and as collector, were without date, with no 
penalty set forth, and in the opinion of some lawyers void for patent de- 
fects. The sureties were all colored men except one, a married woman 
whose signature did not bind her. They were resident in different 
counties in the State, and in nearly every case were either insolvent or 
possessed of very little property. Many of them had justified in sums 
ranging from fifty dollars up to a thousand. Many of their signatures 
were liy marks, without witnesses, and others were signed in such man- 
ner as to make it next to an impossibility to decipher the names. The 
district attorney, a Republican, had advised the Board of Supervisors 
whose duty it was to look after the bonds of county officers, that they 
were insufficient, and the taxpayers had urged the board to require 
new bonds. That body, however, were under the sheriff's influence, 
and they would do nothing; would not even meet to consider the matr 
ter. Crosby, the sheriff, published a card in the Times stating that he 
would not further attempt to give bonds, and would hold his office until 
ousted by a judgment of the Supreme Court. The law of the State was 
that if a county officer should fail to give his official bond, or, having 
given one, if the supervisors shoidd order him to execute another be- 
cause of insolvency of sureties, and he should fail to do so, his office 
thereby became vacated. 

In the month of August the Auditor of Public Accounts, the State 
official, a Republican, had discovered that a large number of fraudulent 
and forged witness certificates had been issued from the office of the 
Circuit Clerk, and criminal proceedings were instituted against the 
Clerk, one A. "W. Dorsey, and against his predecessor in office, one T. 
W. Cardozo, tlu'u State Superintendent of Pul>lic Education, both 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 233 

negroes. The Chaucery Clerk, one Davenport, a negro, was cnstodian 
of the county records appertaining to the finances; and he kept the 
county seal, and issued county warrants. It was discovered that large 
numbers of fraudulent county warrants were in circulation, and that 
Davenport's official bond was missing from his office. He was called 
on to make a report to the Board of Supervisors, the county's fiscal 
body, of the warrants outstanding, and persistently and contemptuously 
refused to do so. He refused to let the taxpayers' committee examine 
the warrant books, which was the unqestionable privilege of any citi- 
zen. At the November term of the Circuit Court the grand jury, com- 
posed of ten blacks and seven whites, working under the direction of a 
Republican district attorney, found several indictments each against 
Dorsey, Cardozo, and Davenport. The district attorney testified after- 
wards that they could just as well have found five hundred, in his opin- 
ion. A short time before these indictments were found the Treasurer's 
books and other important records, which had been by the only white 
member of the board taken from the office of Davenport and locked up 
in another room, were stolen by a burglary committed from inside the 
courthouse. Other records remaining in Davenport's office were used 
by the grand jury.' After the indictments were presented a committee 
of citizens requested Crosby, who was custodian of the courthoirse, to 
gather up all the keys in order to prevent access without his knowl- 
edge. This he promised to do immediately; but that night four or five 
persons were seen to enter by the use of keys, and the next morning it 
appeared that the remaining records above mentioned had been ab- 
stracted. They were afterwards found buried under Davenport's resi- 
dence. 

It was universally known that all these colored officials composed a 
"ring," and were playing into each others' hands. The county seemed 
to be in their grasp. 

Under these circumstances, all confidence in the integrity and compe- 
tency of the officers being destroyed, a taxpayers' meeting, held without 
distinction of party or cohn-, and in which Republicans participated, 
sent a committee to Crosby, Davenport, and the Coroner on the 2d of 
of December to request their resignations. They found only Crosby 
and Davenport, who promised to answer in half an hour. They did not 
do so, and the meeting, being com])osed of some three hundred persons, 
proceeded to the courthouse in a body and there repeated the demand. 
There was no offer of violence or exhibition of weapons, although 
doubtless some of the party carried pistols. Davenport had disap- 
peared, but Crosby then delivered his resignation. The party then de- 
tailed one Capt. Beaird, a Republican and a " gallant ex-Union soldier," 
to take temporary charge of the office and public records, for their pres- 
ervation. 



234 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

Crosby went to Jackson to see Gov. Ames. He was advised that 
his resignation was not binding, being under duress. The Governor 
advised or directed him to return to Vicksburg and demand pos- 
session of the office, and if refused to call out the power of the county, 
or posse comitatus; and if the posse refused to act, then to call out the 
militia. It was suggested that this might cause bloodshed, to which 
the Governor is said to have replied: "What if it does cost blood? The 
blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." He further addres-sed 
himself to the colored men present, telling them that he and other white 
men had faced the bullets to free them, and now, if they were not will- 
ing to maintain that freedom, they were unworthy of it. 

Crosby returned to Vicksburg on Friday, and was followed thither on 
Saturday by Col. Lee, aide-de-camp to the Governor, and A. G. Packer, 
Adjutant General, who were charged to look over the situation, and if 
necessary call out the militia. 

On Saturday, the 5th, Gov. Ames also issued a proclamation to the 
effect that riotous and disorderly persons had conspired together with 
force and arms to deprive colored men of their civil and political 
rights because of their color, and warning them to disperse, etc. At 
the same time Crosby circulated upon the streets, and through the 
county generally, a handbill which had been written by a colored clerk 
in the office of the Secretary of State at Jackson, and printed by the 
Pilot, the official Radical organ, in which, appealing to "Bepublicans, 
black and white," he denounced those who had demanded his resignation 
as " an armed mob of the most bitter and relentless of our enemies," 
as "determined and heartless political banditti," as mendacious and 
"heartless barbarians;" declared that he was made to resign because 
he was a Eepublican and tried to do equal justice to all, that his resig- 
nation was void because made under duress; and, announcing his deter- 
mination to hold the office, called for the support of his friends, saying: 
" We have joined issue, now let us fight the cause on its merits, by any 
and all means known to the constitution and laws of our State." On 
Sunday Cardozo, the Superintendent of Public Education, wrote him 
not to "make any compromise with those fellows. The Governor is at 
your back." 

The Circuit Court was in session while these things were occurring. 
It had adjourned over until Monday morning. The slieriti' was required 
to attend that court, and perform cei'tain important functions in connec- 
tion with it. The question of Crosby's incumbency would therefore be 
raised at once, and in a very striking way. 

During Saturday night and Sunday he had fifteen colored riders go- 
ing over the county with his handbill and further messages. These bills 
were read, and tlie messages were delivered, amongst other ways, in the 
manner common in tiieir iwlitical movements to the negroes, from the 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 235 

pulpits in their cliurclies by tlieir preachers. The uegro uaeii were told 
to repair to Vicksburg on Monday luoruiug, with their guns, and to be 
there by ten o'clock, which was the hour for the court to convene. 
The news of these messages, "siirrei)titiously sent out," transpired on 
Sunday afternoon; and Gen. Packer tried to stop them, and to stop 
the negroes on their way to the city, but unavailingly. On Monday 
morning, between eight and nine o'clock, the alarm was sounded, and 
it was bruited about that some fourteen hundred armed negroes were 
marching upon the town on three different roads. There was a great 
hurrying to and fro, and arming for defense of the city. There was 
also great alarm. A rising of the town negroes, who were more than 
half the poijulatiou, and were thoroughly under Crosby's influence, was 
feared. Amongst them was a militia company, organized and drilled, 
armed with Sjjringfield rifles, the negro captain of which had been or- 
dered by the Governor, on Friday, to cooperate with Crosby, together 
with the company, in his efforts to regain jjossession of his office, and 
to " disperse the riotous mob." The streets were filled with terrified 
and weeping women and children. Men in small squads hurried into 
the outskirts. The incoming forces were met in three different direc- 
tions, armed with pistols and guns, .some marching in military array, 
others disorderly — about seven hundred in all. The Vicksburg people 
claimed that the negroes fired upon them so soon as they met, and fired 
iipon white flags. There is no reasonable doubt that such was the case, 
but the negroes claimed otherwise. However that may be, a conflict 
(or, rather, several conflicts ) ensued, in which one white man and about 
fifteen blacks were killed, besides others wounded. The whites were 
better armed, and claimed that they could have killed many more of the 
invaders, but desired to repel them with as little slaughter as j)ossible. 
Thirty blacks were taken prisoners, all of whom were shortly afterwards 
allowed to go free. 

In this conflict Republicans and Democrats alike took part in defense 
of the city. Amongst the former was Mr. Furlong, a brigadier general 
of militia. State Senatoi', and for four years a Union soldier. He aft- 
erwards testified before the Congressional Committee that "every ex- 
soldier of the Federal army in Vicksbnrg was out in arms, the same as 
the other citizens, that day. ... I reckon about one hundred. All 
of them joined, and I think took an even more conspicuous part than 
the ex-Confederates." Gen. Packer, in his testimony, on cross-exami- 
nation, said that under the circumstances he did not know but that the 
citizens were justified in doing what they did; that if the negroes had 
succeeded in getting into the city he believed that the loss of life 
would have been even greater than it was, and that in his judgment it 
was a matter of mercy to the women and children of the town that they 
were prevented from entering. 



236 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

With the repulse of the invaders hostilities ceased. For two or three 
days afterwards isolated cases of violence occurred, including a few kill- 
ings, in which each party charged the other with being the aggressor. 
In three days, however, quiet was restored aud business resumed. 
Crosby, whom the citizens had confined, was released without injury. 

On the 11th of December Mr. Lamar wrote to Judge Wiley P. Har- 
ris, of Jackson, inquiring into this matter, aud especially " whether the 
taxpayers had any available legal redress against the injury threatened 
in the collection of the enormous levies which had been made, and the 
appropriation of them afterwards by what is called 'the courthouse 
riug.' " To this inquiry Judge Harris replied, under date of December 
16, as follows: 

I see no remedy that the taxpayers liad when the officers and tribunals ajipointed 
bylaw to give relief utterly failed to act, and in fact were in complicity with the sher- 
iff. There was one remedy — not a legal, bnt a moral one— which would have been 
suiBcient. If Gov. Ames had expressed his disapprobation of the conduct of tlie board 
in refusing to meet, or had stated to the sherifiT that it was his duty to give a good 
bond or resign, his behests would have been attended to. 

The truth is (I speak from sad experience) that under our government, as it now 
exists, there is no remedy for the peculations of public offic'ers. We are fleeced and 
robbed on all sides, and we are powerless to prevent it, either by law or the force of 
pul)lie opinion. In fact, there is in the State no such thing as a public opinion which 
can be made effective in preventing abuses in government. The rule is that officials 
are either corrupt or incompetent. Qualifications for the office and personal integrity 
are not considered by tlie majority in making selections. You can't operate a govern- 
ment honestly where the majority of the voters care nothing for the morals of the of- 
ficials. It does not aflect the standing of an officer with the majority to convict him 
of having abused the powers of his office to his private gain. In fact I believe that it 
is true that the majority think that the offices are created for the private advantage 
of the occupants; and hence the enormous fees, salaries, and perquisites allowed by 
law, and taken without law, creiite no dissatisfaction among the majority of the voters, 
who, paying no taxes themselves, care nothing for burdens imposed on others. 

In short, whilst I have laliored to come to an opposite conclusion, I am satisfied 
that the experiment of trying to make self-governing people out of the negroes will 
fail— in fact, has already failed. Let any Northern man wlio thinks the negro is capa- 
ble of self-government imagine tlie condition of Mississippi, or any other State, at the 
end of twelve months from the day when the last white man has left it, and there re- 
mains no olistacle to the full development and free exercise of African statesmanship. 

Tlie Northern people have imposed on us an impossible task. We are expected 
and re(|uired to have a stable and honest and orderly government, when we are prac- 
tically without any voice save the voice of the minority— regarded by tlie majority as 
the thing above all others to be disregarded. 

I regret that our Vicksburg friends resorted to anything that even looked like force. 
I know that their action will be misconstvued, and it will he made the occasion of 
giving another turn to the screw. But when I look at tlie condition of affairs here— 
the constant and daily sources of irritation, the rapid decline in all values, the almost 
hopeless task of getting subsistence even, after the demands of the taxgatherer have 
been satisfied— I am astonished at the moderation of our people. I feel sure that if it 
were not for the gleam of hope offered by the elections this last fall there would be 
hardly life enougli left among our people to jilant another crop; that there would be 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. ■ 237 

wholesale emigration, embracing all who could get away; and that those who were 
compelled to remain would sit down in utter despair, with energies wholly benumbed 
and paralyzed. 

Judge Harris' apprehensions proved to be well founded. Not only 

was the Vicksburg affair misconstrued, but it was also misrepresented 
and distorted. An investigating committee was sent down from Con- 
gress. This was not unacceptable to the people of the State. " We 
are glad," said the Clarion of December 17, " that the investigation has 
been ordered. Let the facts go to the country." Mr. Lamar not only 
did not oppose it, but he even urged it. Said he: "The citizens of 
Vicksburg do not shrink from that investigation; they court it, and are 
only anxious that all the facts connected with that transaction, as well 
as the causes which produced it, shall be fully exposed to the country." * 
The committee, however, consisted of Messrs. Conger of Michigan, 
Hurlbut of Illinois, and ^Villiams of Wisconsin, Republicans; with 
Speer of Pennsylvania, and O'Brien of Maryland, Democrats. On the 
2Stli of February they presented a divided report, which, with the testi- 
mony accompanying, made a volume of five hundred and sixty pages, 
and of which the New York Tribune said: 

The Mississipjii investigation, like that in Alabama, has brought forth two reports, 
each strongly colored with the political opinions of its signers. Indeed, that of the 
majority [the Republicans] has so strong a partisan tincture that it will have no weight 
whatever with any one outside of the administration party. Some of its statements 
seem entirely without foimdation in the testimony given to the press from day to day 
during the progress of the investigation. 

Meanwhile Gov. Ames had called a special session of the Legislature, 
which convened on the 17th of December. To that body he addressed 
a message of the most intensely partisan character. He stated the po- 
sition and conduct of the Vicksburg people most unfairly. He de- 
nounced them as insurgents who had organized a military despotism, 
recognizing no law but whnt suited their humor, while the legal reme- 
dies for the wrongs complained of by them were ample; and who pre- 
tended to act in the interest of the taxpayers, while the State (in which 
about one-fifth of all the lands had lapsed for unpaid taxes) was in a 
"fortunate financial condition." He said that "the insurrection has its 
supporters and sympathizers in other parts of the State. They have 
deliberately and knowingly entered upon this revolution, with a purpose 
coextensive with the limits of the State. It is insurrection in its fullest 
sense." He said, further, that he had not the police or the money at his 
command to meet the emergency, and recommended that the Legisla- 
ture take such steps as should be necessary to " overthrow the insurrec- 
tion in Warren County, and prevent in future similar occurrences there 
and elsewhere." 

*'^ Congressional Recorti,*' Vol. III., P.irt I., ]>. 77. 



238 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR; 

The ciineut opinion of this message, outside of tlie special following 
of the Governor, may be conjectured from the nature of an open letter, 
published on the following day by Joshua S. Morris, for four years the 
Attorney-general of the State. It referred to certain statements made 
by the Governor about the condition of the militia organizations in 
Warren County; and, after contradicting them by showing that he had 
issued orders to companies there, concluded: "Either the oi'ders were 
officially false, or the message is officially false. In either case the 
Governor is an official I/'nr; and in either case, as a veteran Republi- 
can, I feel that I am sold." 

It was noticed as a most singular thing that, while the Governor de- 
nounced in unmeasured terms the action of the taxpayers, he had not 
one word of condemnation for the delinquent and criminal officers. 

The Legislature adopted a joint resolution, in like temper with the 
Governor's message, after many extraordinarily iuf^ammatoiy speeches 
by the negro leaders of that body, calling ujjon the President to use 
the army of the United States iu suppressing domestic violence and re- 
storing peace and order. 

Thereupon forty-six members of that body published an appeal to 
the people of the United States, from which, because of its length, only 
an extract is made: 

. . . Tlie action of a majority of the Legislature and of the Governor, before re- 
ferred to, place u?, and, as we believe, del^ignedly so, in a false position, and is an at- 
tempt to blacken the name and fame of the ])eople of the State. It is even more than 
this: being a deliberate eti'ort to introduce into this State martial law and the army 
of the Union for the purpose of continuing in power the present corrupt government, 
by stimulating into unnatural activity the prejudice of race against race, whiich liap- 
jjily had begun to subside. 

This actiiin of the Executive and of a maj(5i1ty of the Legislature is based on no 
evidence whatever. The undersigned are members of that body, and in vain pro- 
tested against this action and demanded an investigatii;>n into the truth of the crimes 
alleged against our jieople, before they were turned over to the tender mercies of the 
martial law. This was refused, though there was not a single armed man in the ac- 
tual or threatened resistance of the State authority. The opportunity of fair debate 
and remonstrance and investigation was denied by the operation of the jirevious 
question- nor was this action the result of the deliberations of the representatives of 
the people. 

Both the preamble and the resolutions iiassed by the majority were concocted as a 
party measure in a secret caucus of the majority, were then put thiough the Legisla- 
ture under the pressure of party disciiiline and for party ends, witliout the examina- 
tion of a single witness and against the evidence furnished by the written statement 
of peaceful and law-abiding citizens of both political jiarties and of the highest char- 
acter and standing, who were eyewitnesses of the transaction about which they 
testified. 

Under these calamities — with a hostile Executive and Legislature, who seem to be 
willing at any time to sacrifice the public interest to personal and partisan advantages 
— we feel that we are authorized to appeal to our fellow-citizens of all sections of the 
Union not to credit these calumnies, and to ask them to investigate for themselves. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 239 

The people of Mississippi are utterly ]io\verless to defend tlieiiiselves against their 
constituted rulers, unless we shall have the sympathy and good will, not of any par- 
ticular party, but of onr fellow-citizens throughout the Union. We are too much con- 
cerned here to save ourselves from local misgo\ernmentand ojipression, to participate 
in any partisan contests which agitate other (.arts of the Union. 

We tlo not deny that there are occasional disorders in our midst, but we solemnly 
aver that in no part of the world and in no age have there been so few under oppres- 
sions so severe and under circumstances of injustice, wrong, and insult so irritating 
and trying. 

The Legislature adjoumeil after a session of eight days; but it met 
again in regular session twelve days later, on January 5, 1875. On the 
day before. Gov. Ames, although there were no disturbances in Missis- 
sippi, and the Congressional Committee was quietly at work taking tes- 
timony in Vicksburg, had telegraphed to the President for troops to 
maintain law and order. On the 5th, it will be remembered, while the 
Mississippi Legislature was meeting, Gen. DeTrobriand was purging 
that of Louisiana. Gov. Ames' annual message reiterated the recom- 
mendations made to the special session the month before, asserting 
that " the freedom of a race is at stake." That night Gen. Sheridan 
wired the Governor that he had taken command of the Department of 
the Gulf and would send a company of soldiers to Vicksburg. At the 
same time he sent out his famous banditti dispatches, in which reference 
was made to the Vicksburg affair. It was inevitable that these things 
should attract much attention and excite nuicli apprehension of evil to 
come. Especially so, when immediately afterwards an effort was made to 
retire Col. Lamar from Congress by transferring his county of Lafayette 
to a different district, in which there was a black majority; when resolu- 
tions were passed through both Houses, under the jjrevious qitestiou, 
indorsing Gen. Sheridan's course and expressing belief that if his pol- 
icy were carried out peace, security, and the enjoyment of the constitu- 
tional privileges would follow; when an effort was made to provide for 
the organization in Warren County of a metropolitan police of the most 
extraordinary and extensive powers, imder the direction of a counnis- 
siou to be ap^)ointed by the Governor — in effect a little standing army 
to be composed of blacks; and when the bill was passed, now to be set 
forth in substance. 

The State Code contained a chapter on the subject of a State militia, 
by which it was provided that all the able-bodied citizens within cer- 
tain ages should be enrolled; and under it many companies had lieen 
organized. These companies were of both races, and were respectively 
officered by persons of their ovvn color; and some of them w-ere com- 
posed of persons of the Democratic faith. The Act of February 25 dis- 
banded all existing militia organizations, revoked the commissions of 
the officers, required all arms to be returned to the quartermaster gen- 
eral, and made the failure to return any of them criminal. This placed 



240 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

the whole subject of tlie reorganization of the militia absolutely iu the 
hands of the Governor liy necessary consequence. It enabled him to 
place the new commissions just where he pleased. Not only so; the act 
further provided that he should have power to organize and arm an in- 
fantry force of Hot less than two regiments (no maximum), and to pur- 
chase four or more Gatling guns for their use. Thus he was given 
power to establish a standing army in time of peace; and other provi- 
sions enabled him to send it anywhere in the State, and with it to (inflci- 
jiiitr riots, etc. In short, the <iovernor, so far as the Legislature could 
do it, was made independent of aid from the United States army by 
giving him one of his own. 

The enactment of this law was viewed with great disgust and indig- 
nation. It was regarded as a step taken in the precipitation of a con- 
flict between the races for political purposes. It was commonly said 
that Ames' hope for a standing army was in the colored people; that he 
would not accept a white company if it were offered; that his course in 
calling upon a negro company in jireference to a white comj^auy in the 
Yicksburg matter, and his subsequent testimony before the Congres- 
sional Committee on that point, showed such to be the case. Also it 
was said that the law placed unlimited power in his hands for mischief; 
and tliat the law should have been entitled "An Act to Ilol) and Murder 
the White People of Mississippi," for that was what it meant. 

The foregoing brief sketch must suffice to convey an idea of the con- 
dition of affairs between the State's administration and lis white people. 
Even to many of the white Eepublicans the status had become intoler- 
able, and their disaffection in State matters had caused Gov. Ames to 
cease to " regard them with respect." Well might Judge Harris say, 
as he did in the speech of 1875 already qixoted from, that " It is a dreary 
life we lead here, with a national government ever suspicious and ever 
frowning, imperious, and hostile, and a home government feeble, fur- 
tive, false, and fraudulent." 

But there was a hope. The partial jiaralysis of the Eadical party 
coming from the loss of the House of Representatives in the elections 
of 187-± gave an opportunity for escape from this thraldom worse than 
death. Before giving account of that escape, however, it remains to no- 
tice the question of the color line. 

In the previous chapters and in vari<ms connections it has been shown 
how the action of those who represented the Federal administration 
since the surrender of the Confederate armies had tended to solidify 
the negroes in jiolitical opposition to the whites, and had caused them 
as a whole to conceive distrust as to the intention of the whites in re- 
spect to their liberties and privileges. It is not designed to present a 
statement at all full of the development and extent of this sentiment 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 241 

among the blacks, or of the instrumentalities by which in this particu- 
lar tlie relations otherwise kindly and generous between the races were 
strained and embittered. Let it suffice to say that as the years passed 
by the evil of political segregation grew more and more apparent and 
fixed, and that such evil was increased by various agencies, some of 
which the white people very deeply resented. For not only were the 
ordinary and legitimate apijliances of political influence wielded, but 
also the schools and the Churches were converted into political propa- 
ganda for the Radicals, and the buildings set apart for those sacred pur- 
poses were employed as clubhouses iu which secret meetings were held, 
often at midnight, where Loyal Leagues were organized and drilled and 
the most iuceudiaiy doctrines promulgated. Not only were the facts 
about the relations between the two races (the previous enslavement, 
the liberation by Northern arms, and all of the considerations which 
naturally and logically clustered around those facts) constantly pre- 
sented to the blacks and urged upon them in all sorts of connections; 
but also the wildest, most iiagrant, and willful misstatements of the mo- 
tives, the intentions, and the powers of the Southern whites were con- 
stantly indulged in. So also the lessons inculcated and the objects set 
before them for their attainment were not by any means limited to the 
proper and honorable ones of freedom and equality before the law, but 
were often grossly wrong-and aggressive. 

Let one illustrative passage be given from the observation and pen 
of a Republican correspondent of the New York HeniM, Mr. Charles 
Nordhoff. He made a tour through the Southern States in the interest 
of that journal, and writes under date of May 21 from Montgomery, Ala. : 

The division of political parties on the race or color line has been a great calamity 
to the Southern States. . . . But it is the Federal interference under the Enforce- 
ment Acts, and that alone, which enables unscrupulous politicians to mass the negro 
vote upon one side and to use it for their own aggrandizement. . . . Gov. Ames 
in Mississippi refuses to stir to prevent a riot at Vicksburg till after the riot, after 
forty or fifty blacks have lieen killed; and when the negroes are riemoralized and feel 
utterly helpless sends for Federal troops, which come at his command and reassure 
the blacks. .Such manifestations of ]iower strike the imaginations of the negroes, as 
they would an ignorant population, ami they follow very readily and blindly its pos- 
sessor. Some colored witnesses in Alabama, l.ieing asked why they all voted against 
Sheats for Congress, replied: "Because Perrin told them to." Being asked if they 
would have voted the Democratic ticket if Perrin had told them to, they answered 
unhesitatingly: "Yes." 

But the leaders whom they thus follow do not instruct them in political duties. 
They do not discuss political (juestions before them. They apjieal only and continu- 
ally to the negroes' fears and to their sense of obligation to the Federal power. In Al- 
abama they were told that the bacon* was sent by Gen. Grant, and its receipt made 
it their duty to vote for the " straight Republican ticket." In some parts of Southern 

*Sent by the United States in relief of an overflowed district. but largely used by the Radical of- 
ficers for campaign purposes; and to some extent, at least, jriven to negroes many miles away from 
the submei-ged country. — Congressio7ial Record, Vol. 'i. Part 3, p. 1,835. 

16 



242 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

Louisiana the negroes are still summoned from the field to political meetings " by or- 
der of Gen. Butler." I know of a rase where a candidate for a county office circulated 
a printed " general order " commanding all colored men to vote for him, and signed, 
" U. S. Grant, President " ; and he received the solid colored vote. One of the most 
intelligent and excellent men I met in Louisiana told me that in 1872 he had made 
a thorough canvass of the part of the State in which he lives, addressing himself en- 
tirely to the colored people, by whom he is liked and trusted, and trying to explain 
to them tlie necessity for good government anil their intei-est in the matter. " But," 
said he, " I presently l^ecarae auare that I was followed by a Reiniblican, an illiterate 
and low-lived man whom no colored man would have trusted with five dollars, but 
who overturned all my arguments by whispering: 'Don't believe what he tells you; 
they only want to put you back into slavery.' So pertinaciously has this base insinu- 
ation been used among the blacks that when last fall the Democrats carried Alaljama 
I knosv of two instances in which colored men came into the nearest town to ask 
white Democrats, in whcse lionor and kindness they trusted, whether they would be 
allowed to choose their own masters, and whether they would be separated from 
their wives and children."* 

On this general subject the Chicago Tribune^ said: 

We have heretofore urged the necessity and wisdom of abolishing the color line in 
Southern politics, and have pointed out how much better it would be for the negroes 
of the Southern States to aliandon their race organizations and assimilate themselves 
with tlie white people who compose the political parties. Divided as members of the 
Democratic and Repulilican parties, the colored peojjle would iiave the support and 
protection of both parties, while so long as they remain united as a race they will be 
but a fraction within one party and perpetuate an antagonizing of races in whicli they 
will be always defeated. So long as the colored people insist on being a solid body in 
political matters, so long will they force the white race into the opposing party, thus 
gis'ing the Democratic party an ascendency in these States which it would not have 
under other cirenmstances. . . . When the negro race at tlie South divide tlieir 
suffrage between the Democratic and Republican parties, all the present hatred, prej- 
udice, ami bitterness. against them will give way; and the negro voters will become 
identified with and merged in the general population of the South, sharing its prosper- 
ity and advancing in intelligence, power, and influence under the better feeling and 
unity of the whole. 

The ill feeling, however, to which the Tribune alluded was not nni- 
versally entertained in the South toward the negroes, even on account 
of their political action. There was general impatience with the situa- 
tion, and much indignation about it; but great allowance was made to 
the masst's of the blac^ks because of their ignorance and credtility. The 
more thoughtful and reasonable portion of the Southern jieople, which 
in this matter was also the more uiimerous and influential, could well 
see that after the opposition which the mass of the whites had exhibited 
in 18()7 and 18(38 to enfranchising the blacks, tlie latter had some cause 
to distrust their leadership, esjaecially in view of the precedent legisla- 
tion in 1865, when neither race was prepared for the extraordinary 
changes which had been accomplished by the war. They could also 

*The siimc jiathetic and shook in j: question, a8 to tlie masters at least, was not imcomnion in ]Mis- 
-sissippi after tlie oleeiion of Mr. Cleveland in 1884. — E. M. 
-fAs rjnoted in the Ctavi it of April iil. 1875. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 243 

well understand why, after having fallen under the malign influences of 
self-seeking adventurers, the negroes had been proue to yield obedience 
to them in subsequent contests of a purely partisan and political charac- 
ter, but in which the question of race privileges had not really entered. 
Mr. Noi'dhofl diagnosed the youthern general temper correctly when he 
said in his letter of June 22 that " it is an evidence of the good nature 
of the mass of the whites that in the main they conduct themselves toward 
the blacks kindly and justly. They concentrate their dislike upon the 
men who have misled and now misuse the black vote, and this I cannot 
call unjust. It is commonly said: ' The negroes are not to blame; they 
do not know any better.' " 

It was this unreasoning and invincible opposition of the negro vote, 
almost as a unit, which led to the development about the year 1874 of 
the counter movement on the part of a portion of the whites, which be- 
came known in the parlance of the time as the "color line." The senti- 
ment of it and the motives which led to it are well set forth in the reso- 
lutions adopted by the " White Man's Club of Pascagoula," at Scran- 
ton, Miss., in the fall of 1874: 

AVhereas the negroes of this comity and State, in common with those of the entire 
South, have uniformly and persistently exercised the right of sufTrage since it has heen 
conferred upon them as a consoliilated class and people, in opposition to the Southern 
whites, and to all men and measures proposed and upheld by them ; and whereas 
such conduct cannot be the result of an exercise of a free, untrammeled exjiression 
of individual opinion as freemen, but proceeds from bigoted, unfounded, and unjust 
prejudices, kindled and fanned by corrupt, vicious, and designing white men for the 
furtherance of their own base and sellisli purposes; and whereas such a course on the 
part of the negroes exhiljits an unnatural, ungenerous, and unwarranted distrust of 
the Southern whites, which should not exist, and wiiich serves to degrade the latter 
politically and to ruin and destroy their material interests; and whereas this close 
clanship on the part of the negroes at the Ixillot box has been the means of tilling 
our public offices with ignorant, incompetent, dishonest, and corrupt otiicials who 
have wrought the ruin of individuals, communities, and States, until, in the language 
of the State Grange, " taxation in Mississippi has become a burden so large and ex- 
tensive that the vital energies and industries of our State are becoming sapjied, para- 
lyzed, and destroyed, and ruin inevitable and irretrievable stares ns in the face; " and 
whereas such a lamentable condition of aflairs is partly due to past political apathy 
and indirt'erence on the part of the Southern whites, as well as to indefatigable zeal 
and energy on the part of those corrupt aliens and strangers who, to prey upon our 
substance and to use the negroes as tools, Jiave consolidated them in Loyal Leagues, 
by guns, signs, and passwords, and by false representations and low and contempti- 
ble association and pretension of social equality have induced them bodily and in 
mass to follow their lead; therefore be it 

Resolved, That we condemn and denounce such a course of conduct on the part of 
the negroes, whose interests are identical with ours, as unjust, unreasonable, and un- 
warranted, perversive of the exercise of the right of suffrage, and subversive of the 
rights and interests of ourselves as individuals, and of the welfare of the county and 
of the State. 

Resolved. That self-pre?ervation and a projier regard for the welfare of the State de- 
mand that the white people, the owmrs of the soil, should have a voice in the politi- 



244 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

cal control of the affairs of the State ; and to this end, and recoanizing that " in union 
there is strenj^th," do we unite and combine to assist, strengthen, and sustain one an- 
other in every legitimate way possible— at the ballot box, and the everyday business 
of life as practicable; and we do most earnestly exhort every white man in the State, 
who has at heart her welfare, to unite with us in her deliverance, in securing the elec- 
tion to oIKce of white men of known capacity and integrity. 

Rt'sohvd, That we do hereby most <:listinctly and emphatically aver that we have no 
desire or intention of depriving the negroes of any rights, privileges, or immunities to 
which they are entitled; that we recognize the imperative duty of all good citizens 
of respecting and preserving inviolate, irrespective of race, color, or previous condi- 
tion, the rights of all men under the constitution and laws of the land; and with scorn 
and contempt do we hurl back the foul aspersions attempted to be fastened upon the 
white jieople of the State and of the South by their slanderous enemies, for political 
effect, that they intend or desire to precipitate upon the ignorant negroes, the dupes 
of bad white men, a " war of races." 

Rcsolred, Tliat those white men who have consorted with the negroes to mislead 
them, who have by false and fraudulent misrepresentations inflamed their i>assions 
and prejudices as a race against the white people of the State, who have used them 
as a means to satisfy lust for office, and under pretension of party fealty have labored 
to gratify their own selfish and corrupt desires, are enemies to the people of the 
South ; and whether they be comparative strangers (carpetl)aggers) or born among us 
(scalawags), they merit the contempt, and are unworthy the confidence, respect, or sup- 
port in any manner, of any and every true man who loves his race, and every citizen 
who has at heart the good of tlie State. 

Resolved, That it is to the interest of the white people of the State that capital and 
white labor should come amongst us to buy and work our Ian. Is, run our mills and 
factories, and in working out their own fortunes to assist in retrieving ours; and to 
the honest, bona fide settlers who come to help and not to rob us, no matter what may 
be their religious or political fiiith, do we extend a hearty, cordial welcome, and pledge 
ourselves to assist and encourage in every way white immigration. 

The impatience disclosed by the preceding resolutions was not un- 
natural. The pertinacity of the great mass o£ the colored people in ar- 
raying themselves in opposition to the whites had even attracted 
Eepublican reprehension, as has been shown; that, too, in the face of 
extraordinary moderation of the white people in political matters, and 
of unprecedented concessions by them. 

In the elections, of 1865 and 1866 there had been no possibility of a 
color line, since the blacks were not enfranchised, and took no part. 
In the election of 1867, under the reconstruction laws, the whites, from 
causes indicated in a previous chapter, took but little part, virtually 
allowing it to go by default. The whites, it is true, carried the elec- 
tion of 1868, largely by the aid of the negroes, on the question of 
adopting the reconstruction constitution, and for State officers under it 
if adopted; but that was a sort of conp d'etat, their indifference of the 
year before having thrown the Eadicals off their guard, and causing 
them to be unprepared for the sudden effort which the whites made. 

The election of 1869 was that in which, for the first time, there was a 
distinct and active contest with full preparation; and in it, although 
the whites placed no ticket in the field, but supported that of the Na- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 245 

tioiial Union Eeijublicans, with the brother-in-hiw of President Grant 
at its head, the negroes massed themselves with the Kadicals. They 
pursued the same course in the minor elections of 1870, 1871, and 1872. 
In that of 1873 the Democratic party virtually disbanded. Again it 
placed no ticket in the field. The whites supported the Liberal Kepub- 
lican nomiuees, led by Gov. Alcorn, whom the negroes had elected over 
Dent; but now they defeated him by supporting Ames and his fellows. 

So that, in 1874, when this process had been going on for quite five 
years, when there w-as some appearance in the political horizon of a 
brighter day, and the temper of the Noi-thern people was felt to be 
changing on the subject of Southern repression, it was but natural that 
to a great many it should appear that the time had come " to quit fool- 
ing with the negroes." Indeed, it seemed a thankless and humiliating 
task to solicit their suffrages further. 

The first indication, it is believed, of a disposition to accept the gage 
of race conflict thus persistently, although iguorantly, offered, was at 
the municipal election in Vicksburg in the summer of 1874. It has 
been already told how Warren County was burdened with officials who 
were not only colored men in whose election the whites, the taxpayers, 
had had no voice, but also were utterly corrupt and prodigal. In 
Vicksburg, however, there was a registered white majority of about 
three hundred votes; and a strong and successful effort was made to 
rally them, as whites, to throw off the oppressive and ruinous negro 
rule. This movement succeeded. The election was carried; and that 
success drew attention to its tactics, and excited more or less inclina- 
tion elsewhere to adopt its j^rinciple. 

The Vicksbio-g Herald, the Pasrarjoufa Sfai; the Iiilri Ilorihl, and 
other papers, warmly a^^proved the new departure of " the White Man's 
party," and earnestly advocated its general adoption throughout the 
State. The Vicksburg paper twitted the Jackson Clarion because it 
" does not respond very graciously," and asked: "What does the Clarion 
advise?" To that question, an able editorial of August 27, 1874, re- 
sponded, that the movement was contrary to the national Democratic 
platform of 1872, in which the party recognized the equality of all men 
before the law, and pledged itself to oppose the reopening of any of the 
questions settled b\' the amendments to the constitution; that the ne- 
groes were not altogether to blame for their conduct, but the whites 
were also in fault by their mistakes of 1865 and 1867; that the adop- 
tion of the white-line policy would be a stiiltification of the whites 
themselves, because it would be the unsaying of all that they had most 
insisted upon for j^ears in respect to the proper relations between the 
races in the field of politics; that not only would it be bad statesman- 
ship and poor jiatriotism, but also bad policy, since the blacks far out- 
numbered the whites in many counties in the State and in the whole 



246 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

State, aud also because it would imperil the brightening prospects of 
Democracy in the North. 

Ex-Senator A. G. Brown, whose course since the war had been 
marked by great conservatism, wisdom, and patriotism, wrote, in a 
published letter: 

I am opposed to the white-line movement. I see nothing in it but increased mis- 
chief, and this notwithstanding the triumph of the white men in Viclisburg. There 
is but one thing for us to expect in comnmnities where tlie negroes are largely in the 
ascendent if this movement becomes gener.il among the whites, and that is negro 
domination in its most galling and revolting form. . . . I am glad that our Vicks- 
burg friends, since they felt constrained to make the issue, succeeded; and shall be 
rejoiced if they shall use their power so as to convince the negro that his rights are 
safe in the hands of honest Southern white men. Give him full justice, and he may 
no longer lend a willing ear to those who are his worst enemies. 

A month later, the Herald jjresented to " Gov. Brown and others who 
have kept up such a persistent howl against the ' color line ' policy be- 
cause it would, as they allege, precipitate a war of races," the epiisode of 
September 14 in New Orleans as a practical object lesson. "The color 
line," it said, " has been very clearly drawn iu that city, and yet in the re- 
cent armed conflict, while many white men were killed and wounded, only 
one negro was wounded." To this the Clarion replied that the uprising 
iu Louisiana which unseated Kellogg was not a "color line" movement; 
that its object was to install persons elected on a fusion ticket com- 
liosed of whites and blacks, one of the members of the McEnery gov- 
ernment being a negro; that Gov. Penn, in his proclamation, had called 
upon the militia, " without regard to color," and had assured the col- 
ored i.ieopjo that no harm was meant to them or their rights; that the 
only officer of the Kellogg irfjiine wlio was permitted by the McEnery par- 
ty to remain in office was Dubuclet, the negro State Treasurer, described 
by the I'krn/inw as " a highly respected colored man, who is the legal 
Treasurer." "If this," said the CJur/oii, "was a 'color line' movement 
in its objects and animating principle, then it is an entirely difierent 
thing from the 'line' here iu Mississippi, as drawn and expounded by 
its originators and advocates." These meant that the cooj)eration of 
the negro M'onld not be admissible on any terms, etc. 

So the discussion progressed. The i:)aiDers had it all to themselves, 
for the time had not yet come for the people to speak. The papers 
were by no means iu accord, and the opponents of the white line were 
greatly in the majority. The IIoJJij Springs Brporfrr said that "it is 
difficult for us to believe that any sane, intelligent white man can hope 
to accomplish any good for his race or jmrty Ijy the advocacy of such a 
doctrine." The Canfon Mail: "We do not projwse to join that class 
who are willing to precipitate a conflict between the races." The Eaaf 
Mississippian: "Most assuredly the formation of white leagues and col- 
ored leagues will antagonize the races completely; bloodshed will be 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 247 

its result, and then comes Federal intervention." The Greenville 
Times: "If there is any one objection to the practices of Radicalism 
that has been more strongly inveighed against than any other, it is its 
tendency to array and estrange the races politically. . . . Surely 
nothing out of bedlam can be conceived madder than this urging of a 
'white league 'in this State." The WoodrUh RepuUican: " Foi'tuuately 
we have none of it, and the i-elatious of the two races are entirely 
friendly and confidential." The foregoing expressions, it will be seen, 
are culled from all portions of the State. Nevertheless, the fact re- 
mained that the movement had dangerous strength, for the people 
were greatly tired of being fired upon without returning a shot, and it 
reqiiired great wisdom and fortitude to refrain from retaliation. 

Such, then, was the comi^licated and critical situation of affairs in 
the early part of the year 1875, growing mainly, as already stated, out 
of the Louisiana troubles, the grinding and hostile administration of 
Gov. Ames at home, and the rise of the sentiment in favor of a white 
line. All of those things inspired passions, and two of them had to be 
dealt with directly. 

Meanwhile the reputation of Mr. Lamar continued to increase. His 
speech in New Hampshire had added to his fame, and from one end of 
the nation to the other attention was directed to him. The newspapers 
abounded in most complimentary notices of him. For instance: 

The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle and Senline! : "Were we asked to-day to name the 
foremost statesman of the South in public life — to name a man with the genius, with 
the tact, with the courage, with the patriotism, requii^ite to lead a great ))olitical party 
— we should unliesitatingly call the name of L. Q. C. Lamar." 

The Miliriiukee Sentinel: " He is in every respect, at least in appearance, the gentle, 
quiet, firm, and uncompromising statesman, and is really reflecting more credit upon 
the extreme Southern locality from which he came than any other member." . . . 

The Alia Califoniian: "In the example set in Congress by Mr. Lamar, of Missis- 
sippi, who behaves like a true gentleman toward other members of the House, his 
fellow-representatives have an example which it would do them no injury to study 
and to follow. He is ever courteous, never low and vulgar, never insulting and abu- 
sive, never announcing himself personally responsible, as used to be too common in 
Congress, and which bad specimens of bad breeding, biid manners, and bad feeling 
seem again coming into vogue. He has made friends of both sides of the House, not 
by jiandering to or flattering the vanity of either, but by exhibiting a spirit of fair- 
ness on all occasions, an independence of thought truly statesmanlike, but at the 
same time not leaving his own political preferences at all in doubt. Such men are 
an honor to the country." 

On the 2"2d of May the United States Commission, organized to man- 
age the Centennial Exposition to be held in Philadelphia in the follow- 
ing year, named Col. Lamar and Charles Francis Adams as the orators 
of the occasion — an honor which he was compelled by circumstances to 
decline, but the offer of which was grateful to his people. 

At home even many of the Radical papers were awarding to him the 



248 LUCIUS Q. C. LA MAE: 

highest encomiums; saving to their partisanship, however, the privilege 
oi saying that lie was not, in respect of his merits, a representative 
Democrat— for which style of applause he was not very grateful. 

On the other hand, ex-Senator A. G. Brown wrote of him to Hon. E. 
Barksdale, editor of the Clarion, inclosing a "communication," under 
date of May 26: 

The inclo.sed brief artirle contains my real sentiments. I feel more inclined to ex- 
l)ress them, inasmuch as I did noi at first fully ajipruve of Lamar's speech over the 
dead Sumner. But, having witnessed its good effects, I recant. It is now, I think, on 
every account our policy to make him our recognized leader. We thereliy, amongst 
many other advantages, get the benefit of liis conservative statements so often and so 
boldly expressed. By making him our leader we make these expressions our own, 
and thus disarm our Northern slanderers. 

The communication, which was prominently displayed in the next 

issue of the Clarion, was this: 

Lamar. 

Press where you see his white plume shine amid the ranks of war. 
And be your orifiauune, to-day, the helmet of Lamar. 

Nothing could have quickened the hearts of all true friends of constitutional lib- 
erty to a higlier degree than the announcement that this peerless orator and incor- 
rui)tible statesman intended to take the field in defense of genuine reform, in acconl- 
ance with the most approved principles of conservatism. In him the faithful adher- 
ents to order, good government, and universal brotherhood, have a cliampion worthy 
of their cause. To him more than to any living man are we indebted for that ap- 
inoach to harmony and good will between the late conflicting sections of this great 
I'nion, whicli all good citizens hail with such sincere delight. . . . The fraternal 
feeling thus rekindled has been growing in fervor and intensity ever since, and bids 
fair, thanks to the genius that pointed the way, to be as lasting as the eternal hills. 

Need I say that the mind which conceived such majestic thoughts is too great to be 
trauuneled by party chains, and the heart from which they flow too generous to ex- 
clude the humblest citizen from its aflections? 

Who need be ashamed to follow such a leader, I care not what he may call him- 
self? Be he Democrat, Conservative, or Republican, if the ends he aims at be his 
country's, God's, and truth's, then let him cast prejudice aside and follow the lead of a 
man who has already thrown prejudice to the winds, and in the greatness of his soul, 
standing amid the ruins of his State, has said: "My countrymen! let us know one an- 
other, and we will love one another." 

If, however, men, from sordid, selfish, narrow, and contracted or mistaken motives, 
reject his counsels and refuse his lead, then let the contest come. The friends of 
equality, genuine equality, and of constitutional liberty everywhere, and of all races, 
colors, and nationalities, will know whose banner they ought to follow. 

And on they'll burst and on they'll rush, while, like a golden star, 
Amidst the thickest of the fight will blaze the helmet of Lamar. 

Gov. Brown's communication was only a voice from the people. They 

had chosen Mr. Lamar for their leader. Long before the meeting of 

the Congressional Nominating Convention it was apparent that he 

would have no opposition. The Clarion of April 14 said, apropos of 

" Congros.sional candidates," that "in the First District no man is 

thought of except the present peerless representative, Hon. L. Q. C. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 249 

Lamar, iu whose return (be whole State (may we not say the whole coun- 
try?) is interested, who will be reelected almost by acclamation to the 
place he has honored." 

As the time for the convention drew near the people began to assem- 
ble in their county mass meetings. In Tippah County, for instance, on 
the 15th of July, it was unanimously resolved that "his course iu the 
last Congress meets our unqualified approbation, as an earnest of which 
our delegates to the Congressional Nomiuatiug Convention shall be, 
and they are hereby, instructed to cast the vote of this county, first, 
last, and all the time, to return him to a seat which he has filled with 
such distinguished ability, and from which he has shed luster upon the 
name of the State of Mississippi." Exactly similar resolutions, using 
the same expression of " first, last, and always," had been unanimously 
adopted at the meeting in Pontotoc County, three days Ijefore; and like 
action was taken in the other counties of the district. AVhen the Nom- 
inating Convention met in Corinth, on the 22d of July, he was renomi- 
nated by acclamation. 

Such was the answer of the people to the query from the North as to 
whether Col. Lamar truly represented the feeliugs of the white people 
of his State, and to the assertion by the Eadical newsjaai^ers of the State 
that he did not. 

It will be remembered that the Democratic party in Mississippi had 
been disbanded, and that its members, together with that class who 
called themselves Conservatives, had been endeavoring to win relief 
from Eadical rule by cooi^erating with the Liberal Eepublicans. Tiiis 
experiment had proven ineffectual. Therefore the Democratic mem- 
bers of the Legislature, during its last session, in view of the Demo- 
cratic victories North, and at the solicitation of numerous friends of the 
party, met in caucus in the Capitol on the 3d of March. That caucus 
appointed a committee of foi-ty-two, composed of men holding all 
shades of Democratic and Conservative opinion, with instructions to 
take such steps and make such recommendations to the Democratic and 
Conservative jjeople of the State as would, in their judgment, lead to a 
thorough reorganization of the Democratic-Conservative party. Hon. 
John M. Stone, State Senator, was made Chairman of the committee, 
and on the 10th of April he published a call for a meeting, iu the city 
of Jackson, on the 17th of May, of the members of the committee, " to- 
gether with such friends of our cause as are willing to give us their 
counsel and support." The committee met on the day appointed, pur- 
suant to the Chairman's call, together with numerous friends from all 
over the State, amongst them Col. Lamar. It was first resolved that 
" all Democrats, Conservatives, and anti-Eadicals " be invited to partic- 
ipate. Eesolutions were then adopted to the effect that the Democratic 



250 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

and Conservative people of Mississijipi assemble iu delegate conveution 
at Jacksou on the 3d of August, to uomiuate a candidate for State 
Treasurer, to adopt a platform of principles, aud to organize the party 
for the November elections. The 2)eople were recommended to nomi- 
nate their ablest and best men for Congress, for the Legislature, and 
for the county offices. A committee of three was appointed to confer 
with the State Executive Committee of the Republican ijarty, with a 
view of getting their cooperation in some movement looking to a fair 
representation of buth parties on the Boards of Registrars. 

This action stirred the people deeply. At once, work iu the counties 
began ; and from this time forth the newsi^apers of the period are filled 
with accounts of mass meetings, great jjolitical gatherings, speakings, 
barbecues, etc. The State was thoroughly aroused. The meeting at 
Falkner's Station, in Tippah County, already mentioned, may serve as 
a specimen of scores of others all over the State. 

The little town was crowded with people from all jiarts of the coun- 
try, who had assembled to hear Mr. Lamar. The si^eaker's stand was 
erected in a beautiful grove, and at eleven o'clock a vast audience had 
assembled. The speaker was introduced by Hon. Thomas Sjjight " in a 
few well-chosen remarks, wherein he said that he had the honor of intro- 
ducing Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar, whose name had become the synonym of 
eloquence and statesmanship throughout this broad land." Mr. Lamar 
followed in a speech of near three hours length upon State and national 
politics. " He dwelt at gi-eat length upon the condition of affairs iu the 
State. He animadverted upon the corruption and tyranny of the 
carpetbag and Radical officeholders in the South, and expressed the 
hope that the jubilee of .the tax-ridden and ojDpressed people of the 
South was near at hand. He showed up our alien government in a light 
that reflected no honor upon its administration. He showed, and 
proved by official documents, which he read, that Gov. Ames had en- 
deavored at divers times during his gubernatorial stay in this State to 
corrupt the sanctity and purity of the judicial ermine by dictating to 
the courts what was his will, and threatening, iu the event that his man- 
dates were not complied with, the expulsion from office of the members 
of the bench. He further showed that Ames was responsible for the 
shameful bloodshed at Vicksburg last fall; that it was Ames and his 
minions who have so shamefully drawn the color line in this State, 
which has proved so disastrous to both races. The speaker said that 
nothing short of earnest and incessant cooperation among the oppo- 
nents of Radical misrule could ever redeem the people of this unfortu- 
nate State. He adverted to the days of Benton, Calhoun, aud a host of 
other true and honest patriots, contrasting the state of affairs then with 
.the present. He complimented the people of old TijjPah upon being- 
represented in the Legislature by so pure, patriotic, and able a man as 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 251 

Capt. Spiglit, and recommondcd that he be sent back again. The 
speaker was loudly applauded many times during his remarks, and re- 
tired amid the deafening shouts of the audience." After the address 
dinner was announced. Then the people returned to the stand and 
resolved themselves into a convention, which proceeded to elect del- 
egates and adopt resolutions. It was earnestly addressed by Col. AV. C. 
Falkner. The meeting adjourned at four o'clock, and the remainder of 
the evening was spent by the young people in dancing in the grove, fol- 
lowed by a ball in Eipley at night, where "all went merry as a mar- 
riage belL" 

Nearly all of these meetings dealt with the question of the color line. 
The proceedings in the celebrated county of Yazoo may serve as an ex- 
ample. The resolutions were proposed and adopted seriatim, amongst 
them: 

Resolved, That we are in favor of a vigorous and aggressive canvass in the contest 
now approaching in IMississippi, and we appeal to our fellow-citizens throughout the 
State to unite with us in our endeavois by legitimate means to regain control of our 
public affairs, and thus secure to all classes, white and black, the blessings of a just 
and honest government. 

Resolved, That we favor low taxes and an immediate reduction of all public ex- 
penditures. 

Resolved, Tiiat honesty and capacity are the only proper tests of official f3tnes.=. 

Resolved, That all men are equal before the law, and are endowed by their Creator 
with certain inalienable rights, amongst which is nol the right to hold office unless 
the aspirant possesses the integrity and other qualificaiions necessary to its execu- 
tion. 

A white-line resolution, offered in this series, was voted down and re- 
jected. In Pontotoc County, at the meeting of July 12, addressed by 
Col. Lamar, the fourth resolution was: 

Resolved, That we hereby fi-eely and cordially invite all persons, of whatever race, 
color, or previous affiliation, to unite with us in securing for all a good, economical, 
and honest government in lieu of the oppressive, extravagant, and corrupt one we 
now have. 

So, like resolutions were adopted in the counties of Prentiss, Clarke, 
Marshall, Montgomery, Sunflower, Grenada, De Soto, Bolivar, Holmes — 
in fact, so far as the accessible files of old papers show, in all, with only 
two exceptions; and in them no platforms are given as adopted. 

The Congressional Convention at Corinth, which renominated Col. 
Lamar, adopted a resolution submitted by him at the conclusion of his 
speech before that body: 

Tliat we are oi-)posed to the formation of parties among the people of this State 
founded upon differences of race or color', and we cordially iiivoke the union of good 
citizens of every race and color in patriotic efibrts to defeat at the next election the 
present State administration and its supporters, and to secure to all the blessings of 
an honest and capable government. 

The State Convention met at Jackson as appointed, on the 3d of 



252 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

August. The body was worthy of the occasion. Every portion of the 
State was represented by delegates of its very ablest and most honored 
men. 

When the convention had organized, Col. Lamar, according to an old 
engagement, was called upon to address them. Although much worn 
from excessive speaking in the open air during the past month, he spoke 
for three hours. A report was made by the Pilot, which, although the 
abstract of a Eadical and hostile paper (Gov. Ames' organ), is still the 
best account extant of the address; and it is given below. The very 
fact that it was an enemy's version, and, therefore, was au admission 
against interest, stood him in good stead later, as will appear. 

Gentlemen of the Convention : I am afraid that my physical condition will prevent me 
from fully complying with the promise that I made, some months ago, to address the 
people at this j.ilace, and yet I regard it as a self-assumed responsibility to our people 
and our party that I am unwilling to shift upon another. It has been said by an em- 
inent Southern divine that we live in a time of great events, an era of change— change 
in the national constitution, change in the government, change in the peojile, change 
in social and jiolitical relations- and this American Government is either to advance 
to a higher plane or retrograde to a lower one. The greatest trials of a ]ieoi>le are ex- 
perienced while in the transition state. The complications growing out of the incor- 
poration of a new foreign and incongruous element, comprising four millions of peo- 
ple, eight hundred thousand voters, cannot fail in producing disturbance in the old 
balance of affairs. Tliey are really appalling in their character. Suppose as many 
Cliinamen were brought into the country and quickly scattered among the people. 
What would not be the alarm of the people, and the terrible havoc and unspeakable 
catastrophe that would follow? Yet this would be much less threatening to our insti- 
tutions and less dangerous to society than the forcing upon our political system, by 
the hand of violence, of four million liberated slaves. A majority of the American 
people looked upon this forced liberation and elevation of this race with deep solici- 
tude and apjirehension. It hangs like a mistletoe upon the body politic, to saji its 
life. It cannot but endanger the nation's life, and threatens its overthrow. Not only 
the masses, but the leading statesmen of the North, looked with fear and dread upon 
the political experiment which conteui plated the incorporation of this race and its 
exercise of the elective franchise. There is no disputing the fact that these people 
have not been heretofore looked upon as a part and portion of the society of the 
Southern States, but ratlier as an appemlage, like unto the mistletoe, that attaches it- 
self to the oak, but is not part and parcel of its growtli ; but rather as an excrescence, 
that miglit be useful, ornamental, or otherwise. Senator ]Morton, the great apostle of 
Republicanism, in a speech made in 186.5, expressed his grave doubts as to the wisdom 
of making the colored man a voter. When this speech was made it was natural that 
the Southern people should not be in accord with such experimental policy. They 
knew the capabilities of the negro and his fitness to vote, and believed that to clothe 
him with these awful attributes, even with freedom's ballot and the incentive of free- 
dom's blessings before him, would be a great wrong. "They are not qualified," said 
Indiana's great war Senator, " to take ]5art in the government not only of the United 
States, but of the States of the United States." Colored State governments we know 
are not desirable, and tlieir inevitable result is a war of the races. [Cheers.] The 
people of the South, however, are an adaptable people; and they have in a measure 
adapted themselves to the changed state of affairs and the new order of things. They 
saw the great calamity which the policy of the government would bring, and at once 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 253 

prepared with all their earnestness and zeal to avert it. What a vast and awful task 
was before them! The old system of government was ruined and destroyed, and out 
of its wreck they had to buiUl and reconstruct the new. Yet, formidable as was the 
undertaking, there were projiitious circmiistances. The people had hope that they 
might yet run a career of progress and prosperity. They had left to them their hon- 
or and good name, the old common law, and the Anglo-Saxon race, born amitl the 
principles of liberty, and which they have never been known to give up or let go un- 
der so long as they had the handling of atiairs. [Applause.] They knew the great 
stake that they held in the success of this great republic, and recognized the fact that 
the failure to recognize the new status of their country would result in devastation and 
disaster to their posterity. They gathered the disjecta membra, the remains of their 
shattered communities, and united in the restoration of the memliers of society. They 
hoped for their reunited country; but this hope was dis])elled, and the Southern sky 
was darkened by the i>arty in power. It presumed on a latent loyal sentiment here 
which did not exist ; and, not finding it, then looked beyond the white man to the ne- 
gro for assistance. The rebel element could not be trusted to do the work required to 
be done. Hence followed Federal interference in Southern affairs : Freedman's Bureau 
agents, reconstruction, and bayonets. The disloyalty of the South was given as a pre- 
text for this action ; and to this day this cry is kept up, and this Federal interference 
comes and establishes and maintains governments alien to all the people, white and 
black. In his place in Congress the .sjieaker had said that the iron that they had 
thrust into the hearts of the Southern people by this relentless and wicked policy- 
burned deeper than the wounds which followed hostile armies. The Freedman's Bu- 
reau, the Civil Rights Bill, the reconstruction laws, with agents and military oflicers, in- 
ti-enched themselves in the South by force, and are here to-day. The principle is that 
this policy must trample on the riglits of the whites to protect the lights of the blacks, 
and thus the goverimient itself originally drew the color line in Southern politics as dis- 
tinctly as if it wa-s an organic requirement of government. Sir Walter Scott, in his 
novel, " The Talisman," tells of the battle between Richard of the Lion Heart and Sal- 
adin. When Richard reared his battle-ax on high and made the fearful blow, Saladin 
drew his scimiter, snatched a gauzy, silken veil, threw it in the air, and with one 
stroke of his keen and trenchant blade cut its folds asunder as it descended. The 
government has used both instruments of destruction. AVith the battle-ax and iron 
hand it has crushed out the system in vogue for years; with the lighter sword it has 
cut asunder the silken tissue of kindness and friendship that had existed between the 
two races. These agencies were indeed \\ell adapted to produce the color line, of 
which men now so bitterly complain, and the)' have done their work with a certainty 
and completeness that could not be mistaken. But in all he said, he disclaimed any 
intention to be personal. His remarks did not especially apply to Southern Republi- 
cans; 'for their efforts, he claimed, were neither helps nor hurt to their cause. Tliey 
had not succeeded either in elevating or purifying their party, and he begged them to 
return to their old friends, and coiiperate with them. He referred to the committees 
sent to Louisiana, and to the character of the testimony that they brought back to 
Congress. Upon this point the speaker dwelt at some length. He took up the Vicks- 
burg matter, and, dwelling upon it some twenty minutes, and reading from the testi- 
mony of Gov. Ames, Judge Brown, Gen. Packer, and otliers, attempted to prove that 
Gov. Ames was responsible for that bloody work, and to excuse it so far as his party 
was concerned. He said nothing in condemnation of such lawless affairs. The 
speaker then depicted, in vivid sketches, the condition of the South in its past days of 
prosperity; the honor and pride that comes of government administered by compe- 
tent hands; the scene he witnessed in the United States Senate when the Southern 
Senators withdrew, and the speeches made on that occasion ; and the surrender of the 
government to Northern hands, after Southern stiitesmen had controlled it, as he 



254 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

claimed, from its infancy, witliout a blot upon its fair name, matchless in strength, 
and unsurpassed in grandeur! In the consideration of remedies for present evils, the 
speaker said tliat two separate theories were presented, struggling for mastery. One is 
to continue the present restrictive policy, and to give the President more power to op- 
press and crii>ple the South. Under this head the speaker reviewed the character and 
scoi)e of the enforcement laws, force bills, and other similar legislation; and, although 
the new National House of Representatives was Democratic (applause), the President 
still has iiower to march his army into the country to oppress and outrage the people. 
Against this policy he pledged the united opposition of his party. (Applause.) An- 
other remedy, comprising the Democrats, Liberal Republicans, and many independ- 
ent voters wiio are tired of the policy of Federal force and commotion, was suggested. 
This policy, said the speaker, was based on reconciliation and good feeling. He held 
that the freedom and enfranchisement of the colored men was fixed in the constitu- 
tion, but that the responsibility of government should rest upon the hands that will 
be most afl'ected and are most capable. He then referred to leading Democratic poli- 
ticians. North, to show in what spirit they view the question of local self-government, 
and their unqualified acceptance of the constitutional amendments. The issue of the 
next national canvass will be, unless the Republican party is reorganized as to policy 
and leadership, whether this Union shall consist of the North and South, as equals, 
or whether the Union shall consist of the North alone. The Republican party has 
lona enough obstructed the government. At no time since the government was estab- 
lished has there been more desire for peace and reconciliation among the American 
people than now, on the basis of equality and friendsliip, and he was rejoiced to see 
this spirit. Once convince the Northern people tliat the workings of the local gov- 
ernments of the South shall lie conducted to protect the colored men in all their 
rights, and in cooperation with them in the sovereignty of the government, and they 
will become strong and invincilile. The means f)f relief is to make a change at Wash- 
ington. Now what can be done? He approached this branch of the discussion with 
the utmost confidence, because the people of the South have the moral courage and 
heroism upon which to base a hope for reform. After paying a tribute to the moral 
and Christian character of the white people of the South, the speaker proceeded to 
speak of the amendments. If any one thing is true, said he, the people of Mississippi 
have pledged themselves to sustain the tliree amendments to the constitution, and 
have no power or desire to change them. They confer upon the newly enfranchised 
race the sacred rights of freemen, and their riiihta are your duties. Impaired by any 
act of yours, your duties by that same act are violated, and the constitution of your 
country is violated. The speaker felt it his duty to ascend to this high position on this 
subject. Any effort, said he, looking to an abridgment of their rights is friiuglit with 
disaster and Ijurdens and ruin to this people. The color line was talked of. Hedeclared 
that it would be ruinous to its victors, if victory could be won that way. It is not 
right. It is not Republican. One of the principles of Democratic government is that 
all parts of tlie body politic shall contribute to its support and control. Any race or- 
ganization which seeks to assert the exclusive management of a country may have 
good government, but cannot have lilierty. It is tyranny unmixed, and is fraught 
with disaster. Woe be unto you if you find yourselves confronted, on such a suicidal 
policy, by the powers of a vindictive government brought upon your defenseless 
heads. The speaker appealed to the convention to come up to the requirements of 
the crisis that is upon them, to realize fully their duties and responsibilities; and, after 
an eloquent peroration, which we shall not attempt to give, retired from the stand 
amid tlie most rapturous applause. 

The Clarion of tlio next day said of this speech that 

By all odds it was the ablest that has been pmnounced in the Capitol since the 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 255 

war. It was massive in argument, irresistible in logic, statesmanlike in the policy it 
fidvocated, and eloquent. A great deal was expected, but the highest expectation in- 
<lulged by the ])ublic was more than realized. His audience was held spellbound for 
more than three hours. 

After the address, letters of sympathy were read from Allen G. Tliur- 
man, Hon. Beu H. Hill, and Tlionias A. Hendricks; and then, after some 
jontine business, the Committee on liesolutious reported the xjlatform, 
"which was as follows: 

The Democratic and Conservative people of the State of Mississippi, in convention 
assembled, invoking the blessing of Almighty God upon their eflbrts, and inviting 
the cooperation of all citizens of the State who favor an honest, impartial, and eco- 
nomical administration, do adopt the following declaration of their aims and 
principles : 

1. We recognize and will maintain the civil and political equality of all men as 
established by the Constitution of the United States and the amendments thereto. 

2. We are in favor of the education of all the children of the State iu pubUc schools 
sustained by adequate taxation, but we are ojiposed to extravagant and partisan ad- 
ministration of said schools. 

3. The selection only of honest, faithful, and competent men for all the offices, from 
the highest to the lowest. 

4. Economy in the administration of the government; the abolition of useless and 
unnecessary offices; and a reduction in the fees and salaries of those that are re- 
tained, and a strict and rigid accountability of all officers having the custody of public 
money or charged with its collection. 

5. Biennial sessions of the Legislature and a reduction in the expenses of that de- 
partment of the government; and we denounce the Republican party of tlie State for 
their violated pledges on this subject. 

6. The selection of an able and cdmpetent judiciary, and a confining of the judges 
to judicial functions purely, so that all temptation to partisanship on the bench shall 
be removed. 

7. A discontinuance of the enormous evil of special and local legislation, and in its 
stead the enactment of general laws, under which local and private interests will be 
fully protected. 

8. The encouragement of agriculture by securing to the farmer and the laborer the 
just rewards of their toil and cai)ital, and l)y relief from the bm'densome taxation 
whi('h now consumes tlieir substance. 

9. The encouragement of manufactures in our midst. 

10. The elevation of the standard of official character, so as to infuse into official 
life a sense of public duty, the spirit of patriotism and integrity, to the end that gov- 
ernment, law, and public authority may be invested with the moral influence and 
dignity which will insure respect and obedience. 

11. We favor immediate action of the general government for the protection of the 
Mississippi River lowlands against inundation. 

12. The building up of partisan newspapers by legislation, the arming of the mili- 
tia in time of peace, the unconstitutional attempt to take from the people the election 
of tax collectors, the attempted passage of the Metropolitan Police Bill, the attempted 
corruption of the judit'iary by the use of Executive patronage, we denounce as gross 
outrages upon constitutional liberty; while, as evidence of the utter incapacity of 
our present rulers to administer the afi'airs of the State, we point to the mass of con- 
fusion in which the revenue and registration laws of the State have become involved, 
the necessity of extraordinary sessions of the Legislature to cure the blunders and 



256 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

follies of the regular sessions, and to the repeated Executive and legislative acts which 
have been by the Supreme Court declared uncoustitutional and void. 

.13. That we cordially invite the voters of all the people of both races to unite vig- 
orously with us in the approaching canvass, in a determined eflbrt to give success to 
the foregoing principles, and thus to secure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings 
of an honest, economical government, administered by able, efficient, and competent 
public officers. 

On motion of Mr. Singleton, it was resolved that " this convention 
cordially approves the course of the Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar in the Con- 
gress of the United States, and holds in the highest estimation his great 
services in the cause of reconciliation, peace, and good government." 
Thtis Mr. Lamar was indorsed from start to finish: in every county of 
his district, iu the district convention, and in that of the State. 

The Pilot of that week said of his speech, among other things: 

The little speech of Col. Lamar knocked the Herald's and the Monitoi-'s color line 
arrangement " higher than a kite." . . . As to the effect that the speaker and his 
piece will exert upon the canvass, we must say that we are shrouded in uncertainty 
and doubt. They may serve to save the Democracy and defeat Republicanism in Mis- 
sissippi, but we do not believe that they will. However, Mr. Lamar did the best that 
he could, and if his party has to suffer defeat in November— as we believe it will— he 
can have the consciousness of having performed his duty to his party to the full extent 
of his ability and strength. 

Of these events and their relations to the fortunes of Mr. Lamar, and 
more particularly of their political significance, nationally considered, 
the Northern press had much to say. For instance: 

The New York Tribune: "No Congressman of the present time is more generally 
liked than Mr. Lamar, of Mississippi. Journals of all parties rejoice at his renomina- 
tion, and pronounce him one of the ablest and most useful men in Congress. The 
best of it is that he deserves all the popularity that he enjoys." 

The Detroit Free Press: "The renomination of Mr. Lamar for Congress in IMissis- 
sippi is a well-deserved tribute to a gentleman whose course as a Eepresentative in 
the last Congress was one of which his district and State may well be proud. It is no 
disparagemeJit to other Southern Representatives to say that he, more ably and suc- 
cessfully than any other, laid the views, hopes, and feelings of the South before Con- 
gress and the people of the country. ... It was and is a favorite theory of his 
that the better acquainted the sections are with each other the higher will be the 
mutual appreciation and the less danger of sectional legislation. The experience of 
Vice President Wilson, Judge Kelley, and many other prominent Northern men who 
have recently visited the South confirms this theory, the almost invariable results of a 
Southern tour being to convince the tourists that the South is not near as black as it 
has been painted." 

The Boston Post: "The unanimous nomination of Congressman Lamar by the Dem- 
ocrats of the First Mississippi District is sulticient evidence that the genuine citizen- 
ship of that State is competent to look out for itself if let alone. Mr. Lamar has been 
an honest and al)le representati\-e of his constituency, and that is reason enough for 
retaining him in the place he now occupies; Ijut he has been far more than that. He 
has risen to the full requirements of a statesman, and has exerted an influence felt 
for good throughout the whole nation. Regeneration in politics, reconciliation, and 
all the immediate needs of our new Union, he has devoted himself to with all the en- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 257 

thusiasm and brilliant, even vivid, eloquence that he possesses. His influence could 
not well be spared fi-oni the forces that in the next few years are to lirinj^ this repub- 
lic up to a higher plane of lionor and prosperity. ... In Col. Lamar the people 
have a leader whose good faith and ability can be trusted, and it is a gratifying pros- 
pect that his public services are not to be lost." 

The Trilmne again: " The Democratic party in Mississippi has been heard from. It 
has heard a speech by Hon. Mr. Lamar, and it has passed resolutions. . . . Alto- 
gether the condition of the Mississippi Democrats is rational and pleasing." 

At this period also the papers, both North and South, had a good 
deal to say about a "reconciliation" Presidential ticket for the ap- 
proaching election, to be composed of Gen. N. P. Banks, of Massachu- 
setts, and Mr. Lamar; a movement which seems to have originated iu 
Boston amongst the Democratic soldiers and sailors of that city. 

On the 15th of August the State Executive Committee promulgated an 
address, which was prepared by Hon. H. H. Chalmers, later Chief Jus- 
tice of the Supreme Court, from which the following extracts are made, 
in order to illustrate the feelings and designs of this momentous canvass: 

We hail the advent to powei- of a Democratic Congress, for the tir.«t time in fifteen 
years, as a pledge to the nation that the shameless disregard of the right of local self- 
government and the bold usurpations of power which have marked the recent his- 
tory of public affairs shall have an end. . . . From the passions of the war, pur- 
posely played upon and kept alive by the party in power, it is pleasing to turn to the 
indications of returning good will between the sections everywhere so abundant and 
so cordial. The people of Mississippi gladly welcome and heartily recii)rocate these 
manifestations of patriotism and fraternal tove, and they view with pleasure the pros- 
pect that the Presidential contest of the Centennial year will be crowned with the 
triumph of a candidate whose election shall put an end to sectional ill will and dis- 
trust at the North, and to the domination of ignorance and race hatred at the South. 

Preparatory to that great struggle it becomes us to addre.ss ourselves to the task of 
shaking oft' in INIississippi a local government whose history has Ijrought the blush of 
shame to the cheeks of Northern Republicans, and which, in connection with its kin- 
dred governments at the South, has done much to overthrow the Republican party of 
the nation. Indeed, nothing but the passions and prejudices growing out of a civil 
war could so long have blinded the American people to the true character of the gro- 
tesque caricatures on govei'ument which have afflicted these Southern States. . 

A glance at the condition of affaire in our own State will serve as a sample of the 
whole : 

In the chief executive chair we have an alien and adventurer whose only interest 
in the State is in the office which lie now holds and the others which he is scheming 
to obtain, and whose habitual and contemptuous disregard of our constitution and 
laws is only equaled by las ignorance of the elementary principles of civil govern- 
ment. Accusations of a much darker nature are brought against him by members of 
his own party. A prominent and influential Republican, high in the councils and 
confidence of his party, has not hesitated to charge him with complicity in the san- 
guinary riot which a few months ago startled the nation and drenched the streets of 
Vicksburg with blood. This gentleman has declared in public speeches, upon Repub- 
lican authority deemed reliable by him, that the Governor of the State, in defiance of 
the earnest protests of his Attorney-general, issued the reckless and wicked orders 
which precipitated that unhappy conflict, and that he justified his action by tlie re- 
17 



258 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

mark, made at the time, that " tlie blood of twenty-five or thirty negroes slain at 
Vicksburg would benefit the Repuljlican party in the State." To add a darker shade 
to his guilt (if guilty he be), he subsequently attempted in his testimony before a 
Congressional committee to cast upon the white men of Warren Count}' tlie responsi- 
bility for the blood that was shed ui)on that unhai>]iy occasion. No blacker nor more 
damning crime than this has been laid at the door of a chief magistrate since Nero 
fired imperial Rome and charged the act upon the early Christians. 

The office of Lieutenant Governor of the State is occupied by one against whom, 
in addition to an incompetence patent to all men, there are grave suspicions of brib- 
ery in the discharge of official duties. The instruction of our youth is intrusted to a 
Superintendent of Public Education who to-day stands indicted by a grand jury, of 
numerous felonies, and whom Ins own party had neither the courage to impeach nor 
tlie audacity to defend. Our judicial positions, with some honorable exceptions, are 
filled by men of no repute in their professions, and in some instances by those who 
first announced themselves as members of the bar by the assumption of the highest 
honors of the bench. Our inferior offices are occupied in many instances by men 
utterly illiterate, and so ignorant of the simplest duties of their positions that their 
attempts to discharge them would be ludicrous if they were not so harmful. Our 
legislative halls are controlled by a combination of ignorance and corruption which 
baffles all hope of reformation. The men who impose our taxes are entirely dissev- 
ered in sympathy and interest from those by whom they are paid. The logical and 
inevitable consequence has been that the rate of taxation. State and local, has in- 
creased more than fifteen hundred per cent in the short space of six years, and yet 
our people, each day growing jmorer, and staggering under a burden too grievous to 
be borne, see with despair the public expenses each year exceeding the revenue. 

No relief from this intolerable scene of wastefulness, imbecility, and corruption 
can be expected at the hands of the Republican party of the State. The same men 
who have wrought these evils are still the controlling spirits of its organization, and 
will be its chosen leaders and candidates in the approaching election. How, indeed, 
can a party be expected to put down corruption which numbers upon its State Exec- 
utive Committee two convicted thieve^i, one of whom, convicted of petit larceny, has 
paid the penalty of his crime; and the other, couvicteil of embezzlement, is now an 
inmate of the penitentiary? Tiie overthrow of such a government and the defeat 
of such a party are the supreme necessity of the hour, and have become the duty of 
every honest man. In this noble work, upon a platform of equal right to all, we 
invoke the aid of all who prefer intelligence rather than ignorance, jiurity rather 
than corruption, economy rather than wasteful extravagance, and low taxes latlier 
tlian legalized robbery under the guise of taxation," etc. 

Ou the '25tli of August Mr. Lamar wrote as follows to Mr. Reemeliu: 
It would give me greater pleasure to visit you than to speak at the Exposition. 
I would be very glad to get back once more to private life. I do not see any field 
of usefulness to our country yet ready for a man of my section and of my political 
anteceilents. The strain for mere existence down here renders our intellect of little 
avail in its contrilmtions to those questions in which all parts of the country are alike 
interested. 

I have just emerged from a struggle to keep our |ieople from a race conflict. I am 
not sure that we are yet safe, for the hlark line is still maintained b\' the agents of 
the Federal Government. The negro race, which lias no idea of a iirinciple of gov- 
ernment or of society beyond that of obedience to the mandate of a master, sees in 
these agents the only embodiment of authority (mastershij)") in the country, and their 
obedience to them is not a whit less slavish than it was formerly to their masters. 
We could, by forming the "color line," and bringing to bear those agencies which in- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 259 

tellect, pluck, and will always give, overcome the stolid, inert, and illiterate majority; 
but such a victory will bring about conflicts and race passions and collisions with 
Federal power. Our only deliverance is in a change of Federal policy toward ua. 

lu the campaign of the summer and fall Mr. Lamar took active and 
ai'duous jjart. He spoke to vast audiences at Coft'eeville, Oxford, Gren- 
ada, Quitman, Scooba, Aberdeen, Holly Springs, and many other places. 
At Coffeeville and elsewhere, while always specially " remembering the 
few white men, largely from other States, who have successfully manipu- 
lated the colored men for their own purposes," he pleaded for the col- 
ored people themselves. He urged that they had been made the un- 
conscious instruments of an oppression which they neither originated 
noj understood, and he said that the white people of the South would 
never forget to the blacks their faithfulness and services in the past. 
He gave them much good counsel as to their relations to the white 
peoi^le and to jjolitical questions; and it was noted that they always 
listened attentively and seemed to be pleased. 

At the recjuest of Mr. Lamar, Senator Gordon had come from Geor- 
gia to assist in this canvass. He and Mr. Lamar spoke at Oxford on 
the 1st of September, and again at Grenada on the 6th. There is ex- 
taut an interesting report, by the Clarion correspondent, of this meet- 
ing, which is but a type of very many others held about the State. 
About one hundred and fifty negroes attended. An attempt was made 
by the Eadicals to keep them from attending by runners sent through 
the country, and while the speaking was in progress another effort was 
made to draw them away by a coitnter jjolitical demonstration, with 
fifes and drums close by, but miavailingly. Senator Gordon spoke at 
great length. He referred to the paradoxical fact that a party which 
violated the spirit, and in legislation violated the principles, of repub- 
lican government, should assume the name of "Eepublican." For ten 
years the history of the party in power had been an unbroken series of 
antirepublicau, auticonstitutional measures; and he pointed out, as 
some of the fruits of those measures, a violated constitution, broken 
laws, the overthrow of long and wisely established local self-govern- 
ment, the squandering of public revenue, and the prostitution of a 
brave and generous army to partisan purposes; and that these fruits 
were seen in disrupted socities, dislionored credit, disgrace of the fran- 
chise, oppressive taxation, and widespread ruin. His eloquent por- 
trayal and humorous illustrations of Eadical rule in the South were fre- 
quently greeted with cheers and laughter. A good portion of his 
speech was directed to the colored people, who gave him their undi- 
vided attention throughout. He commented " with very happy effect 
upon the carpetfeigger's bugbear about iiutting the colored people back 
into slavery." "It was the carpetbaggers' fathers who sold your 
fathers to us. Why didn't they free you when they owned you? We 



260 . LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

did uot want you freed; but I tell you, as I lift my hand to heaven, 
that if it were in the power of the people of the South, by a scrap of 
paper and the stroke of a pen, to put you back into slavery, we would 
not do it! " (Hearty applause. ) He effectually exposed the false state- 
ment, which had been industriously circulated in Grenada and other 
places in Mississippi, as to the status of the colored people iruder Dem- 
ocratic rule in Georgia; and demonstrated by facts, figures, and public 
documents, that there were that day in the piiblic schools of Georgia 
over forty-two thousand colored children, at the expense of the white 
people. The Legislature that supported, by annual appropriations, the 
white university made an equal annual apiDropriation to the colored 
college, and this notwithstanding the fact that the colored people of 
Georgia paid less than one-fifth of the taxes. The statistics showed 
that the colored people of Geoi-gia owned over sis millions in real es- 
tate and over five millions in personal property, and yet they were 
oppressed in Democratic Georgia! 

After the speaking was over Gen. Walthall read some resolutions 
looking to organization. He made remarks explanatory of the resolu- 
tions, and, in inviting colored men to join the club declared that " col- 
ored men shall be protected in the free exercise of their right to vote, 
if it takes white men's blood to do it "—an allusion to the well-known 
fact that the frequent last resort of the Eadical leaders, the negroes es- 
pecially, for the prevention of defection by colored men to the Demo- 
cratic ranks, was personal violence. 

An interesting feature of this campaign was the publication, by Gen. 
James Z. George, the able, zealous, and indefatigable Chairman of the 
Democratic State Executive Committee, of an open eight-column letter 
upon the notorious Black Code of 1865. This letter was elicited by an 
argument commonly addressed to the freedmen to the effect that the 
Democrats were in power in 186.5, and the result was the legislation of 
that year; wherefore, if that pai'ty were allowed again to obtain su- 
l^remaey it would, in some way, abridge or destroy the rights of the 
colored people. After a brief, but clear and forcible, review of the con- 
siderations which should lead the blacks to cooi:erate with the whites 
in a common effort for the rescue of the State and its good government, 
Gen. George entered upon a review of the legislation assailed, main- 
taining that, after all, it would be found to have in most of its features 
its prototype in the legislation of tlie Northern States al)out the black 
race; and, taken as a whole, that it was more moderate in its charac- 
ter, securing greater and more substantial rights to the freedmen, and 
within a shorter period, than the legislation attending emancipation in 
many of the Northern States.* 

The first week in September was signalized by two political riots: 

"The Weekly Clarion ot September 15, 1876. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 261 

one at Yazoo City, the other at Clinton. A number o£ persons of both 
parties were killed and wounded. After the local disturbances thereby 
excited were quieted, Gov. Ames issued a proclamation (aimed at the 
white people) whereby he retpiired all such military companies as were 
organized in various parts of the State, " without authority of law," to 
disband. He also telegraphed to the President that " domestic violence 
prevails in various parts of this State beyond the power of the authori- 
ties to suppress," and called upon him for aid. Gen. George, however, 
on the next day telegraphed to the Attorney-general that there were 
no existing disturbances and no obstructions to the enforcement of the 
laws, and that the employment of United States troops would only in- 
crease the distrust of the people in the State government. Numerous 
offers of companies composed of white men, without respect to political 
affiliations, coming from the most pi eminent and responsible citizens 
of the State, and some through the Chairman of the Democratic State 
Executive Committee, were made to the Governor, for service in estab- 
lishing and maintaining order in any part of the State, if he should 
need them. " But," said the Clarion, "this is not the kind of pi-otection 
Ames wants nor the peace he desires. He yearns for the peace that he 
gave the people of Mississippi in 1869, when he was military ruler here. 
A peace that filled the prison camps with white men, whose crimes 
were that they were white, Southern born, and Democrats; that per- 
mitted colored men who had joined Conservative clubs to be murdered 
at night in their cabins or beaten, ridden on rails, and driven from their 
homes; that permitted his military subordinates to charge on horse- 
back into Democratic processions with sabers gleaming and pistols 
cocked; that encouraged the petty majors and captains and lieutenants 
to tie up by the thumbs colored Conservatives, because they dared ex- 
press their opinions; that permitted his brutal soldiery, with clubbed 
muskets, to di-ive Democrats from the polls, while the Radicals took 
entire possession and voted as often as they pleased." 

The Attorney-general, however, notified Gov. Ames that the Presi- 
dent had declared that " the whole public are tired with the annual au- 
tumnal outbreaks in the South, and the great majority are now ready 
to condemn any interference on the part of the government;" that he 
was expected to use the aid offered him by the people of the State, and 
that before calling for Federal aid he must present a case within the 
constitution of insurrection against the State government, etc. 

The Governor availed himself but very little of the assistance offered 
by white companies. He proceeded, on the other hand, to organize 
numerous black companies. of militia, and so managed them as to cre- 
ate a great excitement and to subject himself to the open charge that 
he was meditating a hostile invasion of Yazoo County by black compa- 
nies from Hinds, with the design to precipitate a conflict between the 



262 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

races, so as to force Federal iuterference. So rash and indefensible 
was Lis course that the Eepublicau and Independent papers North cen- 
sured him severely. Said the Ncir York Tribitiie: "All the proceedings 
following the Clinton riot have served to bring out more clearly the 
entire incompetency of this man for his present position. And yet, 
with such an Attorney-general as we had a year ago, he might have 
had United States troops now roving over Mississippi at his bidding, 
making dcimiciliary visits at midniyht and dragging peaceable citizens 
miles away from home to stand trial for imaginary offenses. The like 
was seen in Louisiana and Alalmma, it will be remembered, just before 
the elections of November, 1874." The Philadelpltia Times said: "Pierre- 
pout may be a better lawyer than Williams, but he can't run an outrage 
mill. And here are elections coming off and no troops. It is too bad! " 
The .S'^. Louis G/obe-Deiiwrraf said: "Gov. Ames's assertion that the in- 
terference which he calls for is necessary is flatly contradicted by the 
evidence of those [meaning Bepublicans] who have quite as good a 
claim upon our trust as he has, and who would not be likely to deny 
the existence of such necessity if they thought it existed." The Xeic 
York Herald: "Ames is working for an election to the United States 
Senate. It would be a just retribution for his scandalous and danger- 
ous course if the next Legislature, instead of making him a Senator, 
should impeach and remove liim." Thus the Herald came to the posi- 
tion which the Clarion had taken a year befoi'e. 

Notwithstanding the intense feeling and the excitements which pre- 
ceded it, the election passed off quietly. The Democratic-Conservative 
2)arty won a sweeping victory. The white people had been aroused as 
never before, and great numbers of blacks, for the first time, had joined 
the Democratic clubs. The State Treasurer, four of the six Congress- 
men, and the Legislators Ijy an overwhelming majority in both Houses, 
were Democratic. This result, which closed the career of the carpet- 
bagger in the State, caused the utmost rejoicing throughout the State, 
and was the occasion of great congratulation throiigh the South. Nor 
were the Northern people displeased, barring the comparatively small 
number of intense partisans. 

In Mississippi, f :-om border to border, the general rejoicing was man- 
ifested by the ringing of bells, the firing of cannon and anvils, the mar- 
shaling of the happy voters in torchlight processions, fireworks, and 
the illumination of the towns. Nor were the jubilations confined en- 
tirely to the Democrats or the whites, for many Liberal Eeijublieans 
and many colored people took part. 

Of this political deliverance the Wasliingfoii Qijiifal, in an editorial 
reproduced in the Jacknon (lanon, said: 

Mississippi is to be ronffi-atulatrd, for she is once more a free State. Wliatever of 
sorrow or joy tlie various results of the recent elections may carry to cliques and par- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 263 

ties, the final emancipation of Mississippi from tlic rule of tlie oarpetbafrger may be |/ 

regarded as a national blessini;. To Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar, more than any other man, 
the country is indebted for the rehabilitation of this State. With the constitution in 
one hand and the olive branch in the other he has met the Radicals of the South and 
the Radicals of the North; he has, by precept and example, taught his own people 
the lesson of patience and long-suli'ering ; he has labored earnestly, conscientiously, 
and successfully. . . . The result in Mississippi is not to be regarded in the light 
of a party victory, but as the beginning of a new era in the material interests of a 
State whose recuperative powers have been paralyzed since the war, because the re- 
sult of the recent election was postponed by the Ameses, Williames, and Sheridans 
until the year 1875. 

When the Legislature met in Jaimary, 1876, steps were taken looking 
to the impeachment of Gov. Ames, Lieut. Gov. Davis, and Superintend- 
ent of Public Education Cardozo. The Lieutenant Governor was speed- 
ily convicted of bribery and removed from office; Cardozo resigned 
under charges. 

On the 2'Ad of February the special committee reported, with the evi- 
dence taken by it, a resolution calling for the impeachment of the Gov- 
ernor on twenty-three articles. On the nest day Col. Lamar, still in 
ignorance of the action of the committee, wrote as follows to Gen. 

Walthall: 

AVashington, D. C, February 23, 1876. 

My Dear General : . . . I want to tell you something confidentially that I have 
learned from indisputable authority — well, just between you and me, my authority is 
Beck. He had a conversation with old Beii Butler yesterday. He learned from him 
all about the impeachment of Ames. The old fellow stated every ground, and had a 
very plausible and — as Beck thought, without knowing the other side — a very satis- 
factory defense against each charge. He said that they could not prove any corrup- 
tion, any theft, any embezzlement, any robbery. And yet Beck saw that he was anx- 
ious and uneasy. He said that Davis was guilty, and that Ames could give tliem 
conclusive proof of Davis' guilt, and wanted him impeached. He also said that if 
the Legislature would not impeach Ames, that he (Ames) would, as soon as Davis 
was found guilty, resign and leave the State in the hands of Stone as Governor. Beck 
says he has not the slightest doubt that old Ben not only meant what he said, but 
that he was able to carry it out. 

They are preparing for a big fight all along our lines. But rather than have it old 
Ben (who has the bills to foot) says that he would bring Ames and Blanche home; 
and he says he will see to it that Ames shall resign, and that IMorton's investigation 
shall be scjuelched. 

I listened to it, and, very soon after, meeting old Jere Black, while the matter was 
on my mind, I said to him : " Judge, how do you Nortliern Democrats feel about 
Ames' impeachment?" He replied: "It is a tiling we feel pretty anxious about. 
We believe that he deserves it; and if you can prove any 'crooked whisky' on him, 
or any stealing, the impeachment of him would be a proper thing; but if it is for 
some illegal act, or some usurjiation of authority, it will have a damaging efiect upon us ; 
it will be used to show tliat you resort to violent means for political purposes." . . . 

It seems to me that the Legislature is reluctant to take hold, and is driven on by 
the press. . . . Beck is perfectly confident that we can get all we want without an 
impeachment. He says that old Ben, with all his badness, will stand to his word 
better than any of them. 



264 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR. 

It was uot until the 2d of 3Iarcli that the articles of impeachnient 
were reijortecl iu tiie House. The Senate set the case for trial on the 
29th. On the 28tli Gov. Ames addressed to his counsel, Messrs. Durant 
& Pryor, the following letter: 

Executive Mansion, Jackson, March 28, 187(i. 

Gentlemen: In reply to your suggestion I beg to say that, in consequence of the 
election of last November, I found myself confronted with a hostile Leiii^lature and 
embarrassed and baftied in my endeavois to carry out mj jjlaiis for the welfare of the 
State and of my party. 

I had resolved, therefore, to lesign my office as Governor of the State of Missis- 
sipjii, but meanwhile proceedings of imiieacliment were instituted against me, and, 
of course, T could not and would not retiie from my position under the imputation 
of any charge afl'ecting my honor or integrity. 

For the reasons indicated I still desire to escape burdens which are compensated 
by no possibility of public usefulness; and if the articles of impeachment presented 
against me were not pending, and the proceedings were dismissed, I should feel at 
liberty to carry out my desire and purpose of resignation. 

I am very truly yours. Adelbekt Ames. 

Messrs. Durant & Pryor, Jackson, Miss. 

On the 29th, in the House before it repaired to the Senate chamber, 
manager Featlierston presented this letter and a resolution to the effect 
that the proceedings against the Governor be dismissed. This order 
was made at once. Dn the same day the Governor resigned; and thus 
the dominion of the carpetbaggers in Mississipi^i ended, finally and in- 
gloriously. 

From these papers it appears that Gov. Ames was not driven from 
the State a refugee, as President Grant said on several occasions; but 
that, on the contrary, the resignation was probably of Mr. Butler's initi- 
ative. Certainly, unless Gov. Ames misstated his purposes to his own 
counsel, it was resolved upon before the impeachment proceedings were 
instituted. 



CHAPTER XYIII. 

Forty-fourth Congress Convenes — Mr. Lamar Chosen Chairman of Caucus — The Cau- 
cus Address — Press Comments — Senator Alcorn's Term Expiring — Mr. Lamar Dis- 
cussed as His Successor — Calls from Outside the State — Nominated by Acclamation 
— Speech before the Legislature — Election and Comments on It — The Centennial 
Year — Debate on the Amnesty Bill — Lamar's Centennial Speech — The Scene De- 
scribed — Press Comments — The Belknap Case — Lamar's Speech on Parliamentary 
Privilege — Press Comments — The Hamburg Massacre — Si^eechand Its Reception — 
Charged with Inconsistency and His Vindication — Speech on the Policy of the Re- 
publican Party and the Political Situation in the South. 

THE first session of the Forty-fourth Congress convened on the 6th 
of December, 1S75. It was memorable in that it was the first 
Congress in which the Democratic party held sul)stantial power after 
the outbreak of the Civil War. Now for the first time in fifteen years, 
and for the first time since the marvelous transformations of the great 
rebellion, that party was called upon to declare its ntison d'etre, and 
was given opportunity to prove itself something higher and better than 
a mere obstructive and self-seeking opposition to the party in power. 

On the Saturday before the 6th the caucus of the Democratic mem- 
bers of the House met. By common consent of Messrs. Kerr, Eandall, 
and Cox, the three prominent candidates for the Speakership, and of 
their respective supporters, Mr. Lamar was chosen permanent Chairman 
of the caucus. " His leadership," says Carson in the " History of the 
Supreme Court," " was marked and masterly, and fixed the gaze of the 
nation." On taking his seat he defined the policy and the duty of the 
Democratic party in its i)artial restoration to power, by the following 
thoughtful and patriotic address: 

Gentlemen: In calling me to this position of responsibility and distinction you have 
conferred an honor which I appreciate most highly, and for which I thank you most 
cordially. We here are confronted with a crisis in the history of the Democratic par- 
ty and of the country, which brings to our party grand opportunities, but is at the 
same time freighted for us with solemn responsibilities; and if we do not improve 
those opportunities and rise to the measure of these responsibilities, the fruits of the 
great political revolution which has brought us here to-day will be for us like the fruit 
which grows upon the shores of the accursed sea. 

The people of this country, by overwhelming majorities of States and of majorities 
in States, have placed the Democratic party, after a long period of exclusion from 
power, in possession of the most important department of the Federal Government. 
When I say important, I do not mean that the individual members are invested with im- 
posing prerogatives or great personal distinction. The departments of patronage, those 
which hold and command the glittering prizes of governmental emolument and hon- 
ors, are the coi'irdinate branches of the government which are still under the control 
of our political opponents. The members of the House of Rejiresentatives have no 
patronage whatever beyond that of the appointment of a military or naval cadet, and 

(265) 



266 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

theii- compensation is barely adequate to a life of republican simplicity and pruden- 
tial economy. There are many offices in the gift of the Executive far more profita- 
ble, and in the public esteem far more distinguished, than that of a seat in the House 
of Representatives; but this l)ranch is, nevertheless, under our matchless system of 
government, tlie corner-stone of our fabric of lil^erty, because it is the only department 
of the Federal Government directly responsible to the people of the country, and re- 
ceiving its powers directly from their hands. All the other branches of the govern- 
ment are two or three degrees removed from the people in the mode of their selection 
or in the nature of their responsibilities; but while the House of Representatives is 
thus immediately responsible to the people, all the other Ijranches of the government 
are responsilile to that body. 

The people of tlie country have charged us, have charged the Democratic party in 
the House of Representatives, with tlie important duty of bringing these coiirdinate 
branches of the government to their just responsibihty ; and thus, by unerring instinct 
or by keen intelligence, have blended together our duty, our interests, and our inclina- 
tions. 

There has been for some time in the public mind a conviction, profound and all- 
pervading, that the civil service of this country has not Ijeen directed from considera- 
tions of public good, but from those of party profit, and for corrupt, selfish, and unpa- 
triotic designs. The people demand at our hands a sweeping and thorough reform, 
which shall be conducted in a spirit that will secure the appointment to places of 
trust and responsibility of the honest, the experienced, and the capable. 

Tliere is also an imperative demand that a vigilant examination be made into the 
administration of the public revenue of the country, bc.th in its collection and its 
disbursement; that all tlie puljlic accounts shall be scrutinized by us, as it is the sol- 
emn privilege and duty of the House to do; and that coi-ruption be ferreted out, and 
wrongdoers, no matter how high or low, shall be fearlessly arraigned and fully exposed 
and punished. 

There is a growing and irresistible sentiment in the country that, under the specious 
theory of inotecting and fostering particular industries and interests, a system of mis- 
called revenue laws has been in operation, detrimental and blasting to all the other 
great interests of the country, and maintained at the expense of the general revenue 
and to the injury of a gi-eat majority of tlie people, or of those classes (the fiirmers and 
laborers) -vho are least able to bear the liurden of oppressive laws. 

One of the highest and most pressing demands upon us will be, not only to insist 
on bringing down the exjienses of tlie government to the needs only of economical 
administration, but to perfect and adopt such a system of taxation as will bring in the 
requireil revenue with the fewest restrictions upon commerce and with the least liur- 
den to the people, and that burden equitably distributed and skillfully adjusted. 
Owing to the exigencies of one of those internecine conflicts incident to the life of al- 
most every country, and also to a pernicious system of legislation, our people, our 
business investments, our commerce, and all the diversified interests of the country, 
are siifl'erins from the evils of an irredeemable currency. In meeling and grapphng 
with the difiiculties of this vital and perplexing question it will be our duty to take 
care that nothing is done which would impair the good fixith of tlie country, or tarnish 
the public honor, or lower or disturb the credit qf our government; but we are to re- 
move these obstructions which bar the progress and check the prosperity of tlie Amer- 
ican republic. 

It is the duty, and it is to be the glory, of the Democratic party while it controls the 
House, to see that the national debt is paid in full, and that the currency of this Dem- 
ocratic republic is made equal with that of any nation on earth. Upon the part of 
tliose who have been invested with the political power and destiny of our country 
during the last ten or fifteen years, it has been a frequent remark that the era of con- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 267 

stitutional jjolitics had closed; that questions of constitutional limitations and restric- 
tions were no longer to hinder or delay the legislation of the government in its deal- 
ings with financial, economical, or social subjects, whicli were, it was assumed, now the 
only matters worthy of public attention; and yet amidst their grand boastings the 
Forty-third Congress found themselves faced with the gravest questions of constitu- 
tional law, reaching down to the fundamental system and involving not only the 
relations, of the States tn the Federal Government, but also those of the people and 
their own home governments. 

The grandest aspiration of the Democratic party is, an<l its crowning glory will be, 
to restore the constitution to its pristine strength and authority, and to make it the 
protector of every section and of every State in the Union and of every human being 
of every race, color, and condition in tiie land. 

Ajiprehension and distrust of one part of the nation that that portion of the South- 
ern people who were arrayed against the authority of the Federal Government in 
the late war would be an element of disturbance to the American Union, lias mainly 
disappeared; an<l this is evidenced by your election. In its stead has grown a more 
fraternal feeling, which regards us of the Southern States as fellow-citizens of the same 
great nation ; and, on the other hand, the people of whom I speak (of whom I am onel 
are here to-day by their chosen rejiresentatives, ready to honor any draft which the 
American people may draw upon their patriotism or their faith in the glory and the 
beneticent destiny of American institutions. [Applause.] The experiment which 
has been introduced amongst us, based upon confidence in the workings of local self- 
government and intended to solve the difficulties connected with the recent social and 
political translbrmation, shall have an open field and fair play. No hindrance sliall 
be placed in the way of its vigorous development and its amplest success. [Applause.] 

It lias been said that the day of sentimental politics has passed away; but, gentle- 
men, there is or.e part of this Union (that part which I know best) which asks for t lie 
great moral nutriment to a spirited and noble peoi^le. We want a government that 
we can love and revere, and serve from the moti\"e of reverence and love. We hun- 
ger for a patriotism which shall knit all the people together in a generous and loving 
brotherhood, and which shall be as broad as the territory over which the national 
flag floats. Let me say here that no government, no nation, can prosper without this 
vital fire. It is the sentiment which, acting upon free institutions and reacting 
through them upon the people, constitutes their public spirit and political genius. 

Gentlemen, we are here as Democrats, membere of a political party which has a 
long, a glorious history. Let us, in our duties this winter, recall and revive those 
principles, yie faithful maintenance of which by the fathers of our country secured 
it, for so long a period, the confidence and support of the people. Let us seek to re- 
new the prosperity, to advance the greatness and glory, of our country. Let us 
resolve to win the confidence, the aflection, of the whole American people for our 
party by showing them that we, its present representatives, have statesmanship, pa- 
triotism, and strength of purpose enough to deserve that confidence and affection. 
Let us not forget that the great victory of last fall, which brought us here, and which 
gives us these opportunities and great responsibilities, was achieved, not alone by 
Democratic votes, but with the cociperating efforts of patriotic and unselfish men of 
all parties, who, wearied and alarmed by the unceasing evils resulting from corrup- 
tion and maladministration, chose to call us to the duty of checking these evils and 
clearing away these corruptions. If we are wise, we shall so rule ourselves and so 
serve our country as to retain the confidence of these voters. Reforms are urgently 
needed. Let us wisely make them. A renewed prosperity is everywhere earnestly 
desired. Let us, by removing unjust discriminations, by imposing a rigid econfimy, 
by restoring a sound currency, by securing the equal rights of all States and all peo- 
ple, make the Democratic party the author of a new prosperity. So we may begin 



268 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

for oui- party a new and glorious career, in which its liistory shall be once more, as 
formerly, the story of the Union's greatest grandeur, and of the people's universal hap- 
piness and contentment. [Great applause.] 

This speech attracted universal attention, and elicited general praises. 
Somewhat of the jjublic opinion will be gathered from the following 
extracts, selected geographically from a great number at hand: 

The New York World: "Mr. Lamar did liis work nobly, and his words will arouse 
a cordial and responsive echo in every Democratic heart from Maine to Texas, from 
New York to California. He rose easily to the level of the situation, and the temper- 
ate, patriotic words in which, with the applause of all his hearers, he marked out the 
line of Democratic duty and Democratic policy in this eventful hour of the country's 
needs and the party's fortunes will inspire with new faith his fellow-Democrats in all 
parts of the Union, and will quiet the solicitude of many good men who have not 
been able to [lerceive, as we do, in the principles of Democracy the best promise of 
the permanence of the republic, and of the revival of the prosperity of its people." 

The Evening Post: "A more genuine, conservative, compieljensive, sound, politico- 
economic, and, above all. Union speech could not have been made by Thomas Jeffer- 
son himself, had he appeared in the flesh and moved to address the people he loved 
so well. . . . Tlie country is tliis day ... as ready to trust Mr. Lamar on the 
financial question as it is ready to trust him with the honor of the Union." . . . 

The Albany Argus: " The speech of Mr. Lamar . . . was worthy of the ablest 
statesman of any period of our history. Its every word and sentence prove that the 
accession of the Democracy to power means peace, and a complete wiping out of the war 
issues, the sacredness of tlie national debt, and a faithful adherence to the guarantees of 
the constitution. This noble speech has met with a response from every section of 
the Union." 

The Fhiladelphia limes : " Mr. Lamar's speech . . . was a careful, conservative, 
and statesmanlike utterance, wliicli will increase the esteem in which this al)le rep- 
resentative of the South is lield in all sections of the country." 

The Chicago Courier: " If the Democracy of the country had been listening for the 
bold tones of a leader, if the slumbering energies of the grand old party had been 
awaiting a bugle blast, it has come. . . . It is a national voice which rings upon 
the air in Washington; the voice of a man whose fealty to party binds him in no sec- 
tional harness ; a Ijrave and able man, worthy of the best days of the republic." . . . 

The San I'Vancisco Chronicle: "There is something in the speech of CJpn. L. Q. C. 
Lamar • . . . that is calculated to encourage the hope that an era of genuine recon- 
ciliation between the North and the South has at last dawned upon us. Gen. Lamar 
is not a hypocrite, and we feel bound to believe that he spoke from the bottom of 
his heart when he gave utterance to the following patriotic sentiments : ' It is our duty 
as Democrats,' etc. . . . it the s}nrU of Lamar's address fairly represents the feeling 
of the Southern Democrats, will not Mississippi show that Lamar did so represent the 
feeling and sentiment of tlie South by electing him to the Senate? If his utterances 
express their sentiments anrl jiicture tlieir mental attitude, the era of a genuine rec- 
onciliation between the Ncirth and South is at hand." 

The Sacramento Evening Post : " It was not a bad beginning when the Democrats 
of the House of Representatives made Lamar, of Mississsppi, the Chairman of their 
caucus at Washington. . . . He has ever since his election to the House mani- 
fested an admirable constancy and vigor in the interest of reform, both State and na- 
tional. The speech he delivered on taking the chair is full of excellent counsel to 
his party." 

The Richmond Enquirer : " We have read nothing in a long time emanating from 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 269 

any public man more full of pith and meaning, or moi-e iiointeil antl forcible, than 
this brief speech, which will stir tlie country like a bugle blast, and inspire the 
Democracy with new hope, while it reanimates them with a determination to perse- 
vere in tlieir noble effort to restore the government to a sound constitutional basis." 

The Rocky Mountain ( N. C.) : " It was another laurel leaf in the rhetorical garland 
that now wreathes the' brow of this orator-patriot. Sound in doctrine, replete with 
sagacity, tempered in patriotism, and glistening with the brightest fires of eloquence, 
it proved a masterpiece of a master mind." 

The Macon (Ga.) Telegraph and Messenger : " Besides being in the highest degree 
graceful and scholarly, it is inspired with the spirit and rings with the clear tones of 
a broad, elevated, and genial statesmanship, and will find a quick and responsive 
echo in whatever is left of the ancient American thought and feeling in the hearts of 
the people." 

The Jackson (Miss.) Clarion: "His speech was equal to the occasion. On the 
question of the currency, the inviolability of the national faith, the maintenance of 
good will between the sections, it is a timely manifesto in behalf of the party of 
which he was the accredited mouthpiece." 

The Memphis Appeal : " His speech was a model of beauty, eloquence, and fine 
taste. It is overflowing with the wisdom, ideas, sentiments, and convictions of the 
statesman. On this, and indeed on every occasion that Col. Lamar has made his ap- 
pearance before his countrymen, his utterances have made a profound impression. 
Patriotism, genius, eloquence — he possesses them all. He has contributed more than 
any one man in all this broad Union toward securing the present Democratic major- 
ity in the House of Representatives, and there is a universal desire among Democrats 
outside of Mississippi to see the great talents, statesmansliip, and patriotism of L. Q. 
C. Lamar transferred to the United States Senate." 

The State o£ Mississippi, at this period, was represented in the Sen- 
ate of the United States by James L. Alcorn and Blanche K. Bruce, 
both Eepublicaus, the latter a colored man. The term of Senator Al- 
corn was to expire on the 4th of March, 1877, and it devolved on the 
Legislature, before that time, to elect his siiccessor. 

So soon as it was determined to reorganize the Democratic-Conserva- 
tive party, and to make a contest for the possession of the Legislature, a 
discussion began as to the question of the next Senator. Early in 
April the Holly Springs South, then edited by that able lawyer and 
most excellent man, Hon. John W. C. AVatson, declared that " our peo- 
ple are fast being roused to a ju.st appreciation of the emergency upon 
us. . . . That model Southern statesman, L. Q. C. Lamar, will, of 
course, be again returned from his district; but we must also have him 1o 
lead our entire force, by canvassing the State durii]g the summer and 
fall as a candidate for the United States Senate." This article seems 
to have been about the first in the State to voice the sentiment of the 
people in this respect, but Col. Lamar did not make his great canvass 
in the capacity suggested. It was not until after the election in No- 
vember, and the ascertainment of the Democratic-Conservative victory, 
that the senatorial succession became a great and living question in the 
State. Then various gentlemen were suggested as possibilities, most 



270 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

conspicuous among whom were Gen. George, Gen. Featlierston, and 
Gen. Lowry. 

The papers of the State took up the matter with the greatest zeal. 
The opposition to Mr. Lamar found three principal expressions: First, 
opposition to his course in Congress, especially to his position upon the 
obligation of the constitutional amendments; secondly, the continued 
need of his services in the House; thirdly, the expediency of adding to 
the strength of Mississippi in Congress by sending to the Senate 
some other equally strong man, who should be a colaborer with Mr. 
Lamar in the House. Of course there were the usual and unavoidable 
complications of personal ambitions and the favoritisms of friendship. 

However, the great drift of public opinion, as well as of the popular 
affection, was unmistakably toward Mr. Lamar. A communication to 
the Clarion, which aj^peared in December, expresses the home ideas on 
the subject so clearly and adequately that it is in part reproduced. The 
article was written, over a noin de plume, by Judge Harris: 

I think that Col. Lamar should be elected. The opinion is based, not upon a personal 
partiality fur him over all others, but upon a well-matured and, I think, unprejudiced 
conviction that it is the right thing to be done. The great orlice of Senator is a trust, 
and not a perquisite. It is to be bestowed upon considerations of public good, and 
not of personal liking, or even of personal services; though upon this score none can 
exceed tliose of Col. Lamar. Mississippi has many fine lawyers, gallant soMiers, 
able jurists, and worthy citizens; she has but one distinguished statesman. . . . 
The State should have its foremost man in the foremost place, not in oi'der to reward 
him, but to obtain the best services for herself. That his opportunities have been 
greater for acquiring fame should not diminish the reward of that fame honestly won. 
The day that Col. Lamar takes his seat in the Senate he ranks at once with Thurman 
and Bay.ard, and when he rises to make his first speech the whole nation will listen. 
The ablest of his competitors cannot hope to win the same weight and influence in less 
than five years. But it is not true that Lamar's greatness is accidental, or that it has 
been won without competition. He was confessedly Mississippi's greatest statesman, 
after Davis and Brown, when the war broke out, and he won that reputation at a time 
when all the talent of the State was unfettered to contend with him. He left the old 
Congress at the age of thirty-six, with a fame established throughout the Union as 
the most jihilosophical thinker and the most eloquent orator in the lower branch 
of that Ixidy from the South. Col. Lamar's election is earnestly desired by the Dem- 
ocrats of tlie North. His defeat will be regarded in that section as the repudiation by 
us of those sentiments of fraternity and conciliation of which he has been the most 
conspicuous advocate. As such, it will be universally deplored by our friends and 
seized upon by our enemies. . . . With regard to services, I will only say that 
those of no man surpassed Col. Lamar's, in point of labor, zeal, or efiectiveness, in the 
late canvass. I doubt whether there was a man in the State who made more speeches. 
There was certainly no man who made aliler ones. But the incomparable service 
which he rendered was before the canvass and outside of the State. He has done 
more than any living man — and Horace Greeley alone is excepted among the dead — 
to produce that state of popular feeling at the North which made Ulysses Grant 
afndd to lay his hands upon us during the late election. It was that sentiment that 
enaliled us to win. To Lamar, more than any other one man, was this feeling due. 
Without it we could not have succeeded. 



lllfi LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 271 

It was not only in the State that the question was earnestly discussed. 
The attention of the nation was riveted on the issue. The utterances of 
Mr. Lamar in Congress had, to a great extent, taken the wind out of the 
sails of the political agitators, so far as the so-called Southern questions 
were concerned, and their most promising remaining resource was to 
avoid the moral eflect of his course, by discounting him as a man not 
representative of his people. True, that people had indorsed him by res- 
olutions, but resolutions were words. Would they give the final indoi'se- 
ment of election? From all the Union the demand came. 

The Mempliis Appeal, December 1, said : " It is not too much to say that to Col. La- 
mar, more tlian to any otlier one Soutliern man, is due tlie dawn and development of 
that kindly Northern feelin;; for the people of the South which President Grant was 
afraid to def)' when Ames called upon him fur troops with which to control the elec- 
tions. Nest to the uncon(iuerable heroism of her people, it is to this feeling that Mis- 
sissippi owes her freedom. Lamar struck the keynote of the canvass. Mississippi 
went into the canvass upon the principles which his Congressional career had so bril- 
liantly illusti-ated, and with a resolution of cordial indorsement of that career appended 
to her platform. His defeat now, in the hour of victory, would be construed by our 
enemies and deplored by our friends at the North as a partial lowering, at least, of 
that high tone of restoreil nationality upon which the canvass was made. His elec- 
tion would be hailed throughout the nation as a fitting consummation of the remark- 
able victory which it would so appropriately crown." And again, December 11 : " The 
noble bearing of Col. Lamar, amidst the enthusiastic applause of an admiring nation, 
shows the grandeur of the man's character. It has not insjiired him with ambition. 
He opposes the use of his name in regard to the Vice Presidency. The only ambi- 
tion he has exhibited is to save the country from the perils of sectional hate. He is 
ambitious to tranquillize an estranged people, to restore peace between the sections, 
peace between the races, fraternal peace between those who love the constitution and 
would cement the Union in the indissoluble bonds of a common brotherhood. His 
ambition consists in an earnest desire to see the States accordant, sections reconciled, 
the rights of all the people jii-eserved, with the honor of none tarnished or destroyed, 
and to presei've the legacy of our free constitutional government unimpaired. The 
defeat of such a man as a candidate for United States Senator would fill the American 
people with wonder and amazement." 

The New Orleans Pkaijune : " The interests and the cause of Lamar in this election 
are the interests and the cause, not only of the State of Mississippi, but of Louisiana 
and of the South, and of the Democracy at large. There has been no name in Amer- 
ica used with more power to turn the Northern people from their madness and hos- 
tility to the South than tlie name of Lamar in the last two elections. He seems to 
be almost, if not quite, the only Southern man who has won a hearing for his peo- 
ple before the tribunal of Northern opinion. Without sacrificing an iota in his de- 
fense and advocacy of our rights, he lias become the accepted type of the conservar 
tive and conciliatory Soutliern Democrat. ... He has become, like Thurnian, a 
kind of national necessity to the Democrats: and, like Thurnian, he ought to be in 
the Senate." 

The New York Herald : " Mr. Lamar's influence throughout the State, and his bold 
and determined attitude at the Democratic State Convention, defeated the color line 
movement, . . . which threatened to create a reign of terror in the State. For 
this defeat the extremists have not forgiven Col. Lamar." And again: "Our Wash- 
ington correspondent s)ieaks of the strong desire felt by the Democrats of both Houses 
to see Mr. Lamar elected to the Senate from Mississippi. In this they are wise. Col. 



272 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

Lamar's name is known and respected all over the country ; he is accounted one of 
the ablest and most statesmanlike of the Democrats, and his defeat would be a calam- 
ity to Mississippi, and would be regretted by the country." 

The Boston Herald : " It is to l)e hoped that Mr. Lamar will be sustained by his 
State, and elected to the Senate. He is one of the most progressive men in the South, 
and is so recognized among Northern men who want to see the affairs of the nation 
settled on the basis of equal rights and local self-government. . . . Mr. Lamar is 
as true as steel. He would not al>ate a jot in demanding every right of the South; 
and he would be intluential in securing every right, because he is progressive and pa- 
triotic." 

The foregoing extracts are fair samples of very many other such ed- 
itorials from papers of both parties, all over the Union. The llenihl 
and others overestimated the intensity, and misjudged to a great extent 
the motive, of what opposition existed to the election of Mr. Lamar; 
but none the less was it true that, if he had failed, the conclusions drawn 
from that failure by the Northern people would have been such as they 
indicated. 

However, he did not fail. AVheu the Democratic-Conservative cau- 
cus met, on the night of January G, before the taking of any ballot the 
name of the last opponent was withdrawn by his friends, and Mr. La- 
mar was nominated by acclamation, " with great enthusiasm, and with- 
out a dissenting voice." 

On the following night, l)y invitation of the Legislature, he delivered 
an address in the hall of the House of Eejn-esentatives, which was de- 
scribed by the newspapers as "one of the happiest efforts of his life." 
Of this address, the Pilot, the organ of Gov. Ames, and therefore a Ee- 
publicau paper of the strongest, said tliat 

The Senator exi)lained his eulogy on the death of Charles Sumner. He said that 
when he first took his seat in Congress he saw that his situation as a Southern Repi'e- 
sentative was a delicate and difficult one. The people of the North suspected the mo- 
tives of the people of the South, and no Southern man could reacli the Northern ear. 
Just at this time a brilliant Northern man, one dear to the Northern people, departed 
this life; and it occurred to him that while tlie Northern heart was shaded and soft- 
ened with sorrow he might deliver a message of sympathy from the South, and at the 
same time estalilish her in the affection of the Nortli. He meant every word that he 
spoke on that occasion. Charles Sumner imagined that he was acting in the cause of 
humanity and freedom when he a<lvocated universal suflrage. He knew that his Sum- 
ner speech misht lie misconstrued; but he took his rejiutation in his own hands for 
the good of his country, meant every word that he said, and believed every word per- 
fectly true. 

Could a challenge be more explicitly accei)ted? And on the 19th, 
twelve days later, with his reiteration of his Sumner speech fresh upon 
his lips, he was elected, in pursuance of his nomination by the caucus, 
by a vote, ou jnint liallot, of 114 out of 138. The only Democratic- 
Conservative votes not cast for him were some which were defectively 
written, a])|)areiitly through carelessness. Several of these were the 
ballots of his stancliest friends. 



H].s LIFE, TIMES, lyv SVKECllES. 273 

There was general acquiescence in Mr. Lamar's election, embracing 
even tliose who had opposed him. The Mrrii/ian Mercury, for instance, 
which it will be remembered was one of the papers that assailed him 
because of the Sumner speech, said: 

The nomination of Lamar to the United States Senate accords witli the fitness of 
things. It is a result of deliberation and judgment upon the platform of his record 
and national reputation, with design to further peace and reconciliation between the 
lately belligerent sections. ..." Peace hath its victories no less renowned than 
war;" and Lamar's achievements already accomplished in the direction of a peaceful 
con(|uest of peace are more glorious, if not more brilliant, than his high and daring 
deeds in the bloody fray. He has nobly conquered his own iire.judices, and his elec- 
tion signifies, and was intended to signify, that he has I'oniiuered ours, and leads them 
captive, to lay upon the altar of peace this Centennial year. 

The Vicksh/irg Hcrahl, which had opposed his election to the last, "not 
because he was toi^) natinnal for it, but because we wanted two of his cal- 
iber in Congress, instead of one," said: 

The influence of the national Democratic party was clearly felt in Col. Lamar's fa- 
vor, and we cannot now say that our party did not do right in resjionding to it. 
. . . The party in the State has given him unlimited confidence, and showered 
honor on him. We firmly believe that he will in the future, as in the past, prove 
himself worthy of them. 

In truth it now seemed as if the sweet spirit of peace were brooding 
over the land. The Centennial year had opened. It brought hallowed 
and vivid reminiscences of the winning of liberty through sorrow and 
blood and rebellion. It brought forcible reminders of increased and in- 
creasing national glory and stability, notwithstanding other sorrows, 
blood, and rebellion. It brought stirring suggestions of future perils 
and future blessings, these to be secured and those to be avoided only 
by a closer union and a most fraternal love between all sections of this 
great country. It seemed as if the permanent subsidence of angry pas- 
sions was at hand. 

In the House of Representatives, ou the 6th of Januaiy, a bill was 
reported from the proper committee making an appropriation of a mil- 
lion and a half dollars in aid of the Centennial Exposition to be held at 
Philadelphia. That report and the reference of the bill to the House 
in Committee of the Whole were followed by the offering, by Mr. New, 
of Indiana, of a resolution to the effect that " the fraternal feeling and 
good will now existing in all sections of the United States, and the 
manifest disposition and purpose of the men who battled against each 
other in the late civil war to join hands as one people in the future, is 
a most auspicious ushering in of the centennial year; and while the 
people are thus making an honest effort to live together in peace and 
uphold the same flag for an undivided country, their representatives in 
Congress should do no act which will unnecessarily disturb the patri- 
18 



274 LVCIVS Q. C LAMAR: 

otic concord now existing and increasing, or wantonly revive the bitter 
memories of the past." 

This resolution was adopted unanimously; but alas for the incon- 
stancy of human virtue! in foiir days the House was embroiled in one 
of its fiercest rows. 

In preceding Congresses efforts had been made to pass bills of am- 
nesty whereby the political disabilities imposed by the fourteenth 
amendment should be removed. In 1869-70 Mr. Cox had introduced a 
bill without any exceptions, which was lost in the House, not receiving 
the needed two-thirds vote. At the following session Gen. Butler offered 
a similar bill with many exceptions to the amnesty, however, which passed 
the House, but was lost in the Senate. At the first session of the Forty- 
third Congress another bill without any exceptions, unanimously re- 
ported by the committee, had been passed by the House; but again it 
was defeated in the Senate. In this Congress, following the examples 
theretofore set, Mr. Eandall on December 15 introduced a bill to the 
same end. It came up for consideration on the lOtli of January. Mr. 
Blaine offered an amendment excepting Jefferson Davis from the am- 
nesty. He justified this step in his speeches, not by Mr. Davis' alleged 
political offenses, not because of the fact that he was the chief of the 
Confederacy, but by his alleged personal crimes in the maltreatment of 
Union soldiers in the prison at Andersonville. Other supjjorters of 
the amendment, however, insisted iipon the political offense. This 
amendment and the grounds assigned for it precipitated a most rancor- 
ous debate of four days, in which Mr. Cox and Mr. Hill, of Georgia, 
bore prominent parts. The bill failed to pass. 

" The debate on the Amnesty Bill," said the Nalion of January 20, " was certainly 
unfortunate, both in matter and manner. It consisted mainly of a game of recrimina- 
tion between Northern and Southern politicians, in which both sides were very vul- 
nerable. Without meaning in any way to palliate or excuse the speeches and reso- 
lutions produced by Mr. Hill, of Georgia, or anybody else at the South during the war, 
we may mention that there are but few Northern members of Congress whose speeches 
will bear being dragged to the light and read in the calm of our own time. There was 
a great deal of ferocious and extravagant language uttered in Washington, as well as 
in Richmond, which its authors would now either be ashamed of or not care to own. 
... Is there not something absolutely childish, if not mischievous, in bandying 
contradictions in a legislative body over what I said an 1 what he said ten or fifteen 
years ago in the midst of a conflict long ended, over questions fully settled, and, as far 
as human eye can see, settled forever? " etc. 

It does not follow, however, that because the debate took such a turn 
it was without serious import. Many thoughtful and patriotic people in 
the South, as well as in the North, felt that the whole movement and the 
debate were a great blunder, morally and politically. The Clarion well 
expressed this sentiment on the 10th of January. It said: 

It was a chapter of blunders from besiinning to end— from its untimely introduc- 
tion at the present session to its melancholy close— and a blunder at this stage of the 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 275 

Presiilential contest by tliose to whom the fortunes and hopos of the party of reform 
are eontided, is equal to a i-rinie. 

Knowinj; the eagerness of the unscrupulous managers of the Republican party to 
obtain capital for the impending campaign; knowing the readiness with which they 
would appropriate oppnrtunities to that end; knowing that they had nothing under 
heaven <in which to build a hope of defeating the Democratic party in the Presiden- 
tial election except a revival of the sectional issues, ... we cannot imagine what 
prompted Mr. Randall, who is reputed to be a sagacious leader, to thrust the sulyect 
upon the House of Rejiresentatives at this time and under tlie circumstances. . . . 

The second blunder was the speech of Mr. Hill, of Georgia. As Byron's dreamer 
said to the spirit, what business had it there at such a time? It was able, trenchant, 
eloquent, and, in some points, overwhelming. It was a victory of Hill over Blaine, of 
the Southern side ovei' the N(5rthern side on the topics introduced. But we are lost 
if many such victories are won at the present session by the " Confederates," as the 
Southern Democratic representatives in Congress are termed by their opponents. . . . 

The New York Herald called Mr. Hill's speech a boomerang, and said 
that it "was felt to be injudicious." 

The 6Y. Louis Ueimhlic declared that " Blaine expects to reap more 
benefit from the replies to his speech than from the speech itself; in 
other words, he hoped to make the ex-Confederates so angry that they 
would sink all discretion and return the attack in kind." 

The Chicago Times, then an independent paper of pronounced Ish- 
maelistic habit, had, amongst other things, these most extravagant re- 
marks, which, with others of like kind in other papers, lent color to the 
foregoing suggestions: 

The very point aimed at by Blaine in taking up the Confederate challenge was 
completely gained. The fire of the Confederates was drawn. The Confederate party 
was brought out of its ambush and made to parade itself before the country in all the 
spread-eagle tinselry of the rebel I'egimentals ; waving aloft the old banner of South 
ern braggadocio; cracking the old slave driver's whip about the ears of "Northern 
MRidsills;" swaggering in the old style of plantation manners; hurling the old e]ii- 
thets of copper-bottom Bourbon bigotry against "Northern fanaticism;" lauding in 
the old way the superiority of "Southern gentlemen," with their bowie knives and 
rutKauism ; proclaiming anew the old insolence of a braggart self-conceit; rending the 
innocent air with the old " reliel yell," etc. 

It was noted and commented upon in the Southern press that, at the 
time when Mr. Blaine was preparing his onslaught upon the South in 
Washington, Mr. Lamar, in Jackson, was reaffirming his eulogy over 
the dead Sumner; and tliat, while Radical jjapers were publishing edi- 
torials like tiiat of the Clilraf/n T/iiirs,the "Confederate" Legislature of 
Mississippi were unanimously and by acclamation preferring him to 
the United States Senate on his platform of "My countrymen! know 
one another, and you will love one another." 

Such was the condition of affairs when Mr. Lamar returned to Wash- 
ington. There was work cut out for him to do, and he did it quickly. 
On the 17th of January the Centennial Appropriation Bill was called up. 



'270 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

It was quite freely debated, and the opposition to it was formidable. 
Amongst other objections interposed to the bill, question was made of 
the power of Congress, under the constitution, to pass such a measure. 
Mr. Townsend, of New York, advocated the appropriation; but in his 
speech indulged very much in sarcasms and gibes, directed mainly 
against tiie Southern members, and tilled with allusions to the debate 
on the Amnesty Bill. On the 25th Mr. Lamar spoke in favor of the 
bill.* The making of his speech and the effect of it were thus de- 
scribed by a correspondent of the Cliinitjo Times itself: 

Altliough Lamar's purpose of joining in tlie Centennial debate was an aftertlioiight, 
suggested and urged by friends of the bill, lie had hardly risen in his place wljen the 
hall and galleries, which had become empty and demoralized, filled up and quieted 
to aim. ist painful intensity. A scene almost as passionately sensational as that which 
marked the first two days of the amnesty debate followed. . . . Tlie appearance of La- 
mar meant something. It was known that impulsive eflbrts had been made to induce 
him to revive the amnesty discussion and give himself an opportunity to put his 
Southern brethren in a less antagonistic position to Northern sentiment. ... He 
was known to have deprecated all revivals of them, and to have counseled his own 
folks to bide their time, that tlieir acts might show the world that Hill was not speak- 
ing the Southern sentiment. 

When, therefore, his slim form and pale face appeared over the Republican benches, 
profound silence fell upon the House. All signs of inattention and weariness were 
swept from the faces on the floor and the gallery. Tliere was no occasion for the 
Speaker's gavel. The audience could feirly hear itself breathe as his splendid elo- 
quence forced itself forth. At the drawing of seats Lamar's luck brought him among 
the Republicans and side by side with Banks. His movements ai-e, therefore, more 
marked. Sitting, as it were, among adversaries, his first movements on addressing 
the House have a sort of self-distrusting timidity of utterance and manner which fas- 
cinates attention. So soon as his voice, which is not sustained in register, is generally 
audible, he is then sure of complete attention so long as he chooses to speak. He em- 
ployed no notes, but a clear, crystal stream of sentiment, soberly toned by acute rea- 
soning, fell from his lips for just an hour and a half, in which more was said than in 
the previous seven days on the same subject. He apologized for speaking, saying 
that he had no thought of taking part until within a short time, but that his heart 
and head approved of some word on the pending bill and some questions germane 
thereto. This was followeil by a rapid, exhaustive rrsumr of the constitutionality of 
the measure, bringing in some of the strongest arguments against the pet doctrines of 
State rights held by some of the more untamed Confederates so far employeil in 
Congress. 

As he went on, discriminating with analytical grasp the constitutional aspects of 
the question involved, the attention which he excited because of his peculiar ijosition 
was changed into absorbed interest. In vigorous crystallization of law, logic, and rea- 
son, by which his faith was justified, he appealed only to reason. There was no clap- 
trap invoked. Blaine had been heard with glistening eyes, clinched hands, and 
grinding teeth; with repugnance, indignation, and incredulity; but this man, nursing 
almost the same themes, asked only the rational judgment of his hearers, and resort- 
ed to no surprises in argument or tricks in expression to recommend his reasoning to 
the House. . . . The Republicans listened in stupefaction. Had wisdom finally 
come upon the Confederates? Here was a man who had battled for the cause now 

- Ajipcinlix, Xo. 11. 



HIS LIFE, TI.VKS, AXD SPKKVIIES. 277 

groundiii"; arms and showing nnanswerable cause for the civil as well as the military 
surrender. Read}', audacious, self-reliant, his piercing eyes fixed upon men who op- 
posed his arguments, he poured out an exposition of nationalism and constitutional- 
ism which equaled in effect one of Webster's masterpieces. 

Remembering this man's place, the real leader of the South politically and the suc- 
cessor of Davis in the Senate, the scene was in every respect the most surprising re- 
cently witnessed in this House of revolutions and surprises. He went square to the 
root of the State rights argument. . . . " Not a nation?" he asked, throwing his fine 
head back and raising his arms; "a people who repelled again and again foreign in- 
vasion, who equipped navies, who accoutered the most tremendous armies the world 
ever saw, who conducted four years of civil war and who recovered from it — not a na- 
tion? Can any man read the record and deny the majestic sovereignty of our nation- 
ality?" The House, which followed line and precept with immovable attention, 
burst into prolonged applause. 

It was the testimony of jurists present that as an argument the constitutional part 
of the speech was the most clearly put and the most coherent recently delivered in 
either House. While the keenest attention of the House was still fastened upon him, 
and the weight of his argument had visibly taken its intended eflect, Lamar passed 
to another theme. He singled out Townsend, who made such a capital speech last 
week, to deliver a word of reproach. Tliat gentleman, conscious of what was coming, 
began to laugh complacently as Lamar alluded to his jocose comments on the per 
sonal appearances of ex-Confederates; but his laugh died out and chagrin took its 
place as the speaker, with measnied, almost jiathetic, accents, reminded him of the 
mischievous results of his Preston Brooks allusions. It was not friendly. It was not 
patriotic. It was not decent. The noble American who suffered wrong at the hands 
of Brooks left his sentiments on record, and these sentiments should shame those 
who seek to perpetuate discords and enmities that were buried ten years ago. 

No conception of the real effectiveness of Lamar's utterances can be given by the 
cold language of comment. Blaine, tightly squeezed between both hands until noth- 
ing but hair, nose, and mouth were discernible, colored visibly, dropped his eyes be- 
fore Lamar's gaze, and moved restlessly in his seat. Townsend, whose face is nat- 
urally a flame, coughed irresolutely, turned in his seat, and looked the very picture 
of discomfort. Judged by its effect on the House and the comment of the town, the 
speech was the most masterful in moderation, exhaustive in argument, and captivating 
in method so far delivered. It told on every soul. 

Of this speech the Clarion, which was then the official journal of the 
State, said: 

Col. Lamar's good fortune has not deserted him. His speech was one of those for- 
tunate strokes by which he has illustrated, in his own wonderful career as a statesman 
since his advent into the national councils, the maxim that peace hath her victories 
no less renowned than war. On Col. Lamar, more than any man, or all others com- 
bined, the hopes of the people who have suffered from the proscriptive I'ule of a vin- 
dictive party are centered ; and we are rejoiced at the accumulating evidences that he 
will not prove unequal to his grand mission. 

The Vickshurg Herald said : " Senator Lamar's speech on the Centennial has electri- 
fied the nation. Not so much because he favored the appropriation for the celebra- 
tion, which was meet and proper, but because he touched upon the vital questions of 
national sovereignty. If we understand his position aright, and we think we do, he 
occupies the position fully indorsed by his party in this State, and which should be 
held by the national Democratic party. It is simply that the power of the nation is 
superior to that of any of the States, and that national sovereignty is superior to State 
sovereignty. If the war settled anything, it certainly settled this question. The the- 



278 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

ories as to the manner in which the nation was formed by separate sovereign States 
amount to .nothing since the decision of the sword tliat the power and authority of 
tlie central government shall be supreme. Mr. Lamar accepts this fact, and the Dem- 
ocrats of this State fully apjirove his course. 

" Col. Lamar so astonished many of the Northern people that the Cincinnati Com- 
miTcial is very anxious to know how his speech will be received. In regard to it that 
journal has the following comments: 

"'It is now said that Representative Lamar's later speech advocating the Centen- 
nial Appropriation Bill . . . was made to neutralize the jirejudicial effects of Ben 
Hill's effort, and tliat Mr. Lam.ar is not sincere. But we are not of this opinion. ... 
We shall be curious to note wliat sort of a reception is given to his speech in Missis- 
sippi and other Southern States. Will it be welcomed and praised as Ben Hill's was'? 
That is doubtful. Hill's speech was carefully measured and adapted to prejudices and 
passions which he wislied to please. Lamar's is rather designed to soften and remove 
them, and tn substitute for them the hiLdier idea of nationality and a conviction that 
the day for the indulgence in the worship of State sovereignty an<l sectional vanities 
is over. This sort of doctrine has not l)een popular in the South, but with men of the 
force and eloquence of Lamar to proclaim it there is a hoiie that in time it may be- 
come so.' 

"The Herald's views of Mr. Lamar's course may be easily judged from this article, 
and the Herald is regarded in this State as tlie extreme white line Democratic journal. 
It opposed to the last I\Ir. Lamar's election to the Senate, not because he was too na- 
tional for it, but because we wanted two of his caliber in Congress instead of one. 
We are, therefore, certainly not prejudiced in his favor when we say: 'Well done, 
thou good and faithful servant! ' " 

The Louisville Courier-Joxtmal said : " Since his reappearance in Congress, Mr. Lamar 
has certainly displayed more political acumen, of an active and practical description, 
tlian any of his contemporaries; and as a consequence of useful and brilliant public 
service, he has been rewarded by a return to the Senate, made by the unanimous 
vote of his party, and by a position at Washington and over the country at large, le- 
minding us of that period in our political history of which we are in the habit of 
observing with a reverential and pardonable vanity, 'There were giants in those 
days.' . . . The South should not allow itself to be chilled out of its nationality Ijy 
the sectionalism of a political organization whose stock in trade is its venom and our 
folly. The people of this country are Americans all, and, rid of the middlemen, we 
shall come together, soon or late, upon common interests, being already insiiired by a 
natural and inevitable good will. This, whenever it has a chance to show itself, 
whether at Boston or at Richmond, is never slow to show that the blood and bone, 
sense ami sinew, of this country are all right, and only too ready to be knit to- 
gether. The one man from the South in public life who has seen and recognized 
the truth in all its bearings, and who, without stultifying his convictions or com- 
promising his personality, has followed its counsels, is Lamar. He began his life as 
an enthusiast, and by necessity as an impracticable. He has gone on from grace to 
grace through manifold misfortunes, until he has reached— shall we say it?— perfec- 
tion. . . . The latest exploit of this singidarly fortunate and rarely gifted man was 
his far-seeing, right-hearted, patriotic, and courageous support of tlie Centennial ap- 
propriation. It is admitted that he saved the bill. . . . The Southern Democrats never 
exhibited their lack of political intuition so lamentably and so preposterously as upon 
the Centennial vote. It was their opjiortunity to \ripe out the amnesty muddle and 
make even, and morc^ than even, on the Republicans. But only Lamar and fifteen oth- 
ei-s saw it. They rescued the House, the country, and their party from the iguominy 
of a defeat which would have covered America in blushes and have signifidl to dis- 
cerinna people all the world over the beginning of the end, and that through Radical 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 279 

•levices ruinous to the South. The seoret of Lamar's success is so simple that it ouglit 
to be more easily understood and its plan more readily copied by the ambitious poli- 
ticians of the new South. With a perfect knowledge of the political literature of his 
country, including the ethics of its constitution, Lamar is an orator of surprising 
readiness and power, who has caught the changed spirit, the altered phraseology, and 
the peculiar exigencies of the time, and has applied these to the business which is 
given him to do. He sees that there is a new way much better than the old way to 
pay oft" ancient liabilities, and he is not blind to the fact that there are debts not 
dreamed of in the ]ihilosophy of the last generation. He seeks to be useful, he is not 
afraid to open his mouth ; and he takes to things tliat are, not to things that were." 

The Neiu York Herald: " Mr. Lamar made a sjieech which will add to his own fame, 
and be received at the Nortli as an expression of good feeling on the part of the South, 
to be reciprocated by many kindly words and and acts." 

The Nni) York Tribune: "Col. Lamar's speech to-day was one of the ablest he has 
ever made in the House. . . . His speech to-day places him in the front rank as 
a debater of constitutional questions." 

On the 29tli of February the Committee on Exi^enditures in the War 
Department undertook the investigation of a charge against Gen. W. 
W. Belknap, the Secretary of War, of accepting bribes for the disposal 
of a post-tradership. Pending that investigation, after appearing before 
the committee and hearing the testimony it had taken, the Secretary 
on the 2d of March resigned, and his resignation was at once ac- 
cepted by the President and notified to the committee. Thereupon the 
committee immediately, by Mr. Clymer, its Chairman, reported to the 
House, setting forth the fact of the resignation and recommending that 
the Secretary be impeached, that the testimony be referred to the Ju- 
diciary Committee with instructions to report suitable articles of im- 
peachment, and that a committee of five be appointed to proceed to the 
bar of the Senate and prefer the charges. 

This report induced a debate of some acrimony. It was claimed that 
since the Secretary had resigned there was no longer any jurisdiction 
to impeach him. Question was made of the President's motive in ac- 
cepting his resignation with such " unprecedented, not to say indecent, 
haste." It was discussed whether the proceeding against the Secretary 
was or was not a political issue, etc. However, the resolutions offered 
by the committee were unanimously adopted and the testimony was or- 
dered to be printed in the Conf/ressionaJ Record. 

On the next day, at 1 p.m., the special committee of the House appeared 
at the bar of the Senate and discharged the duty imposed on it. The 
Senate thereupon resolved that it would "take proper order thereon." 

On the 7th Mi-. Clymer rose to a question of privilege. He .stated to 
the House that on tlie day before he and other members of the commit- 
tee had been summoned before the Supreme Court of the District of 
Columbia, in criminal session, by a subpcena recpiiriiig tliemto bring all 
books, papers, etc., in their possession, or in possession of the commit- 
tee, in relation to the charge against Gen. Belknap of accepting ])ri1:)es 



280 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

while Secretary of War, there to testify iu behalf of the United States; 
that he had called to the attention of the Court the fact that such a pro- 
ceeding would hav^e a tendency to close the mouths of all witnesses be- 
fore the Congressional Committee, and even to drive them from the land. 
Mr. Clymer then submitted the matter to the House for such action as 
it might deem necessary, right, and just. 

Mr. Robbins, of North Carolina, one of the committee, said: 

1 Siiy to you, Mr. Speaker, luid to this House, tliat the inevitable effect of our being 
required to testify as to what transpires in the sessions of our committee before a grand 
jury or anywliere else will be, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Clymer] 
lias stated, to intimidate witnesses, to stop their mouths, and throttle all further in- 
vestigations. I say here that if it is not the design it certainly will be the result of the 
course now being taken by certain officials of this district, under the promptings of 
the head of the government, to break down investigations by shutting the mouths of 
witnesses. If that is not the purpose, it is tlie effect, unless this House takes the mat- 
ter in lianil and provides for the protection (not of us; we need no protection; we 
have nothing to withhold or conceal as committeemen) — the protection of the wil- 
nesses who shall come before us. 

Later Mr. Blackburn, of Kentucky, also one of the committee, said: 

I am not surprised, sir, at tlie uneasiness manifested and the nervousness displayed 
by the gentleman from Maine [Mr. Blaine], who seeks to inject his speeches into 
every man's utterances on tliis side of the House. Did I hold the same questionalile 
position in this matter as gentlemen on the other side by reason of the cijmplicity of 
their prominent officials, I at least would be disposed to sympathize with him and 
share his apprehensions. 

I do not like to charge that it is the purpose of the Executive of this country to in- 
timidate witnesses, to throttle investigation, and to afford immunity from ))unish- 
ment to publicly convicted criminals. But I do say this: that this is the result, and 
unless this gag process is stopped the country will believe, and I will believe, that 
such is the purpose. [Cries of" O! 0!" from the Republican side of the House.] 

It will be seen from the foregoing statement that while this investi- 
gation was treated in certain aspects as one not of party politics, yet 
the discussiou of it had taken such a turn that party passions were more 
or less aroused, and the motives and actions of certain Republican lead- 
ers, including the President, were brought directly into question. 

AVith his usual conservatism and wise moderation Mr. Lamar did not 
enter upon these discussions. His speech was confined to a question of 
l^arliaraeutary privilege.* So far as he touched upon the disputations 
he rebuked them; giving, in pnssing, a stroke at Mr. Blaine because of 
his later course in view of Presidential aspirations. He said; 

All this debate, with all tlie passion that has been flung in here, is irrelevant, and 
simply tends to convert a Jiure question of constitutional and ])arliamentary law into 
an idle logomachy, a war of words and of passion which can but obscure the issue. . . . 

I came forward with a resolution which states all the circumstances and then sim- 
ply asserts the jurisdiction of this House over the subject-matter, over the person, 

* Ai'penrUx, No. 12. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 281 

over the papers in this great impeaciinient trial, tlie most august and imposing trial 
known to the constitution and laws of onr country, in the presence of which these 
passions, these thoughts about Presidential succession and party triumph, actually, sir, 
fatigue my contempt. 

The result of the debate was the passage of Mr. Lamar's resolution, 
by which the committee and its members were directed to disregard 
the subpoena until the further orders of the House. 

Of this debate, and Mr. Lamar's part in it, the correspondent of the 
Cincinnati Enquirer said: 

For the first time in his congressional career, Blaine was to-day completely fl;ittened 
out and squelched. He had arranged a programme for defending the action of the 
President and the Attorney-General in trying to get the Belknap case out of the 
hands of the House. . . . Mr. Hoai- offered this programme as an amendment to 
the resolution of the Democrats, which was presented by Mr. Lamar. Then the bat- 
tle began. At the proper moment, after several of the " small fry " had made their cut- 
and-diied speeches, Blaine took the floor, and, in his customary bullying, insolent 
style, attempted to overwhelm all opposition, and scare the Democrats into conces- 
sion to Hoar's amendment. Blaine's design was to call out some indiscreet remarks 
from the Democratic side, and then throw the House into a barroom imiee, as he did 
in the Andersonville debate; but when he had finished, Lamar rose. Lamar is the 
coolest man on the Democratic side. No taunts can annoy him; no bullying or inso- 
lence disturbs his equanimity. In reply to Blaine's frantic bullying, he coolly began 
to read the law governing such cases, together with several decisions and precedents. 
He made no comment by way of preface, except to say that he would show Mr. 
Blaine to be utterly ignorant of the law and utterly unmindful of the precedents in 
regard to the mattei-, and that before he (Lamar) got through he would subject him 
(Blaine) to the ridicule of his opponents and the pity of his friends. The result was 
a most complete and abject humiliation of the KenneViec bully and the utter explo- 
sion of his programme. The whole affair was admirably managed by the Demo- 
crats, and Mr. Lamar deserves great credit fiir the masterly way in which he led the 
fray. The expression among the Democrats to-night is universal that Lamar is the 
safest and most adroit leader that could be selected. He is the only man who has 
succeeded in flooring Blaine. 

From many other newspaper notices of this debate the following is 
given because of its animated style and its pointed application, which 
is worth remembering. The extract is from an editorial in a New York 
paper, evidently Democratic in politics, but the name of which, unfor- 
tunately, does not appear on the clipping: 

The Fall of Blaine.— Mr. S. S. Cox has recently published a bright and amusing 
book, called " Why We Laugh," in which he has gathered together a wonderful num- 
ber of good political stories, not without a purpose. But nothing in his book gives so 
satisfactory an answer to the question asked liy its title as the last week's simple his- 
tory of the decline and fall of that great Republican emperor, Blaine, of Maine. . . . 
If any one of a dozen Republican members of Congress who might be named had put 
himself in the way of getting so severe a trouncing as Mr. Lamar was forced to ad- 
minister to Mr. Blaine on a question of constitutional law during the debate which 
resulted in the impeachment of Belknap, his Republican colleagues might have lieen 
secretly amused ; but they would probably have been able to suppress their mirth out 
of a fellow-feeling with the victim. But when Mr. Lamar, calmly, coolly, almost sweet- 
ly, led the unhappy Blaine steadily onwanl from blunder to l)lunder until, with Wal- 



282 LUCirS Q. C. LAMAH: 

lace's " Supreme Court Reports" in hand, he daintily but decisively turned him over 
suddenly, and once for all, on his back, and laid him floundering in a mess of adjec- 
tives on the floor, the bonds of party 'teympathy itself gave way like wisps of straw, 
and the Republicans joined as heartily as the Democrats in the Homeric laughter 
which followed. Mr. Lamar's treatment of Blaine on that occasion has been com- 
pared l)y some of the picturesijue correspondents of the press to the playing of a cat 
with a mouse. So far as the image expresses the intellectual sui:ieriority of the victor 
over the victim, it is correct enough ; but the cat which worries a mouse undoubt- 
edly takes pleasure in the worrying. ... Mr. Lamar was obviously sorry, on the 
contrary, to find himself compelled to worry Blaine. He gave the arrogant member 
from Maine, not one, but a dozen chances to escape from the false position into which 
he had inconsiderately and vaingloriously thrust himself; and even at the end, when 
Blaine's persistency made it impossible for him to rescue himself or to be rescued by 
anybody else, Mr. Lamar, with unruffled temper, and in a soft, low, almost comiias- 
sionate voice, turned to the House, as a generous gladiator in the Roman arena might 
have turned to the crowded amphitheater when his foe lay unsworded ami un- 
shielded at his feet, and called for the verdict of the thumbs. " I have a great mind, 
Mr. Speaker," he said, "to let my friend off. What do you say, gentlemen? Shall 1 go 
on?" And it was only when the House, either nobly eager to see a petulant bully 
made an end of, or merely hot with the fierce instincts which the spectacle of a sharp 
contest always excites, cried out as with one voice, " Go on ! go on ! punish him ! " 
that the sword of the Mississippian descended, and his helpless antagonist fell " all 
of a heap " together at his feet. 

In our congressional annals this scene will long live for an example and a warning: 
an example, as showing how much more effective, even in so heterogeneous a body 
as the House of Representatives, are the belligerent methods of a well-e<iuipped and 
well-bred nature than tho^^e of a hasty and violent one. 

The uext occasion on which Mr. Lamar came prominently before the 
cotiutry was in the debate about the massacre at Hamburg, South Caro- 
lina. In that village, on the 7th of July, a riot occurred which tot)k the 
shape of a drawn battle, on a small scale, between the white citizens of 
that vicinity and some reenforcements of white men from Augusta, Ga. 
(which was immediately across the river), on the one hand, and a com- 
pany of negro militia, on the other. One of the white men was slain, 
and afterwards six of the negroes; the latter being killed after the com- 
pany had been taken prisoners. Of course this affair excited much 
comment and much indignant protest from all parts of the country. 

On the inth of July the House was engaged in the consideration of 
a joint resolution for the protection of the Texas frontier, on the lower 
Eio Grande, from the incursions of Mexican banditti. Mr. Smalls, a 
colored member, representing the proper district in South Carolina, in- 
troduced an amendment to the effect that " no troops for the purj oses 
named in this section shall be drawn from the State of South Carolina 
so long as the militia of that State, peaceably assembled, are assaulted, 
disarmed, and taken prisoners, and then massacred in cold blood by 
lawless bands of men invading that State from the State of Georgia." 

This amendment induced a discussion of the Hamburg affair, in 
which Mr. Smalls had read at the clerk's desk, as a part of his speech, 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 288 

a letter from which the signature had been erased, which purported to 
give au accurate and impartial account of the riot, and which was of 
the most startling and seusatioual character. Mr. Smalls declined to 
name the author, in the remark that " I will say to the gentleman that 
if he is desirous tliat the name shall be given in order to have another 
negro killed, he will not get it from me," which remark was applauded. 
Thereupon Mr. Cox spoke, and charged that the letter read was " in- 
tended to be shaken in the face of the House for political and bad 
party purposes." On the 18th this debate was resumed, and Mr. La- 
mar, who was a member of the Committee on the Texan Frontier 
Trouble, spoke as follows: 

Mr. Chairman: I do not propose to discuss or analyze this terrilile and disgraceful 
afl'air at Hamburg, although I think that the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Garfield) has 
not given a fair and impartial statement of the circumstances in which it originated. 
But those circumstances are of no moment here upon this question, nor are the prov- 
ocations which led to the final fearful tragedy involved in the proposition now before 
us. Nor are they, in my opinion (and here I differ with the member from Ohio), the 
legitimate topic of debate or discussion on this floor ; they belong to another tril)UDal, 
to which the constitutions of States, as well as that of the Federal Government, remit 
these subjects. 

Whether, in the circumstances and provocations, the whites or blacks were the 
most to blame, is a question to wliich I shall not now recur. Through all the confu- 
sion which has been thrown around this transaction (and 1 must say that, notwith- 
standing the honorable character of the informant of the gentleman from South Car- 
olina, which I do not question in the slightest degree, his document was evidently 
written, and perhaps very naturally, under great exasperation and excitement), 
through all the uncertainty which exasperation and exaggerations have thrown 
around this subject, there is one fact which gleams out acknowledged, or, if not ac- 
knowledged, is indisputable. It is that a body of white men did, without authority 
of law, put to death a number of black men who had been taken as prisoners ; I 
mean who had been captured and deprived of their liberty, but who were not pris- 
oners in the legal sense of the term, inasmuch as those capturing them had no right 
under the law to deprive them of their personal liberty. 

Now, sir, I wish to say here in my place (and what I say here, just as it drops from 
my lips and falls upon the reporter's notes, is at once .sent throughout the entire 
South, and every constituent of mine in every home and hamlet will read what I say ; 
and even if I were Imse and ignoble enough to utter here what I would swerve from 
there, as ha.s been falsely charged against Southern men, the Record would always 
convict me)— in my place here, and with the responsibilities surrounding me, I assert 
that no excuse or palliation can possibly be found for these outrages ami this bar- 
barism. [Applause.] 

As a Southern man and as a Democrat, I have a remark or two to make upon this 
subject. Mr. Chairman, we of the South have a lawless class, precisely as you of the 
North have lawless classes. As a consequence we have riots in which human life is 
lost, precisely as you have such riots, with this difl'erence: ours, without preconcert^ 
flame up in different localities, and are confined to short periods of time ; while yours, 
in more than one instance, have held several counties in terror, have extended over 
months of time, and have involved a larger loss of human life, defjdng the authori- 
ties of your States. 

There is another fact which I wish to mention: In those Southern States where dis- 



284 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

orders and violence occur there are governments of a peculiar character and type, in- 
variably governments of one character and type. They are governments which are 
called Repulilican governments; but it is a spurious Republicanism, which has no 
identification or sympathy with the views and i)urposes that have inspired the follow- 
ing of the great Republican party of this country. And, sir, those State governments 
liave invariably encouraged these disorders and these murders by tlieir inefficiency, 
by their imbecility, Ijy their cowardice, and by their connivance; fur they liave in 
every instance not only failed to punisli these murderers, not only failed to adminis- 
ter justice, not only failed to execute the laws, Ijut they have used the occurrences as 
occasions to appeal to Congress and to the North for help in maintaining the power 
which they are so ruthlessly exercising. 

The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Garfield] asked if this was a sporadic ca^e or one 
typical of the general condition of things South. I answer that there is no commu- 
nity in the South that is not thrilled with horror at such occurrences. Sir, it is a 
wonder that society does not go to pieces under the operation of governments that 
allow such lawlessness to stalk abroad in the land unpunished. Tliey are govern- 
ments which live on violence and disorder, and when they cannot have violence they 
proNoke it in order to use it as an instrument of political power. 

A word in answer to the argument of the giMitleman from Michigan [>Ir. Conger], 
Saturday, in all good temper. The use of the army never iiroduced any good effect in 
such cases as this. The troops always get to the scene of the disturbance after the 
occurrence, and too late to prevent it; and as a means of righting personal and private 
wrongs, as a means of preventing violence to personal securitx, the army is slow, 
cumbersome, is ineffective and almost useless; and in spite of the efibrts of the army 
officers to the contrary (whose actions cannot be too highly commended), it is con- 
verted into a monstrous engine of political opjiression and corrupt political intrigues. 
That is the only use to which it is put in the South. The gentleman nmst see how 
utterly inappropriate the use of the army is in such cases. A riot like this in the 
Streets of a town or village is not a thing for the Federal Government to intervene 
about, for it violates no Federal law ; it does not conflict with national authority ; it 
has no relation to the exercise of the right of suffrage. 

This was a riot like the riots which occurred in the State of Pennsylvania, in the 
mining regions; or in Indiana, where, on the day of the last election, three or four 
colored men were killed; or like that which occurred the other day in New Jersey, 
where seven men were killed, two of them put to death by stoning. Why do you not 
apiily the same remedy there? Why confine your Federal intervention to prevent 
muriier and riot to one section alone? 

Wiat is the remedy in this case? It is clear. It is the duty of the Governor cf 
South Carolina to take prompt and severe measures to have apjirehencled and pun- 
ished the men who comndtted snch a crime. He cannot use measures too vigorous 
or too summary to bring the men who shot down these prisoners in cold blood to a 
swift retribution. I understood the eloquent and gifted gentleman from Georgia [^Ir. 
Hartridge] to promise the ccx'iperation of the Governor of Georgia, if the case touches 
Georgia in any way, to bring these men to condign punishment. Is the Governor of 
South Carolina doing anything in that direction? If he is, he will meet my support 
and praise, ami that of the good citizens of South Carolina; but if, instead of doing 
that, he is rushing to \\'ashington to invoke once more the demon of discord and 
sectionalism, to drag their material of passion through this chamber, he will not be 
doing that which will prevent disorders in that State. I say, sir, if there is lawless- 
ness, it is because these so-called Republican governments ha\e been, not only cor- 
rupt and lawless themselves, but also because they have encouraged it by giving it 
impunity through their imbecility and cowardice, and often by actually inciting it. 
I say that wherever, as in the State of Arkansas to-day, the Governor has ruled with 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 285 

a firm hand and enforced the law, lawlessness has been crutihed out; and all citizens, 
black and white, are alike secure. Gov. Garland has in one year put down tlie spirit 
of lawlessness in that State, and it is now as peaceable a community as any in the 
country. I repeat, it is not the fault of the people, whose property interests and busi- 
ness investments and industrial arrangements depend upon peace and order, and are 
utterly ruined by such disorders, but of governments either too inellicient to put down 
crime, or so much interested in producing it that they furnish provocations to it. 

Why, sir, tlie other day Gov. Kellogfj, of Louisiana, appointed as a tax collec- 
tor to a parish in that State (so I read in the press) a man who was a captain of a 
band of murderers and robbers. If he had sent his police to hunt him down and 
shoot him like a wolf, him and his marauding band, be would have done his duty. 
But, instead of that, he legalizes robbery and theft by making the robber a public 
officer; and wlien riots and disturbances grow out of such actions as these, he comes 
here to Washington and calls on this government to bring about order. Sir, these 
occurrences are ruinous to the South ; they are unnatural and morbific elements, and 
disappear whenever this kind of men is eliminated from jiolitical and social control 
in the South, and the management of affairs falls into the hands of her own i)eople. 

This positive and bold speech met with widespread approval. Com- 
plimentary letters poured in upon Mr. Lamar, and flattering notices 
appeared all over the country. Of course there were many in the South 
who did not agree with the views expressed, or like the fact of their 
expression; but the great majority were more than satisfied. 

The ultra Eadical politicians were no more pleased than the ultra 
bourbons; and efforts were again made to neutralize the injury which 
this and other like speeches of Mr. Lamar's were doing to the Radical 
"bloody shirt" pi'ogramme, by charging him with making inconsist- 
ent speeches at Washington and in Mississippi, as before he had been 
charged with misrepresenting Southern sentiment. He was assailed 
in this way by papers in Washington; and on the 25th of July he ex- 
posed the injustice of such charges by a personal explanation in the 
House, using both Democratic and Republican testimony in a most 
conclusive way.* 

About this time, -so pronounced was this flank movement against him 
by certain classes of leaders that it attracted attention even so far away 
as California. Said the San Francisco Examiner: 

Nothing seems more to irritate the average Radical temper than a contemplation 
of the distinguished position of respect and influence in Congress and before the 
country won for himself by the Hon. L. Q. G. Lamar. The more senseless and un- 
reasonable of this class, finding in his course and conduct nothing that they can mis- 
represent to his disadvantage, and nothing upon which they can with any justice 
hang a tirade of abuse, like silly schoolboys, find their only satisfaction in sitting back 
and pouting or making faces at him. . . . 

On the 2d of August Mr. Lamar delivered the most elaborate, philo- 
sophical, and, from some points of view, most statesmanlike speech 
which he had yet made in Congress. It was a set oration upon "The 
Policy of the Republican Party and the Political Condition of the 

*See Congressional Record of July 25, 1876. 



286 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

Sdiitli," manifestly embracing matters which he liad l)eeii long- revolv- 
ing iu liis miud, and whieli he had, more or less directly, touched iii^ou 
iu other addresses — notably in the New Hampshire campaign. 

He made occasion for this argument by adverting to a speech made 
in the preceding Feljruary by Hon. Henry L. Pierce, a member from 
Massachusetts, upon a jiroposition so to amend the Constitution of the 
United States as to declare the President ineligible to reelection, in 
which that gentleman had discussed the relation of that proposed step 
to the abuses existing in the Federal administration. Mr. Lamar's idea 
was that such a measure was inadequate to the end proposed; that no 
project of civil service reform gave promise of success which did not 
secure removals from office for cause only, and at the same time secxire 
integrity in the power which determined the cause. From that general 
proposition he drifted into his speech,* of which the following is a 
synopsis : 

1. The greater portion of the American people, irrespective of pai'ty, 
now regard the administration of public affairs with decided dissatis- 
faction and despondency; but this sentiment, pronounced and pervading 
as it is, has not produced its legitimate effect upon the action of the 
government. This noteworthy and anomalous fact is caused by the in- 
terposition between the vast masses of a free and virtuous people and 
their government of an intermediate and irresponsible body known as 
the party, with its vast army of officeholders and expectants. 

2. A secondary obstacle in the way of reform is the apprehension enter- 
tained by thousands of honest voters that a mere change of parties would 
produce no practical good, liecause the Democratic party might pursue 
the same evil courses under similar temptation. But this view involves 
an abandonment of even the struggle for reform; for certainly no re- 
form can Ije wrought by retaining the Eejjublicau party in power, since 
the controlling spirits of a party organization are those who represent 
its worst tendencies. The Democratic party, however, has always been 
jjledged, and has always redeemed its pledge, to a system of economical 
administration of the enormous revenues and expenditures of the gov- 
ernment, and in this particular, if in none othei-, a change of parties will 
open an avenue for reform, since prodigal expenditure is one of the 
greatest sources of the present administrative corruption; while, on 
the other hand, the issues upon which the mass of the American peo- 
ple had differed with the Democratic ])arty had passed away. 

3. There are other controlling influences which obstruct the tenden- 
cies of the people to change their administration. The people believe 
that the great social and political transformations in the South which 
have resulted from the war of secession should be guaranteed a success- 
ful and i)eaceful working, undisturbed by adverse influences; and they 

'^' A])pendix Xo. 13. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 287 

fear, in any advent of the Democratic party to power, an iutluenc-e un- 
favorable and dangerous to tlieir stability and permanence. These 
misgivings, based upon their estimate of the past career and purposes 
of the Democratic party, are strengthened by the fact that the people 
of the Smith are united against the party which established the new 
order of things, and in support of the party which opposed it, thus 
threatening the reestablishment of that Southern sectional domination 
so repugnant to the Northern people. No such hallucination, however, 
inflames the imagination of the South as that she will ever again, under 
any combination of parties, obtain control of this great Republic. Her 
people are fully homogeneous with the whole American people; their 
very sectionalism now identifies them with the national life, and makes 
them cultivate that wider patriotism which is coextensive with the 
Union. In acting unitedly with the Democratic party they are simply 
obeying the imperative law of self-preservation, because they desire to 
escape from the practical grievances which the hostile and oppressive 
policy of the Republican party brings upon them. 

Here Mr. Lamar ijasses to the real point of his speech: 
4. Equally unfounded is the belief that the results of the war, as em- 
bodied in the amendments to the Constitution, would be unsafe in the 
hands of the Democratic party, and that the retention for another Pres- 
idential term of the Republican party, with all its misconduct and mis- 
o-overnment, is still necessary in order to secure those results and the 
conditions upon which they are based. In support of this position Mr. 
Lamar advanced four principal propositions: 

((/) "The present condition of the South is the unfortunate but nat- 
ural result of a sudden and unparalleled social and political revolution, 
which woiild have confused by its shock the peace and order of any so- 
ciety in the civilized world. 

(b) "The necessary consequences of such a revolution were recog- 
nized by the leaders of the Republican party itself: in the protest of 
Mr. Hoar, of Massachusetts, against the admission of New Mexico as a 
State; by the protest of Mr. Sargeant, of California, against the fur- 
ther immigration of the Chinese upon the Pacific Coast, upon the ex- 
press ground that the Mexican and Chinese populations were, from 
race characteristics and inferior intelligence, incapable of healthy as- 
similation into the body of American citizens; and still more emphat- 
ically by the earnest, profound, and eloquent denunciations of African 
suffrage by such eminent Republicans as Morton, of Indiana, and An- 
drew, of Massachusetts. 

(f) "These inevitable difiiculties were aggravated by the fact that 
the essential principle of the reconstruction policy of the Republican 
party was the creation of that very color line which is now represented 
as the work of Southern malignity. 



288 LlVnS Q. C. LAMAJi: 

((/) "The investigatiug committees of Congress, sent to the South 
for the express purpose of justifying those Southern State governments, 
were obliged to acknowledge a condition of political life which nobody 
is willing to defend, which everybody wishes to terminate, but which 
party exigencies comijel the Federal administration to support and sus- 
tain. 

"The conclusion which Mr. Lamar deduced from those propositions 
was this: If that reconstruction policy, supplemented and supported by 
the steady interference of the Federal government, has produced this 
condition of things; if it is, as he admits, impossible to reverse that pol- 
icy, destroy the State governments which it created, and abolish negro 
suffrage, then there is but one course to adopt consistent with the form 
and spirit of the constitution. That course is to leave the Southern 
States to settle the problem fur themselves." * 

"Give them that," said he; "give them local self-government, and you will then 
see at last what will be the dawn of prospeiity in all the industries and enterprises 
of tlie North. You will see, sir, a true Southern renaismnce, a real grand reconstruc- 
tion of the South in all the elements of social order, strength, justice, and ei|uality of 
all her people. Rising from her confusion and distress, rejoicing in her newly recov- 
ered liberty, prosperous, free, great, lier sons and daughters of every race happy in 
her smile, she will greet your benignant Republic in the words of the inspired poet : 

' Thy gentleness hath made me great.' " 

This ])Owerful arraignment of the Southern policy of the Republican 
party had to be answered; and on the 4th of August Mr. Garfield under- 
took til do so. His speech, however, while able and ingenious as a po- 
litical discourse, neither rose to the level of Mr. Lamar's nor answered 
his argument. Mr. Garfield did not deny any one of Mr. Lamar's prop- 
ositions last stated above. He denied neither that war and emancipa- 
tion had unsettled the very foundations of Southern society, nor that 
the leaders of the Eepnblican party in 1865 declared that negro suf- 
frage was unwise and dangerous, nor that the plan of reconstruction 
adopted itself drew the color line with a fatal precision, nor the cor- 
rupt and debasing character- of the Southern State governments erected 
by the reconstruction. He contented himself with a vigorous arraign- 
ment of the general fitness of the Democratic party for the government 
of the country, leaving entirely unanswered the main point of Mr. La- 
mar's speech. To meet that he was bound to have gone further. 
Whether the Democratic or the Republican party was thenceforth to 
govern the country, interested the South only so far as either party 
should be able and willing to settle the Southern questions wisely. 
Mr. Garfield's reply was radically defective in failing to show either 
that Mr. Lamar's remedy of leaving those questions entirely to the 
Southern States for settlement was not the proper remedy, or else that 

* The Southern Question : William H. Trescott, in North American Review, October, IsTG. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 289 

the Republican party was as much disposed to adopt that policy as 
were the Democrats. 

Apropos of this speech the Boston Post said of Mr. Lamar: 

The representative from Mississippi was undeniably cast in a statesman's mold. 
Everything about his mind is large, fair, open, and comprehensive. The ordinary 
femall devices of the political pettifogger are not for him. No more is the furnace 
door of passion open within his nature for the stuffing in of combustibles by stoker 
opponents. He is at all times in comjilete self-command, and from the height of view 
to which that fact raises him he is able to survey the whole situation without letting 
a single feature of it escape him; and for like reasons he is able to make its sum- 
mary a harmonious and consistent one. The need of more such men in the National 
Legislature, from both sections, was never more apparent than now. When one does 
make his apjiearance, by an unerring law of nature he draws to himself the attention 
and confidence of all, without respect to parties. 
19 



CHAPTER XIX. 

The Presidential Election of 1876— The Result Contested— Storms Threatening— The 
Electoral Commission— Mr. Lamar Speaks in Favor of the Bill — Speech — Addi- 
tional Reasons for Sup]iorting the Bill— Popular Speech— The Electoral Count- 
Democrats Disappointed — Filibustering— Feeling in Mississippi — Unfounded Ru- 
mors of Collusion — Press Discussions and Correspondence — The Gain Found in 
Defeat — President Hayes' Inaugural on Southern Pacification — Republican 
Chagrin— Mr. Blaine's Tilt witii Thurman — Mr. Lamar's Letter to the President — 
AVithdrawal of the Troops— The South Relieved— Mr. Lamar's Speech of 1879 on 
Hayes' Administration. 

THE State of Mississippi was not allowed to take any part in the 
Presidential election of 1868. In that of 1872 the carpetbag gov- 
eruoieut was in power, backed by the Federal administration, and the 
white people were not zealous for Mr. Greely; the State's electoral 
votes were therefore cast for President Grant. In the election of 1876, 
for the first time, the State was to participate in a Presidential election 
uutrammeled by Federal repression and with a Democratic candidate 
in the field. On that election, however, the Eadicals of the State had 
placed tlieir hopes of regaining possession of power, and their papers 
during the preceding winter had consoled their party for the loss of the 
State elections of 1875 by promising a complete recovery in those of 
this year. Needless to say, therefore, the canvass was a most thorough 
and spirited one on the part of the Democrats. Mr. Lamar took a very 
active part in it. Notwithstanding the fact that since July his health 
bad been bad, and when speaking he had to occupy a chair during part 
of the time, he made a number of effective siieeches in Yicksburg, Can- 
ton, Grenada, and other places. Mr. Hewitt, the Chairman of the Na- 
tional Democratic Executive Committee, endeavored to get him to go 
North on a canvassing tour; but Gen. George, the Chairman of the 
State Committee, objected, on the ground that he could not be spared 
from Mississippi. 

The Democrats swept the State by a tremendous majority, electing 
all six of the Congressmen; and the electoral votes were cast for Tilden 
and Hendricks. 

The election, however, which in Mississippi had gone so favorably for 
the Democracy and the great cause of local self-government, in its gen- 
eral result brought the country face to face with one of the greatest 
emergencies which had ever confronted the nation and with the frown- 
ing visage of civil war. 

The total vote of the electoral college was three hundred and sixty- 
(2;U)) 



LIFE, rniES, AND SPEECHES. 201 

niue. It reiiuired one buiKlrod and eighty-five votes to elect the Presi- 
dent. The (States of Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, New Jersey, and 
New York had all gone Democratic; and for the first time the "solid 
South " was claimed to have wheeled into that column. In this state of 
the case Mr. Tilden would have two hundred and three votes; but the 
Ilepublicans claimed the States of Florida, Louisiana, and South Caro- 
lina, with their votes of four, eight, and seven, respectively. If this 
claim prevailed, tlien Mr. Hayes had exactly one hundred and eighty- 
five votes. On the other hand, the Democrats claimed one vote from 
Oregon, which, even conceding the three Southern States to Hayes, 
would still give Tilden the necessary one hundred and eighty-five. 

In Florida the Radical Returning Board, against a small popular ma- 
jority, declared Republican electors chosen, and those electors voted for 
Hayes and Wheeler; but at the same time the Democratic electors voted 
for Tilden and Hendricks. The Radical Governor had duly forwarded 
the Republican votes under a proper certificate. At the same election, 
however, State officers had been chosen, and as a result thereof a Demo- 
cratic Governor and Legislature came into oSice. Thereupon, in Jan- 
uary a statute was passed requiring a new canvass of the popular vote, 
and that canvass resulted in a declaration of the election of the Demo- 
cratic electors. The new Democratic Governor then forwarded a prop- 
er certificate that the vote of Florida had been cast for Tilden and 
Hendricks. 

From Louisiana there were also conflicting certificates: one in favor 
of Hayes and Wheeler from W. P. Kellogg, claiming to be Governor, 
and acting as such; the other from Mr. McEnery, also claiming to be 
Governor of the State, in favor of Tilden and Hendricks. 

From South Carolina the Radical Governor certified Hayes and 
Wheeler votes, while certain persons claiming to have been duly chosen 
as Presidential electors certified their own votes in favor of Tilden and 
Hendricks, and also certified the facts upon which they claimed that 
the withholding from them by the Governor and the Secretary of State 
of the customary and regular certificates was wrongful and illegal. 

From Oregon also appeared two conflicting certificates: one by the Sec- 
retary of State certifying three Hayes and Wheeler votes; one by the 
Governor certifying two Hayes and AVheeler votes and one vote for Til- 
den and Hendricks; the point at issue being, in its essence, that one of 
the electors chosen by the Republican majority was disqualified to hold 
the office, wherefore it devolved upon his Democratic competitor. 

The decision of any one of these four contentions in favor of the Dem- 
ocrats would have seated Mr. Tilden, while the Republicans needed to 
prevail in all in order to seat Mr. Hayes. 

With such an array of chances in favor of the Democrats it was nat- 
ural that they should be much elated, and that the Republicans should 



292 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

be greatly alainued and aroused to strenuous efforts to save their imper- 
iled power. Early iu November au eager aud passionate discussion of 
the situation began, which increased in bitterness as the weeks passed 
by. Party was arrayed against party, and again the division was dan- 
gerously sectional. The Republicans denounced the Democratic ma- 
jorities in the ci'itical Sonthern States as the criminal results of fraud 
and intimidation. The Democrats, on the other hand, denounced the re- 
turns made fi'om those States as a fraudulent reversal of the jjopular 
vote, made by corrupt conspiracies and sustained by au illegal and op- 
pressive use of the bayonet in the interest of a faction. 

When Congress met in December the lurid lightnings of a political 
tempest played all about the horizon. The atmosphere was full of the 
rumor of civil war imminent. There was an evident determination on 
the part of the Eepiiblican leaders not to surrender the reins <>f power, 
and apparently on the part of the Democracy as resolute a purpose to 
reap the harvest of the victory which they believed that they had won. 
Congress itself, with which rested the determination of a Cjuestion so 
great, involving not merely a change of administration, but also a re- 
versal of the fundamental policy of the government, was divided politi- 
cally. The Senate was Republican, but the House was Democratic; 
and to each body the party of its predominant faith looked for rescue 
in the momentous crisis. 

The provision of the constitution which controlled the case is as fol- 
lows: "The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate 
and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the vote shall 
then be counted." Here is no direction on the vital question: By whom 
shall the count be made? That was the jjoint which was pregnant with 
all possible ills: discord, civil war, revolution. Had the President of 
the Senate this right, and did the constitution iu case of contacting 
certificates invest him with the jDower to determine which was the true 
vote? Had the two Houses of Congress any function to perform be- 
sides that of mere witnesses, or was their acquiescence in the count 
necessary? If their acquiesceuce is necessary, then must both unite iu 
any objection to the decision of the President of the Senate, or would 
the objection of either to a return be fatal to it and prevent its count- 
ing? These questions perplexed the people no less tlian Congress, and 
of course the jjartisans throughout the country claimed that interpreta- 
tion most favorable to their cause. 

Petitions [says Mr. Cox] * poured into Congress from commerciai organizntions and 
good citizens of all parties and all sections, anxiously praying for a i^?aceful settle- 
ment of the Presidential question. In the wisdom and ])atriotism of that body was 
now the only reliance for averting bloodshed. A few days after the meeting of the 
electoral college, Decendier 14tl], Mr. Proctor Knott, of Kentucky, . . . initiated a 

'"Three Decades of Federal Legislation," p. n;;r. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 293 

response to the urgent demamls of the country. lie proposed a committee of five 
meiiiljers whose duty it sliould be, acting in conjunction with a similar committee on 
tlie part of the Senate, to consider the vvliole question of tlie disputed votes, and to 
recommend to Congress a course to be followed. The resolution was adopted almost 
with unanimity. 

These committees, after mauy consultatious, agreed upou a plan of 
procedure, and oii the ISth of January reported to their respective 
Houses a bill which provided for the celebrated Electoral Commission. 
Of course this proposed bill needed to be ijassed by Congress in the 
usual manner. Its provisions were, in substance, that the commission 
should be composed of fifteen members: five Senators, to be chosen by 
the Senate; five representatives, to be chosen by the House; and five 
Justices of the Supreme Court, the latter to be the justices for the first, 
third, eighth, and ninth judicial circuits, and one other to be selected 
by them, thus adopting an idea of geographical distribution; that all 
conflicting certificates of electoral votes, as they should be reached in 
the regular process of counting, should be referred to the commission, 
"which shall proceed to consider the same with the same powers, if 
any, now possessed by the two Houses acting separately or together, and 
by a majority of votes decide whether any and what votes from such State 
are the votes provided for by the Constitution of the United States, and 
how many and what persons were duly appointed electors in such State, 
and may therein take into view such petitions, depositions, and other 
papers, if any, as shall, by the constitution and now existing law, be 
competent and pertinent in such consideration; . . . and the count- 
ing of the votes shall proceed in conformity therewith, unless . . . 
the two Houses shall separately concur in ordering otherwise." . . . 

It will be observed that this statute does not fix any principle upon 
which the commission should proceed in deliberating upon the ques- 
tions to be considered, unless indeed it be the principle that it was to 
exercise just such powers, no more and no less, as Congress itself might 
exercise in discharging the same function. 

It was well understood that the two Houses would select their repre- 
sentatives on the commission so as to give a majority of Kepublican 
Senators and a similar majority of Democratic representatives. To that 
extent the commission would be equally divided politically. The ele- 
ment of uncertainty was in the justices. Of the four designated by 
their circuits, two belonged to either party; while the fifth, to be selected 
by the four, would probably be Judge Davis, who was considered to be 
an Independent, although the more zealous Kepublicans accused him of 
Democratic leanings. 

Such was the plan, and such were its promises. The fact that a 
measure was reported to which both parties seemed committed, and 
which gave assurance of a peaceable settlement of so threatening a 



294 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

complication, caused general relief and rejoicing. The bill passed both 
Houses easily. Its principal opponents in the Senate were Mr. Morton 
and Mr. Sherman; in the House, Mr. Garfield and Mr. Mills. The lat- 
ter spoke earnestly against the bill on the 25th, urging objections to its 
constitutionality. On the nest day Mr. Lamar replied to him. After 
touching at no great length on the constitutional questions,* he con- 
tinued: 

Believing tliis bill to lie constitutional, I sliall support it for reasons which I will 
now give as well as I can in tlie short time allotted to nie. 

My first reason is that it furnishes a provision which secures our government 
against what has been considered by all our wisest statesmen as the weakest and 
therefore the most dangerous point in our system. They have feared that the elec- 
tion of President, in which nearly all the honors and emoluments of government are 
staked as prizes to be contended for, would soon degenerate into a struggle and contest 
for these honors and emoluments, in which party ascendancy and party triumph will 
be objects of far greater solicitude than the prosperity and good of the country. This 
apprehens^ion was expressed twenty-five years ago by a great Amei-ican statesman in 
words which seem to be pecidiarly appropriate to the present condition of public 
affairs. Speaking of the vast and growing patronage of the President and the num- 
ber of offices of distinction and i^rofit in his control, he says : 

These, and especially the latter, have made (the election of President) the great 
and alisorbing object of party struggles; and on this the appeal to force will be made, 
whenever the violence of the struggle and the corrujition of parties will no longersubmit 
to the decision of the l)allot box. . . . If itcomes to this, it will be, in all i>robability, 
in a contested election ; when the question will be, Which is the President? The in- 
cumbent—if he should be one of tlie candidates — or, if not, the candidate of the party 
in possession of power? or of the party endeavoring to obtain possession? On 
such an issue, the appeal to force would make the mndklaie of the successful party master 
of the whole. . . . The contest would put an end, virtually, to the elective character 
of the department. The form of an election might for a time be iireserved, but the 
ballot liox w-ould 1)6 much less relied on for the decision, than the sword and bayonet. 
In time even the form would cease, and the successor be apijointed by the incumlient; 
and thus the absolute foi-m of a popular, would end in the absolute form of a 
monarchical government. — Oilhoun on the CoiiMilulion of the United Stcdes, page 378. 

Sir, this measure, unanimously recommended by men representing lioth political 
parties, I regard as certain proof that in this Congress devotion to party is not stronger 
than devotion to the country, and that the promotion of the prosperity and interest 
of the country is an object of deeper and more intense solicitude than all the honors 
and emoluments which may be reaped as the rewards and spoils of a Presidential tri- 
umph. Its enactment into a law will lie a grand triumph of patriotism, nationality, 
harmony, and zeal for the public good, over faction, selfishness, and the struggle for 
party ascendancy. For this reason alone I would give my supjiort to this bill. 

I proceed to my ne.xt reason. As I understand the measuie it rests on three propo- 
sitions: First, that the President of the Senate has not the right to decide wdiat votes 
to count and what to reject ; second, that both the Senate and the House have the 
right to decide and direct what is an honest count of legal votes; third, that, as 
neither can surrender this right to the other, and as there are differences of opinion 
as to the extent of this power, whether it is limited to the ascertainment of the au- 
thenticity of the certified returns or extends to the rislit of going behind them, it pro- 
vides for a tribunal to decide these questions in cases of conflicting returns and to 
determine which return is the true and which of the controverted votes are the proper 
ones to be counted. In other words, they will take the advice of a commission, the 

'■■'Appendix No. U. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 205 

character of which will guarantee a thoroughly considered and impartial opinion. 
Upon that opinion the two Houses assembled will finally act. 

Now, sir, if I had doubts of the wisdom of this plan (which I have not), I would ac- 
cept it in preference to the alternative which is now before us. If no mode of adjust- 
ing or reconciling the present ditt'erences can be found, what is the result? AVliy, that 
the next President will have to be inaugurated by a method and through processes and 
agencies advocated and pressed by one jiarty alone with the view to a single object, 
and that is the consummation of its own triumph, to which it believes itself entitled. 
However this Presidential contested election may be ended, unless this bill passes, 
one or the other party nuist determine to submit to what it Ijelieves to be a fraudulent 
perversion of law, constitution, and right, or to resist by force. Either of these results 
would be an incalculable calamity. In case of submission, the whole moral force of 
the government would be destroyed. Both to those who win and those who lose the 
constitution will have become a mere weapon of party warfiire, and the manipulation 
of a venal and corrupt popular vote will be perfected in the hands of bold and bad po- 
litical adventurers ; and in all succeeding elections the forms of constitutional proce- 
dure will be mure and more recklessly disregarded, until finally the result will be de- 
termined, not by the ballot, but by sword and bayonet. 

As to the alternative (jf resistance, there is no necessity to i^retend to ignore it; for 
we all know that a good deal has been said about it, both by those who would scorn 
to think it possiljle and those who (I am sorry to say it) would be glad to hear it 
threatened. Now, sir, the man who says that he despises such indications, who feels 
a contempt for the menace of civil war, no matter from what quarter it comes, permits 
himself to overlook one of the most important features in the problem of government : 
the contentment, the harmony, and the repose and security of the society for which he 
legislates; and he forgets the first lesson in the elementary book of practical politics. 

For one, I am not unwilling to say that the former alternative (of subnnssion) would 
be the one adopted, and that resistance would not be made, at least by the Democratic 
party. .\nd in saying this, I wish to repel the disparagement which has been ex- 
pressed of the courage and patriotism of our Northern political associates and friends, 
which we sometimes hear. I believe them to be wanting in neitlier. As to the charge 
that in the past they have encouraged us with promises of support that were not ful- 
filled, I deny it. They did sympathize with us as to the causes which provoked our 
secession ; but while a few public men made extravagant declarations as to what they 
would do in a certain event, our Northern Democratic friends as a paiiy pleaded with 
us to remain and defend our institutions with their support inside of tlie Union. 
They did not as a party give assurances of cooperation and aid to us against their own 
States should war result from our secession. And sir, if there e.xisted with us at that 
time any bitter feeling of disappointment toward our former political associates, it 
has been ell'aced by their undeviating fiilelity since the war to the constitutional rights 
of our people, and by their unwavering support and sympathy coming up on every 
t|uestion as true as the needle to the pole, without the needle's variations. No, sir; 
wliatever of responsibility the South incurred in that movement she has no desire to 
shrink from. The sorrowful lesson we have to teach our children is all our own. It 
is that we undertook a great political movement which time and the fortunes of war 
disclosed tliat we had not tlie strength and resources to carry on to a successful con- 
suiiimation. Our vindication — and a generous victor will not deny us that- lies in 
our solemn conviction that we were defending the institutions and the principles of 
constitutional liberty, the heritage of the fathers of the Reimlilic. It was this senti- 
ment which inspired the courage of our soldiers in battle and now renders our section 
all the more precious to us in defeat, giving her, to our eyes at least, dignity in her des- 
olation and beauty and majesty even iu her ruin and woe. 

I repeat that this bill avoids the necessity of any submission of the defeated party 



296 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

to what it may consider either fraud or force. The result, whatever it may be, will have 
been reached by the patriotic consent of both parties; and if it involves any additiun to 
the methods heretofore observed, it will have been an addition fairly discussed, openly 
and legally adopted, ratified by the will and approved by the good sense of the whole 
people. It leaves the framework of the constitution unshaken, the sanctity of law 
inviolate. Indeed, it is so in harmony with the genius of the constitution, so promo- 
tive of the scheme of its framers, that, liad this commission of reference been part of 
the original constitution itself, there would have been no language too extravagant to 
describe its far-sighted wisdom. 

To have solved so dangerous and difficult a question so simply, so calmly, and so 
justly, is the highest tribute which can be paid to those principles of constitutional 
liberty which have trained the American people to such a possibility. The spirit in 
which the bill has been framed by its authors of both parties is no slight guarantee 
of the fairness with which the representative men of both political parties will ad- 
minister its provisions ; and if I cannot rely upon the patience and ability and the jus- 
tice which the members of the Supreme Court will bring to the discharge of perhaps 
the most solemn duty ever imposed upon the magistrates of a free I'ountry, with what 
confldc'nce could I accept, or ask others to accept, the decision of the same question by 
a mere i)arty majority either of the Senate or of the House? 

There is another consideration which commends this bill to my support. It can- 
not be denied that this Presidential campaign has been marked by some painful char- 
acteristics; it cannot be denied that strong sectional prejudices and passions were 
appealed to and excited in its progress; it cannot be denied that a large majority of 
Northern States were found on one side, and that an almost unbroken body of South- 
ern States were found on the other. Now, sir, in such an issue, in the presence of such 
parties, in full view of all the unjust and unconstitutional action to which party pas- 
sion has stimulateil party powei', I feel that this l>ill is a declaration that in the fu- 
ture this tyranny of force must cease; that hereafter in any conflicts to which the 
South as a part of the Union must be necessarily a party the sword shall not be 
thrown into the scales of justice, nor military power be permitted to silence the law^ 
but that all questions of difference must be referred to the arbitration of reason. I 
feel that my section at least has been permitted to stand forth once more in the pure 
air of free discussion, and that, whatever be the decision, we have been allowed to ap- 
peal to men acknowledging a common citizenship under an equal constitution. 

Nor does the fact that the Justices of the Supreme Court are made parties in this 
Commission lessen my conviction of its propriety or weaken the sentiment of apjsrov- 
al with which I regard it. I have no fear of disturbing the l>alance of constitutional 
powers, nor have I any mistrust of the spirit of honest impartiality in which that duty 
will be discharged. I listen with no patience to imputations upon this august tribu- 
nal. I cannot forget that one of the greatest of American statesmen, the man who 
least of all who have left their mark on our constitutional history was disposed to 
compromise either rights or duties, who spoke of such compromises as shifting sands 
and the constitution as a rock of support, taught me this confidence. When, in 1848, 
the question of the power of Congress over slavery in the Territories was perplexing 
our councils and presaging the civil troubles which came upon us afterwards, it was 
proposed in the Clayton Compromise to refer that question, political and sectional as 
it was, to the Supreme Court for decision, that reference was warmly supported by 
Mr. Calhoun, who declared that such a reference was leaving it where it ought to be 
left— to the constitution. And, sir, so we may say that this measure refers this ques- 
tion to the tribunal of the constitution. 

Sir, I do know that in tlie dark hour of our distress it was from that court, just as 
it is now constituted, and from it alone of all the departments of this Federal Govern- 
ment, that we of the South have had protection against the legislation that forgot the 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. '2S)7 

constitution in the vengeful spirit of its harsh and oppressive provisions. Its decisions 
in the Slaughter-liouse and other cases justified us in believing that there was one ref- 
uge for those wlio claimed that pnitection. 

An additional recomruendatinn (and I confess that it is no light one) of thisiihni to 
my support is that to a certain extent it frees either candidate from the exactions of 
party oblitration. It is true that either will haveowed his elevation tu the party which 
supported him; Imt the closeness of the contest, the possibility of a failure in the elec- 
tion, the scrutiny of all the doubtful and dishonorable elements wliicli unavoidably 
mix in a great popular vote, the solemn recognition by such a cotu't of the awful re- 
sponsibility which they are about to place in the hands of him whom they shall con- 
firm — all these incidents, so impressive and bo unusual, cannot fail to teach the com- 
ing President that he is not the President of a party, but of the people; that the for- 
tunes and the character of a great Commonwealth depend upon the elevation, the \>\x- 
rity, the patriotism of his administration ; that the conscience of the country cries 
aloud for the old-fashioned honesty of its past honorable life, and that everywhere • 
over this vast continent, amid the distraction of party passion and the honest perplex- 
ity of political dilierences, the iiojailar heart is yearning for " the old good nature and 
the old good humor." [Applause.] 

Two years later, Mr. Lamar, in an address to his constituents, gave 
the following additional reasons for his support of the Commission Bill: 

I believe that the most dangerous event in our history, not excepting the war of 
secession, was tlie contest over the result of the Presidential election of 187ti. The 
war of secession must have ended either as it did, in the restoration of the Union, 
or else in the formation of two republics, based on different systems, but equally rep- 
resented by strong and civilized governments. But if this last contest had reached 
no legal and peaceful solution, if it had resulted in the establishment of the jirinciple 
that a Presidential election may be determined by force alone, there would have been 
an end to constitutional government on this continent. We should have been de- 
graded to the condition of Mexico and the South American Reimblics, and could have 
looked forward to a future only of revolutions and counter revolutions, savage out- 
breaks, bloody i-etaliations, and despotic suppressions. 

The most dangerous feature in this contest was its sectional character. Mr. Tilden's 
majority came mainly from the South, having carried every Southern State, three of 
which were put in dispute by the cheating, fraudulent action of Returning Boards 
and the false certificates of State Governors. Mr. Hayes had a decided popular ma- 
jority in the Northern States, a majorfty accustomed to look upon any active assertion 
of Southern ideas in national politics with strong distrust and apprehension. In all 
of those States there was only one Democratic Legislature. The Republicans were in 
possession of all the governmental bureaus and of the powers exercised through 
them, as well as of the Presidency and its overshadowing povi^er. The constitution 
had provided no method of solution for this controversy, ami the need of a quick so- 
lution was imperious. Unfortunately the two Houses of Congress were divided polit- 
ically. The Republican Senate demanded the installation of Mr. Hayes, on the cer- 
tificates based on the returns of the Returning Boards, as the only lawful criterion of 
election. The Democratic House asserted its right to go behind those returns and 
investigate their truth. There was no mode of settling this issue, no arbiter, and no 
tribunal proviiled by the constitution. If, then, the Democratic party had insisted to 
the last upon the view of the House, had consented to no settlement except its own 
will, and had determined upon the installation of Mr. Tilden on the ground that the 
certificates and returns were false, while the Republicans held that those questions 
could not, under the constitution and the laws, be raised at all, what would have been 
the result? 



298 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

The Republicans would undoubteiily have inaugurated Mr. Hayes. The Republi- 
can Chief Justice would have sworn in bim, not Mr. Tilden. The Republican Senate 
would have recognized Mr. Hayes, would have confirmed all of his Cabinet and other 
appointments, and would have refused to entertain any nominations sent in by IMr. 
Tilden. The Republican bureaus would have been delivered over to Mr. Hayes' nom- 
inees, and would have been closed to those of Mr. Tilden. President Girant, with the 
entire military force of the United States at his command, would have supported Mr. 
Hayes with arms, and the Tilden government would have melted away like that of 
McEnery in Louisiana, or else it would have meant civil war. 

But, worse still, Mr. Tilden would have been forced to rely upon a solid and armed 
South against what would liave been shown to be a solid North, aroused to resist the 
rule of a President set up by what was called "the Confederate House." The Demo- 
cratic North was prepared for no such issue, and would not have gone into it. What- 
ever were their wishes and intentions, no Democratic Northern statesman could have 
withstood the outbreak of popular sentiment whenever the South, just admitted for 
the first time to its full equality in the Union, and that upon probation, and under a 
suspicion and a misgiving, should again plunge the nation into the horrors of a civil 
war. 

I go further. If the Northern Democrats had been willing to meet the issue in 
arms, even to blood (as they took special care to disclaim), I would never have con- 
sented. I know what civil war means, and you know it. 

Mr. Lamar here dwelt at some length upon what would have been 
the fatal consequences to the South had she suffered herself to be in- 
veigled into another war with the North for supremacy in the National 
Government, and said: 

Men may talk of courage and auilacity, but you know and I know that the men 
who lead in cruel convulsions are not alone they who pay the penalty of temerity. If 
any man thinks that it is a lack of courage not to be willing to confront such conse- 
quences and dangers, let him pass judgment upon me for my course on that occasion; 
but I thank my God that he gave me the moral courage to avoid them. Some pacific 
solution, then, was necessary ; and it was found in the Electoral Commission. I do 
not mean to examine it in detail nor to review its decisions. It was a Democratic 
measure, opposed by the Republicans, and by Senator Morton, who said: "It is a sure 
thing as it stands; why run any risks?" It was supported by men like Thurman, 
Bayard, and McDonald, who have stood side by side in the defense of Southern rights 
always; and it was voted for by every Democrat in the Senate, save one. 

If now you will review what I have said, I think yoii will not misunderstand my 
motives or my action. I had seen the South steadily improving at home, restored 
more fully year by year to her rights of self-government, taking her place with larger 
numbers and wider influence in the council of the nation; and doing all this with a 
temper, moderation, and patriotism that were fast convincing the general mass of the 
Northern people that tlie full and equal presence of the South in every department 
of the government was no longer a danger to tlie nation's security, not even a deduc- 
tion from it; but, on the contrary, a contribution to its highest interests. Our domes- 
tic troubles were lieginning to be justly and kindly appreciated, the difficulties in our 
way better coiiiiirehended, and the conviction was gaining ground everywhere that 
their solution must depend upon the Southern people, both black and white. The 
language of mistrust, of strong and angry condemnation, was rajiidly becoming the 
mere political slang of partisans; and we had the practical guaranty of safety from 
any new policy of oppression, in the full control of the Lower House of Congress. Of 
course I would have preferred to see Mr. Tilden inaugurated. I regarded him as one 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 209 

of the ablest of the many able leaders of the Democratic party, and one of tlie best 
representatives of its best ideas. I believed him elected, and was deeply tirieved at 
our loss of the precious fruits of tliat election. When I voted for the Electoral Com- 
mission I voted for the creation of a tril)unal which I believed was as apt to decide 
one way as the other; but wlien it decided i^ainst us I felt sure of these things: That 
any decision was better than force and civil war; that any civil commotion woulii be 
fatal to the people and to the prospects and prosperity of the South ; and that four 
years more of probation — if probation it could be called, with such a President as Mr. 
Hayes representing the Republican party, and with Congress Democratic — would, if 
we acted wisely, leave us stronger in ourselves, steadier in our policy, and in closer 
and more friendly relations with the people of the whole country. And the condition 
of the South and of the Democratic party to-day proves that I was right. 

Entertaining the views as to the impending crisis which he so clearly 
sets forth in this extract, it seems manifest that Mr. Lamar could only 
have acted as he did. Any other course would have been not merely 
culpable, but even criminal. 

Whatever calculations wore built upon the likelihood of the selection 
of Judge Davi.s as the fifteenth member of the Commission, and upon a 
possible bias upon his part toward the Democratic party, were doomed 
to disappointment. Pending the discussion of the electoral bill he was 
elected to the Senate from Illinois; and Judge Bradley was consequent- 
ly selected as the fifth justice, thus giving to the Eepublicans eight 
members of the fifteen. However, while this was felt to be unfavora- 
ble to the Democratic claims, there was still a very general hope that 
the distinguished men chosen to discharge so responsible and conspicu- 
ous a service would lay aside any party prepossessions, and determine 
all questions according to the very right and justice of each. 

The first controversy sitbmitted to the Commission was that over the 
conflicting certificates from Florida, on the 1st of February, when that 
State was reached on the alphabetical call. Its decision was rendered 
on the 9th, awarding the votes to Hayes and Wheeler, on tlie ground 
that it was not competent, under the constitution and the law, as it ex- 
isted at the date of the passage of the act creating the Commission, to 
go into evidence nJiunde on the iiapers opened by the President of the 
Senate— in brief, that the Governor's certificate, based upon the decision 
of the State Pteturning Board, was conclusive. A similar decision was 
rendered as to Louisiana on the 16th, and another as to South Carolina, 
on the 27th, of February. In the case of Oregon, the judgment ren- 
dered on the 23d was that the elector whose vote was challenged on the 
ground of his incompetency to hold the office was qualified; that under 
the laws of Oregon the duty of canvassing the votes and certifying the 
result to Washington devolved upon the Secretary of State alone; 
wherefore this vote must be also counted for Hayes and Wheeler. 

Aside from tlie exultation, on the one hand, and the chagrin, on the 
other, caused to partisanship by the result of these decisions, their 



300 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

anuouucement was a distiuct shock to the moral sense of the people. 
The Commissiou bad decided iu every iustauce on strict party lines, 
eight Eepublicaus voting steadily against seven Democrats. Despite 
the discussions about the possibility of such a course, there had still 
been a strong expectation otherwise; and that it should indeed prove 
so was a grievous disappointment to the country. The proud office of 
the Presidency was felt to be degraded by the rendition of an unjust 
judgment, and the sense of patriotism suffered. That men so able and 
good should apparently be susceptible to such influences staggered 
faith in iiuman virtue. It was not so much the decision as the method 
of it. Viewed from the standpoint of a State rights Democrat, and 
assuming that the Governors and Eeturniug Boards whose action was 
accorded such finality were lawful State officers, the principle of the 
decisions as anuourlced was intelligible, and their leasouiug difficult to 
combat. But that principle was now announced by a Kepublican ma- 
jority on a strict party vote, iu order to seat a candidate of their party, 
which party had theretofore persistently rejected that principle wholly 
as to the Southern States, and had not only claimed and asserted the 
right to investigate and interfere with elections in those States, but 
had also pidled down and set up their very governments at will. In 
the case of Louisiana, the Governor, whose certificate was relied on so 
absolutely, was one who was declared by many leading Eepublicaus, 
including committees of Congress, to have no title to his office; who 
had been installed iu it only l>y the illegal midnight order of a Federal 
judge without jurisdiction (afterwards impeached by the House for that 
very order), and who was maintained in his office only by the will of the 
President, backed by the United States Army. 

After the decision of the committee in the Louisiana case was an- 
nounced, the political feeling in the House became very intense. A 
certain proportion of the Democrats, about ninety in number, felt that 
they had been cheated and betrayed. They resorted to dilatory mo- 
tions in order to retartl the progress of the count, with the avowed 
object of preventing its completion, in which case it would have been 
the duty of the House t(j proceed, before the 4th of March, to the elec- 
tion, by States, of a President. Said one of those members, when 
taunted with filibustering in violation of the statute: "When fraud is 
the law, filibustering is patriotism." Says Mr. Cos: "The scenes iu 
the Ht)use were at times intensely exciting. The country seemed to be 
bordering on a revolution to be inaugurated in the Hall of Eepresen- 
tatives. . . . Mr. Speaker Eandall's resolute course during this memo- 
rable epoch may have saved the country from consequences even more 
serious than a fraudident Presidency." 

A large number of the Democrats refused to adopt this policy. It 
was distinctly and emphatically rejected in a party caucus. Having 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 301 

participated in the enactment of the statute in good faith and from 
motives of the highest patriotism, they resolved to carry it out loyally 
even though the result was bitter. With this number Mr. Lamar 
cooperated. He supported none of the dilatory motions, but unvary- 
ingly for\yarded the proper business of the House. 

He prepared a speech upon the subject of the decisions of the Com- 
mission, which, however, he did not deliver, presumably either for 
want of opportunity or because it seemed useless. It is of interest 
only as a presentation of his views upon this crisis. * 

Mr. Lamar might well thank God that he had been given the moral 
courage to do his duty in this troubled period. There were many 
temptations to shirk it. His own natural and very strong inclination 
to support Mr. Tilden at every risk was to be suppressed; and he 
neither lacked the zealous temperament nor a high and daring spirit, 
as was known to all who remembered him in 1861. Moreover, certain 
things were saying and doing about the pending measure and the gen- 
eral situation which are necessary to be noted in order to understand 
the trials of spirit to which he was subjected. 

Throughout Mississippi, and indeed through tlie entire South, there 
was, not a general, but a very common and emphatic opposition to the 
electoral bill. Thousands of ardent Democrats, flushed with the heat 
of victory, confident iu the justice of their claims, skeptical about the 
determination of the Republicans to resist, and regarding their bold 
front as only a political blutf, oversure of the resolution of the Demo- 
crats of tlie whole nation to resort if necessary to the final test of force, 
unaware of the depth and danger of the pitfalls before their party iu 
pursuing any policy of force— demanded persistence to the end, without 
compromises, without regard to consequences, and at all risks. The 
newspapers were prolific of such sentiments, and abounded in elaborate 
editorials on "The Eight of Resistance," and similar topics. Such 
Democratic leaders as did not respond to these extreme views, and 
manifested a disposition to adopt more conservative courses, were often 
denounced as traitors to the Democratic party. They who were of this 
school were a minority, it is true; but it was a minority, positive, ag- 
gressive, and noisy. On the other hand, the majority, who were more 
pacifically disposed, were neither so assured that they were right nor 
so vociferous in respect to their convictions. It was just the condition 
in which, if one had in him any element of demagogy, he would be 
sadly puzzled to know which turn to take; for if the event proved the 
minority right, it might mean political ruin to him who withstood them. 

The minority in this instance numbered also some of Mr. Lamar's 
warmest personal friends— men for whom he had strong attachments, 

♦Appendix No. 15. 



302 . • LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

and whose politicfil sagacity he was wont to count npou largely. Espe- 
cially was this true of the able aud patriotic editor of Tlie Clarion, Mr. 
Barksdale, who, uutil this period, had been of the greatest assistance 
to Mr. Lamar iu his public duties. Here, however, was laid the foun- 
dation of an estrangement which lasted for years (being overcome only 
after Mr. Lamar went into Mr. Cleveland's Cabinet), and converted The 
Clarion to lukewarmuess if not open hostility. 

There was another, aud to Mr. Lamar a far more trying, feature. No 
man ever regarded his political convictions with a deeper reverence 
than did he, and no man ever had less respect for a political turncoat; 
yet no sooner was the fact fully developed, after the election, that there 
was to be a serious contest of Mr. Tilden's election, and that his inaug- 
uration was doubtful, than sensational newspaper stories began to cir- 
culate, charging or insinuating various forms of political disloyalty, 
some of which more or less directly connected Mr. Lamar's name. 

Early in December it was said that Col. Lamar and Gen. Wade 
Hampton were plotting with Gov. Hayes on the basis that the South 
would acquiesce in the fraudulent counting of the Returning Boards 
and support the administration of Mr. Hayes, provided he would agree 
to discountenance the carpetbaggers and distribute the official pat- 
ronage in the South among Democrats. This report elicited an in- 
formal denial from Mr. Lamar, in which he is represented as saying 
to tlie reporter that, "so far as his name is connected with certain re- 
ports as to the views of Gov. Hayes, there is no truth in the story. 
Mr. Lamar has not seen Gen. Hampton since the war, nor communicated 
with him, except l)y telegrams which have been jjublished. He never 
saw Gov. Hayes iu his life, nor ever communicated with him either 
directly or indirectly." 

Another absurd story, a little later, was to the effect that Mr. Lamar 
was offered a place in Mr. Hayes' cabinet on condition that he would 
support that gentleman's claim to the Presidency. Of this report, " Col. 
Lamar said tliat no such offer had been made, aud if it had, he would have 
declined to receive it. If any proposition should be made to him from 
that quarter with regard to the settlement of the Presidential question, 
he should at once submit it to a caucus of his party." Apropos of such 
rumors, the papers had much to say to the effect that "the Radicals 
have been deluding themselves with the belief that they could alienate 
the Southern Democrats from their Northern allies, and thus make 
the Hayes usurpation jn'ogramme more certain of success." . . . 

To one constituted like Mi-. Lamar it would have been impossible to 
offer an affront more galling than liberties of this exact shape, taken 
with his name and character; and no dread could have borne more 
heavily upon him than the fear of giving such reports, however un- 
founded in fact, color by his political course. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 303 

Of the papers which assailed him in this maimer, one of the most oE- 
feusive was the Union, a uew Democratic daily published iu Washiug- 
tou under the direction of Mr. Montgomery Blair. On the 5th of Jan- 
uary appeared a column editorial, iu which Mr. Hayes was charged with 
conspiring with the Southern leaders, and Mr. Lamar with the chief en- 
terprise of the intrigue on tiieir part. The St. Louis Republic said of 
this editorial that in Washington its appearance " caused considerable 
excitement. Ou first impulse Mr. Lamar wrote a card to Mr. Blair 
wiiich meant fight, or it meant nothing; but up to this hour he has, by 
advice of his friends, withheld from sending it to Mr. Blair or giving it 
out for publication. . . . Mr. Lamafs theory of these assaults, 
there having been one or two of less severity within a few days, is that 
it is nieaut as a punishment for his support of the Texas Pacific Rail- 
way." 

Mr. Lamar sent to Mr. Blair a friend, who pronounced the charges 
false, and demanded a retraction of the same; and tlie following is what 
Mr. Blair stated iu his paper of the next day, the 6th of January: 

Mb. L. Q. C. Lajiar— .1 Correclion.—Vfe said yesterday that "we had heard of no 
one of the Southern Senators save only Mr. Lamar who thinks it belongs to the Sen- 
ate tlirough its presiding otKcer to make the President." 

We have learned since the publication from the best antliority th.it we were misin- 
f(irn:ied respecting Mr. Lamar on tiie point in question; that from tirst to last he has 
entertained directly the contrary opinion, holding that it is settled lieyond controversy 
by the terms of the constitution and by the uniform usage under it that it belongs 
to Congress to count the electoral vote, and that the duty of the President of the Sen- 
ate extends only to the safe keeping of the packages and to breaking the seals in the 
presence of the two Houses of Congress. 

We make the correction with unfeigned pleasure, and regret very much having 
been misled to do Mr. Lamar injustice. We take the occasion also to say that noth- 
ing short of the positive statement by persons whom we had every reason to rely upon 
could have misled us. We had no distrust of ^Mr. Lamar, and approve entirely the 
liberal course by which, as nuichas by his great ability, he has attained his high posi- 
tion in the councils of the nation. 

On the 5th of March :Mr. Richard Malcolm Johnston wrote to Mr. La- 
mar from Maryland a letter of condolence on the late death of his 
cousin, Lavoisier Lamar, which included this paragraph: 

I have been much concerned to notice the charges against you of confederating 
with the Republicans to defeat the inauguration of Mr. Tilden. I need not assure 
you that I have regarded them as having no foundation in truth. If you think a let- 
ter from you now would tend to place you right in the face of the public, suppose you 
write to me and allow me to publish. 

Indorsed on this letter is the brief of his answer, apparently for the 

use of his secretary: 

My cousin Lavoisier was as near to nie as my own brother, and was one of the no- 
blest men on earth. As to my connection with politics, I am a Democrat, shall al- 
ways be a conservative Democrat, and do not expect to act « ith any other party. But 



.// 



304 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

a public maii'fi status must bedeflued liy his acts and course, and not by studied !,s- 
surances; tlierefore decline to publish this letter. 

So far as the reports of political apostacy are concerned, they were 
not entertained for a morueut in Mississippi. Even those papers and 
persons wlio differed most positively from Mr. Lamar in respect to his 
course about the Commission spoke of this matter as " absurd " and 
" impossible." It was only in other States that they arrested any atten- 
tion of a more serious nature. 

On the 6th of March his friend, Mr. Goar, wrote him from Tupelo, 
Miss., that 

. . . Our people are very much depressed here, cursing everybody, you with 
the balance. They talk like you, Gordon, and Hill could have had the thing your own 
way if you had tried. This will pass away after a little while, though. 

These details, trivial as history, are yet significant as biography. 
Staunch and loyal as was Mr. Lamar, devoted to his section and peo- 
ple as he was, disinterested, proud of his luitarnished record and repu- 
tation, the suspicion of him and the " cursing " cut him to the very soul. 
Yet it is characteristic of his self-poise and fortitude that he gave no 
public expression of his feelings, nor anything more than the faintest 
trace of it in his most jn'ivate correspondence. 

On the 26th of Aj^ril he wrote to his wife: 

I wish you knew how happy your stay with me made me. ... It brightened 
an existence in which for months every day had liroiight its sting, loaded v.'ith dread 
of evil, and piling upon me disappointments in others and failures in myself. . . . 
I have no happiness outside of your love and presence. I wish I could go home to 
you. I know everything looks beautiful; and if I had the means. of support there, I 
would stay there all my life. ... I hope you will go to see our friends in Grenada. 
I love them so much beyond any others I have. I have more confidence in Gen. 
Walthall than I have in any man on earth. No man has such a bold upon my afl'ec- 
tions as he has; and, my wife, it will Ije a great happiness to me if you will enter into 
and sliare with me the warm, grateful, and loyal fiiendship I bear to them. 

At this time, too, he corresponded with parties in Georgia looking to 
the purchase of the old Lamar homestead, evidently contemplating the 
possilnlity that things might take such a turn for him that it would be 
desirable to retire to the shades of private life permanently. 

The struggle over the Presidential election was lost to the Demo- 
crats, it is true; but so far as the Snuthern section of that party was con- 
cerned, it was written in the book of fate that they were to secure, even 
in defeat, something of the fruits of victory. The great want of the 
Southern States was the reestablishmeut of local self-government. 
Undue Federal interference in the domestic affairs, now protracted 
through ten years, was felt to be the most serious trouble of the nation. 
What had most concerned the people of the South in the election was 



ins LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 305 

not the public debt and finances, nor civil service reform, nor the tariff. 
These all sunk into insignificance by comparison with the one absorb- 
ing topic of relief from the domination, by military interference, of the 
Federal Government. No political liberty could exist, it was felt, or 
political virtue remain, within the gleam of the bayonet. The with- 
drawal of those troops whose in-esence in the South at ouce suggested, 
facilitated, and typified such interference, was the great political de- 
sideratum. 

In July preceding, Mr. Hayes, in his letter acce])ting the Presiden- 
tial noLuination, had used language which was regarded as promising a 
. more lenient policy in Southern affairs. This language, although sus- 
ceptible of two very different interpretations, according to the point of 
view of the reader, was, on the whole, regarded in the South as favora- 
ble to the wishes of the white people of that section. It gave some 
hope, although not a strong one, that in case of his election Mr. Hayes 
would be less inclined to employ military interference in State affairs 
than President Grant had been. Even this hope was again modified 
by the gravest doubts as to how far Mr. Hayes would be permitted by 
his party leaders to carry into practical operation the policy indi- 
cated, at the peril of losing to the Eepublicau party the electoral votes 
of four States. 

When, therefore. President Hayes, in his inaugural address, expressly, 
elaborately, and emphatically reiterated the sentiments of his letter of 
acceptance, and declared that " the fact is clear that in the progress of 
events the time has come when ' wise, honest, and peaceful self-govern- 
ment' is an imperative necessity, required by all the varied interests, 
public and j)rivate, of those States," he was considered to have pledged 
himself, in the most ])ublic and solemn manner, to a reversal of the ex- 
isting policy. "The inaugural address," says Mr. Blaine, "did not 
give satisfaction to the Eadical Eepublicans, but was received with 
every mark of approbation by the more conservative elements of the 
party." * On the other hand, the Democrats were immensely pleased. 
This, said they, would be all that the Southern Democracy could ask; 
would it not be a splendid vindication of their policy if a Eepublican 
President should be compelled by the force of public opinion. North as 
well as South, to indorse and enforce it, as President Hayes has prom- 
ised to do? In the executive session of the Senate which followed his in- 
auguration the Southern Senators all rallied to the support of the Presi- 
dent against the oppositions which developed in his own party. Expect- 
ancy stood on tiptoe watching for the early day when the troops should 
be withdrawn, and the Chamberlain and Packard governments of South 
Carolina and Louisiana should explode like bubbles from their own in- 
ability to hold together. There was delay, however. Much to the dis- 

20 * Twenty Years of Congress; Vol. II., p. 595. 



306 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

aiipointment of the Southern people, aud somewhat to their chagrin, 
the " reversal of policy " was uot at ouce effected. 

The sitijatiou was manifestly a seriously embarrassing one to Presi- 
dent Hayes. The State governments which he was called upon by the 
new departure to renounce, or at least to decline to support, based their 
title to power upon the very elections at which the electors were chosen 
by whose votes Mr. Hayes had been declared elected. Mr. Blaine's 
"Radical liepublieans" asserted confidently, and with show of reason, 
that to dishonor the titles of those governments was to dishonor his 
own. On the 6th of March a skirmish occurred in the Senate between Mr. 
Thurmau and Mr. Blaine over the question of Mr. Kellogg's admission 
as Senator from Louisiana, in which these ideas were strongly developed. 
Mr. Blaine insisted that the decision of the Electoi-al Commission was 
conclusive on this matter, as well as upon the Presidency. Mr. Thur- 
man maintained that the decision was entirely irrelevant, since the 
Commission only held that it could not go behind the returns, while the 
Senate is, by express enactment of the constitution, the judge of the 
election of its members: 

Mr. Blaine: " Do I understand the Senator from Ohio, then, to maintain that the 
Returning Board was good euougli to count in tlie electors for President, but not good 
enough to deterniine who was Governor?" 

Mr. Thurman: "If the Senate asks my opinion,! say it was not good for anything 
except to be hung." [Laughter.] 

Mr. Blaine: "I believe the gentlemen in Louisiana, whom the Senator from Ohio 
represents in his opinions, hold that the Electoral Commission deserve about the same 
thing, or at least eight of them." 

Mr. Thurman: "A majority." [Laughter.] 

Thereupcm Mr. Blaine, adverting to the fact "that there has been a 
great deal said here and there in the corridors of the capitol, around 
and about, in by-places and in high places of late, that some arrange- 
ment had been made by which Packard was not to be recognized and 
upheld, that he was to be allowed to slide by and Nicholls was to be 
accepted as Governor of Louisiana," made a short but very heated 
speech denying the report. He denied it without being authorized to 
speak for the administration; he denied it on the ground of its inher- 
ent impossibility; he denied it because President Hayes possessed 
character, common sense, self-respect, and patriotism. Mr. Blaine's 
speech was apjjarently made to voice the sense and feeling of that wing 
of his party which he represented, and, if j)ossible, to disconcert and 
intimidate the President. The opposition indicated by that speech 
seems to have retarded Mr. Hayes' action for a time. The question of 
removing the troops was brought before the Cabinet, and there it was 
opposed by some of the members. The final determination, reached in 
March, was to appoint a commission, who should jjroceed to Louisiana 
and ascertain whether it was practicable to withdraw the troops with- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 307 

out giving rise to civil commotious between the adherents of the rival 
State goveriimeuts, This step was by no means satisfactory to the 
Southern people. It meant delay, and it might mean either a retention 
of the old status or a recognition of the Packard government. 
On this subject Mr. Lamar addressed the President this letter: 

Washington, 2105 Pennsylvania Avenue, March 22, 1877. 
To THE President op the United States. 

Mr. President : A severe illness has alone prevented my calling upon you before 
this, and my regret at my "disability has been intensified to positive distress by the 
news that you had decided to send a commission to Louisiana. 

I respectfully ask you to read what I am about to say with a candid allowance for 
that difference of opinion which, in public affairs, must exist between men of equally 
patriotic and disinterested purposes. 

The position toward your administration which has been taken by Southern Sen- 
ators, m solido, rests upon the foundiition of your inaugural address, viz.: that you 
would not consent to sustain, by unconstitutional interposition of the Federal forces. 
State governments which had no support in the character, the intelligence, and the 
material interests of the States which they misruled. We felt that this resolution, 
promptly and firmly carried into eflect, gave to the South tliat for whicli she had 
most earnestly contended. Believing this, we were willing to suppress the disap- 
pointment at the loss of a political victory which seemed so near and so precious, and 
to mark our sense of the justice and wisdom of such a course by giving you that cor- 
dial support which extreme partisans in your own political following seemed unwill- 
ing to give. But the support, to be honorable to us and useful to you, must have a 
sure foundation. 

When you made the decLaration in your inaugural thei-e were but two States to 
which your language could ajjply, and the universal sense of the country made the 
innnediate application. It was understood that you meant to withdraw the troops 
from South Carolina and Louisiana; to say, as your predecessor, Mr. Van Buren, had 
said in a not dissimilar case, that the differences between the local authorities of a 
State were not subjects for the armed intervention of the Federal Government. 

All that was required was an order to withdraw the troops from those States where 
they were a postive interference with the popular will, and in which the condition 
produced by their presence was a daily violation of your own sense of constitutional 
right, and threatened still further and more mischievous complication. Upon that 
subject we thought you had made up your mind ; and indeed, Mr. President, you told 
me that you had. 

I cannot conceal from you the extreme concern which I feel lest your present 
decision be considered as implying a doubt as to the possiliility of your action. 
In reality it is so considered. The facts are all before you. Without undertaking to 
extenuate or exaggerate, nothing is more certain to-day than the fact that the Pack- 
ard and Chamberlain governments do not have the support of the character, intelli- 
gence, or property of Louisiana and South Carolina, and that they exist in these 
States only so long as they are supjiorted by you. If they were the best governments 
in the world, as they are confessedly the worst, this would be sufficient, upon the 
principles of your inaugural. No commission can alter the truth ; no commission can 
make it clearer. You know, and they know, that if the troops are withdrawn these 
governments will not exist a month. 

More than that, the country recognized the fact and the justice of the spirit in 
which you proposed to deal with it. Had your order lieen issued the day ujjon 
which vour Cabinet was confirmed, not one man in the Republic would have been 



308 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

surprised; and nothing but the delay so far lias encouraged, in some quarters, the 
hojie that possibl)- the policy of the inaugural will be abandoned. But every day's 
delay does make that a possibility. Men who dared not ojipose what your constitu- 
tional duty so plainly prescribed and the people so universally demanded are begin- 
ning to hope that you can refuse the one and avoid the other. 

I know that deliberate action is wise; but in many cases prompt action is the best 
considered, because its wisdom consists in its promptness. I know that you desire, 
and properly desire, to carry the American people with you, slep by step; but they 
were with you when you started in this course, and they are not faltering now. 

No, sir; your declaration of what you would do prevented a fearful crisis at the 
South, but the tension is too severe. If you would achieve what you have begun, you 
must do as you said that you would do. 

This commission is a declaration of doubt on your part. Mr. President, there can 
be no doubt. If this case is again to be argued, we Southern Senators cannot be found 
in alliance with those who maintain any other ground. Southern Senators will not 
hear in silence the slanderous denunciations heretofore uttered on the flooi- of the 
Senate. We cannot join in any palliation of the enormous iniquity of those State 
governments. We cannot willingly acquiesce in the delay which is to be prolonged 
at the expense of so much suffering and in the face of so much danger. 

As for the opposition to your policy by some of your own household, it will be op- 
posed to the end ; nothing will reconcile them to the aliandonment of the gras]) which 
party has upon those afflicted States. By others it will be opposed so lont; as you al- 
low it to be a subject of discussion ; but their opjiosition will vanish before the simple 
words, " I will." 

The American people understand this question to-day perfectly. These govern- 
ments cannot last. Tliey will not be maintained. Military domination you can es- 
tablish down there, but carpetbag governments you cannot uphold without a tremen- 
dous army in each State. Withdraw the troops at once, and youi- act will be recog- 
nized with gratitude, because it will secure the peaceful and quiet dissolution of those 
pretended governments. But allow this action to be the subject of prolonged and 
angry discussion, let the Southern people feel that it is doubtful whether tlieir cour- 
ageous patience will win them justic'e, and you will not secure those governments; 
they will go as certainly as at your bidding, but they will go amid the wrath of an in- 
dignant and outraged people, and leave you as a legacy questions far more dangerous 
in their settlement. 

I wish I could make you realize how hopefully I relied on the honesty of your 
purpose, the patriotism of your intention; but this dilatory jiolicy means certain fail- 
ure and fearful esasjierations. Believe me when I say, as sincerely and anxiously as 
man ever spoke, that it is due to yourself, to your own party, to the country (may I 
not say to us of the South?), to adopt in this matter a policy as prompt as it is positive. 

For myself, I have, as perhaps you know, gone great lengths in the policy of con- 
ciliation. I would go even further to secure peace to my troubled land. [/ hiow thai 
men v<ho liave loved me are her/inning to grow cold in their affections; I know that men who 
have trusted me have begun to falter in their confidence. I have no thought of turning back, or 
even pausing; for I know my purpoae, and, till now, thought I knew my means; and you must 
permit me to enter my solemn and sorrovful protest against a policy of delay which I cannot 
support because I lielieve it fatal both to you and to the Sovth.^'} 

I regarded you as one who was about to introduce an era destined to be illustrious 
as one of [leace, prosperity, and nationality. But to-day I hardly dare to Iriok that 
hope steadfastly in the face, k^t it be shown to bean unreality; and you must permit 
me to enter my solemn and sorrowful protest against your policy of delay. 

'>TIie italicized part was cut out, and sneoeeding paragrapli substituted. — [E. M.] 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 309 

I have written this in piclcneps. I trust tliat in vvliat I liave said I have shown the 
respect I entertain lor you personally, and oliicially the just appreciation I have of 
the grave responsibility you bear. 

What effect this letter had upon the President, or whether it had any, 
it seems impossible now to say. On the next day the President sent his 
letters to Governors Hampton and Chamberlain inviting them to a con- 
ference; and twelve days later the troops were ordered out of the State 
House in South Carolina; and in Louisiana, on the 24th of April, in 
pursuance of the recommendation of the Commission. And so the armed 
intervention in the South came to an end amidst great rejoicings. The 
Chamberlain and Packard governments disappeared as silently and 
as swiftly as cloud shadows. 

" No act of President Hayes," says Mr. Blaine, " did so much to cre- 
ate discontent within the ranks of the Eepublican party." The North- 
ern and the Southern Radicals were alike much exasperated. Mr. 
James Eedpath, a Kadical journalist, who had been connected with the 
Boutwell Investigating Committee, published an open letter addressed 
to the colored sheriff of Jefferson County, Mississippi, in which he de- 
nounced President Hayes as having surrendered the rights of the black 
people, and advised those people to cooperate with the Southern Denio- 
crats. Some Southern Eepublicans, however, were more reasonable in 
their views; for instance, Judge H. A. Hill, of the United States Court 
for Mississippi, wrote to Mr. Lamar in May, that, 

So far as I am informed, peace, quiet, and good will prevail in this State between 
all parties and races. We sincerely trust that the new policy will prove a success, re- 
gardless of extremists on both sides. What we want is the promotion of the interests 
of the people; mere partisan interests are a matter of secondary consideration. 

The Southern Democrats, on the other hand, were by no means dis- 
satisfied with the turn of events. They were pleased with the position 
of Mr. Hayes, and their pleasure was not lessened by seeing that he had 
made enemies of the men who were so very inimical to themselves. 
Their sense of injury in his installation w-as modified to a great extent; 
and to this day they regard his administration kindly, as that of a man 
who meant, for the first time for a number of years, to be the President 
of a united country, and not the mere leader of a party. 

In his speech of 1879, already quoted from in this chapter, Mr. Lamar 
had this to say on these general subjects: 

After the remarks already given, Mr. Lamar "then proceeded to show that, not- 
witlistanding tlie sore disappointment it gave in depriving the Democratic party of 
the fruits of its victory, the decisions of the Electoral Commission involved some 
principles which will be of great importance and benefit in the future. He spoke of its 
declaration of the supreme right of self-government of a State in tlie Federal elec- 
tions, and its denial of the power of the Federal Government to examine or question 
it; also of its formal recognition, for the Federal Government, for the first time since 
the war, that an issue between the North and the South should be referred to the arbi- 
tration of reason and law, and not to force. 



310 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

" There was a third benefit, one which lie liad confidently anticipated. Mr. Lamar 
here quoted the concluding paragraph of his speech upon the Electoral Commission 
Bill, and then continued: 'Now, has not this anticipation been verified? Is it not 
true that Mr. Hayes, in the first two years of his administration, pursued a policy 
which has brought upon him the hostile opposition of the leading men of his own 
party? And, at the same time, has he not had to depend for the success of many of 
his measures upon the support and cooperation of his political opponents? 

"' Within two months from tlie day on which he assumed executive power there 
was not left in the South a trace of the unconstitutional force which had tyrannized 
over it. For the first time since the war South Carolina and Louisiunii Aveie free, sov- 
ereign, and independent States, governed at home and represented in the national 
councils by their own people. 

" ' However strongly I have had occasion to differ with Mr. Hayes, and however 
strongly I shall hereafter have to oppose his policy, I must say in justice to him that 
he has, since his inauguration, been tlie kind and impartial Chief ^Magistrate of the 
whole country. His selection of a Cabinet was itself a favorable augury.' Mr. Lamar 
here spoke at length of Mr. Evarts as tlie able and eloquent jurist and advocate who 
declared that the blow struck at self-government in Louisiana was a blow at the safety 
and dignity of New York, and who, in his great place, has never spoken in language 
unbecoming to an American statesman. He also spoke in comjilimentary terms of 
Carl Schurz, who, he said, dared to oppose a Republican administration in the pleni- 
tuile of its power because he thought its ends unwise and corrupt and its methods op- 
pressive to the South. He also referred in kind terms to the Secretary of War, to the 
Secretary of the Navy, and to the Postmaster General. He was sorry to be con- 
strained to add that the Secretary of the Treasury, whose rancorous partisanship, vio- 
lent sectionalism, misrepresentation, and abuse of the South were well-known to his 
audience, could receive no encomiums at his hands. 

"'Of my opposition to the action of the President, in its relation to that of the Sen- 
ate and House of Representatives in the last extra session of Congress, I shall have 
something to say hereafter; but this much I felt in honor bound to say: that up to a 
few days past he has not violated a Southern right or wounded a Southern feeling. I 
say, up to a few days past; because his recent utterance was harsh, ungracious, and 
unjust.'" 

The general drift of public sentiment upon these matters early in 
1877, after the first sjDasm of disappointment had passed, is expressed 
in the following letter, of May 14, to Mr. Lamar from Hon. Jeff. Wilson, 
a prominent lawyer of Poutotoc: 

I must say to you in all candor that your course as a public man for the last few 
months meets with almost universal approval. Mississippi will overwhelmingly sus- 
tain you in what you have done, and no mistake. 

The policy of President Hayes in relation to Soiith Carolina and Louisiana meets 
the approbation of all classes, except ]Mr. Carpetbagger and such extremists, belonging 
to the one party or the otlier, as Col. Flournoy. I learn that he lacks something of 
being entirely happy. 

Nevertheless, there was enough of objection and criticism to make 
Mr. Lamar pass many au unhapi^y hour, in which respect his case was 
not exceptional. 




SENATOR L. Q. C. LAMAR. 



CHAPTER XX. 

Doubts About Admission to Senate — Causes Thereof— Elections of 1875 — The Bout- 
well Committee of Investigation — Correspondence— Reports of the Boutwell Com- 
mittee — The Presidential Contest Intervenes — The Comjilication with Kellogg's 
Case — Mr. Blaine's Unexpected Turn — Seated — The Democratic State Convention 
of 1877 — Independentism in Mis^^issippi — Gen. George's Addres.s to the Conven- 
tion — Mr. Lamar a Member — Speaks — Silver— Platform of 1877 — Called Session 
of the Forty-fifth Congress— Speech on the Seating of Senator Butler, of South Car- 
olina. 

THE preceding chapter finishes the story of Mr. Lamar's career as 
a member of the House. The Senatorial term to which he had . 
been elected in January, 1876, was to begin March 4, 1877; but it was 
by no means a foregone conclusion that it would be allowed to begin at 
all. It yet remained to be seen whether the State of Mississijjpi could 
seat a Democratic member in the Senate of the United States. 

The Southern pi-ess, not that of Mississippi alone, had much to say 
about that problem. The following qiiotation from the Macon (Ga. ) Tcle- 
(jntph and Mesaeiu/er of January 8, 1876, is a fair example of this vein 
of speculation, and is moreover interesting from its citation of ex-Sena- 
tor Eevels' letter: 

We say (/ he gets to the Senate. His election of course is a matter of moral cer- 
tainty, but the ultras of the Senate under the lead of Morton will doubtless make a 
vigorous eflbrt to set aside the election on the charge that the result was procured by ■ 
intimidation. Wiiat is the probability of success to their enterprise, we are unal)le to 
say ; but tiie letter writers generally predict a failure. The actual facts, many of them 
claim, were given in a letter of ex-Senator Revels (negro) to President Grant, writ- 
ten immediately after the election. Here is the way Revels spoke of the condition of 
affairs in INIississippi, and just now his statement is peculiarly interesting: 

"Since reconstruction the masses of my people have been, as it were, enslaved in 
mind by unprincipled adventurers, who, caring nothing for the country, were willing to 
stoop to anything, no matter how infamous, to secure power to themselves and perpetu- 
ate it. My people are naturally Republicans, but as they grow older in freedom so do 
they in wisdom. A great portion of them have learned that they were being used as 
mere tools; and, as in the late election, not being able to correct the existing evil 
among themselves, they determined, by casting their ballots against these unprinci- 
pled adventurers, to overthrow them. 

"My people have been told by these schemers, when men were placed upon the 
ticket who were notoriously corrupt and dishonest, that they nmst vote for them ; 
that the salvation of the party depended upon it; that the man who scratched a tick- 
et was not a Republican. This is only one of the many means these malignant dem- 
agogues have devised to perpetuate the intellectual bondage of my people. To defeat 
the policy at the late election, men, irrespective of race or party affiiliation, united and 
voted together against men known to be incompetent and dishonest. I canncjt rec- 
ognize, nor do the masses of my people who read recognize, the majority of the officials 
who have been in power for the past two years as Republicans. 

(311) 



312 LUCIVS Q. a LAMAR: 

" We do not believe that Repiiblicani:?!!! means corruption, theft, and embezzlement- 
Tliese thn-e otlenses have been prevalent among a great portion of our ofliceholders. 
To them must be attributed tlie defeat of the Republican i^arty in the State, if defeat 
there was; but I, with all the light before me, look upon it as an uprising of the peo- 
ple, the whole people, to crush out corrupt rings and men from power. The bitterness 
and hate created by the late civil strife have, in my opinion, been obliterated in this 
State, except perhaps in some localities; and would have long since been entirely ef- 
faced were it not for some unpi'incipled men who v/ould keep alive the bitterness of 
the past and inculcate a hatred between the races in order tliat they may aggrandize 
themselves by ofSce and its emoluments to control my people, the effect of which is 
to degrade them. 

" I give you my opinion that, had our State administration adhered to Reimblican 
principles and stood by the platform upon which it was elected, the State to-day would 
have been on the highway of prosperity. If the State administration had advanced 
patriotic measures, appointed only honest men to office, and sought to restore confi- 
dence between the races, bloodshed would have been unknown, peace would have 
[irevailed, Federal interference been unthought of, and harmony, friendship, and mu- 
tual confidence would have taken the place of the bayonet. In conclusion, let me say 
to you, and through you to the great Republican party of the North, that I deem it 
my duty in behalf of my people that I i^resent these facts in order that they and the 
white people (their former owners) should not suffer misrepresentation, which certain 
demagogues seem desirous of encouraging." 

Mr. Lamar himself regarded his admission as an opien question, and a 
question of gravest doubt. During the entire year of 1876 his letters 
to his wife abounded in sentences lilvS this: "If I get my seat in the 
Senate, I shall be able to help Lucius; if I do not, he will have to help 
me." In January, 1877, he was corresponding with Mr. Mayes, his nom- 
inal law partnei', about a possible resumption of active practice. 

In order to understand the causes of this doubt and the obstacles to 
be overcome it is necessary to revert to the elections of 1875, and to re- 
call briefly the history of the "Boutwell Committee." 

In those elections, it will be remembered, the white people had by 
thorovigh organization and hard work effected their political deliverance 
from the Ames wiug of the Repiiblican party. They had succeeded in 
electing the State Treasurer, four of the six members of Congress, and 
an overwhelming majority of the Legislature in both branches. That 
Legislature had chosen Col. Lamar as Senator to succeed Senator Al- 
corn, and it had also impeached Gov. Ames. 

The Radicals, however, did not acquiesce quietly in their defeat in 
Mississippi. Knowing that a large majority of the registered voters of 
the State were negroes, they repudiated utterly all evidence that any 
considerable number of colored men had voted the Democratic ticket. 
They postulated the proposition that all black votes must be Republi- 
can votes; wherefore it followed that a Democratic victory could be ob- 
tained only by force or fraud, or both. 

Hardly had Congress met when, on December 15, 1875, Mr. Morton 
introduced in the Senate a resolution requiring the appointment of a 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 313 

committee of five to proceed to Mississippi for the purpose of investi- 
gating tlie circumstances attending the elections and directing the com- 
mittee to report before the end of the current session. This resolution 
was not pressed actively until after the Christmas holidays. In Janu- 
ary, however, it was urged earnestly and with political speeches of great 
acrimony. 

The resolution finally passed. The committee was composed of Sen- 
ators Boutwell (Chairman), Cameron of Wisconsin, McMillan of Min- 
nesota, Bayard of Delaware, and McDonald of Indiana; the last two 
being Democrats, the others Republicans. The appointment of this 
committee was regarded in Mississippi as nothing but another partisan 
measure, intended to manufacture capital for the approaching Presi- 
dential election, and to regain the grasp of the Radicals upon the State. 

On the 7th of March Mr. Lamar wrote to Gen. Walthall about the 
committee as follows: 

A bill has been introduced in tlie Senate to appropriate money to pay tiie expenses 
of tiie committee. It could be prevented by tlie House, but to do so would lie viola- 
tive of the rule which prevails between the two branches of the Legislature, and would 
be regarded as a stifling of the investigation for fear of exposure. . . . Boutwell is 
a bitter man, and he will push the investigation and find out all that was done which 
was wrong, if anything wrong was done. He was put at the head of the committee for 
that reason. . . . The investigation will be very hostile in its spirit. It was se- 
lected, in its leadership at least, upon the principle that if you follow a buzzard you 
will find carrion. He pretends to believe that we are striving to get up another re- 
bellion. 

And again on the same day: 

The appointment of Boutwell to the Chairmanship of the Investigating Committee 
has already deprived the investigation of much of its moral power. An extremely 
bitter report, full of exaggeration, is expected ; and the public is prepared for all sorts 
of " shocking revelations." If he now tries to be fair and impartial, it will be regard- 
ed as a breaking down of the attack. There is this much good in the selection of this 
notorious and vindictive Radical politician; but our friends must be prepared for a 
relentless, incessant, indefatigable war of detraction and calumny. 

It will be remembered that the movement for the imiieachmeut of 
Gov. Ames was inaugurated in the State Legislature on the 6th of Jan- 
uary by a motion in the House by Gen. Featherston for the appoint- 
ment of a committee of investigation. While that committee was tak- 
ing testimony, and before it reported, and when the movement for the 
Boutwell Committee was approaching its consummation, this letter was 
written to Col. Lamar, then in Washington, by Col. Reuben O. Rey- 
nolds, one of the leaders of the State Senate: 

J.\CKsoN, Miss., February 16, 1876. 

Dear Colonel : . . . The Act of Congress of July 25, 1866, provides that it shall 
be the duty of the Governor to certify the election of Senator to the President of the 
Senate of the United States, which certificate shall be countersigned by the Secretary 
of State of the State. In company with Senator Allen we called on Gov. Ames, called 



314 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

his attention to tlie Act of Congress, and requested liim to give his certiticate of your 
election. He replied that he was threatened with impeachment, and during the 
pendency of these proceedings he would decline to do any executive business. I 
asked him if this was the only reason why he declined to give the certificate. He re- 
plied that it was a reason. He tlid not decline to issue the certificate, but simply re- 
fused to do it now, stating that Congress would not adjourn until June, and there was 
ample time to give the certificate. 

I do not think there is anything in Ames' refusal, but I intend to see some discreet 
members and confer with them further about it. If it is ground of impeachment, the 
House will take charge of it; though 1 doubt the policy of such a course, as it makes 
the issuanceof your certificate a political question, and adds that much weight again.st 
your aduiission into the Senate. 

The resignation of Gov. Ames ou the 29th of March and the inaugu- 
ration of Gov. Stone as his successor removed all difficulty about the 
certificate of election; but there remained the Boutwell Committee, and 
there remained the policy of the majority of the Senate, of which that 
committee was the exponent. Clearly there were still breakers ahead. 

The committee did not report until near the end of the long session, 
late in the summer, only three months before the Presidential election. 
The nature of the report was such as to justify the expectations men- 
tioned in Mr. Lamar's letter quoted above, and the opinion of its pur- 
pose which the Democratic papers had expressed. 

The majority report, signed by the three Republican members, first 
denied, in a long argument, that the taxpayers of Mississippi had any 
cause for complaint. It then proceeded to prove that the election had 
been carried by intimidation and violence, or in many localities by 
fraud; that the violence and the fraud were so widely extended as to 
have reversed the proper result; that the State Legislature was, for 
that reason, an illegal and usurping body, which did not represent the 
will of the peojjle; that the resignation of Ames had been extorted by 
measures unauthorized by law, and that of right lie was still the Gov- 
ernor of Mississippi. Tlie rejjort concluded with a recommendation 
that Congress pass laws to secitre the jjeojile in their civil rights; that 
States in anarchy be denied rejiresentation in Congress, or, in case of 
continuance of disorder, be reduced to a territorial condition. 

The minority report was signed by Senators Bayard and McDonald. 
It opened with an elaborate review of the partisan spirit with which the 
investigation was tmdertaken, and of the " attemiats to forestall ptiblic 
opinion in relation to affairs in Mississippi, calculated to mislead," 
touching ujion utterances of the Chairman, of Mr. Eedpath (the Clerk), 
and of President Grant. It sets forth attempts to fasten obloqtiy upon 
Senator Bayard, " and at the same time to convey unjust impressions 
against the people of Mississii^pi." It animadverted uj^iou the action 
of the majority of the committee in transcending their powers by extend- 
ing the investigation to matters within the powers reserved to the States, 
and not subject to Federal control. " The social habits," it said, " domes- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 315 

tic institutions, personal and individual dealings and contracts, local po- 
lice arrangements, and whole classes of subjects heretofore supposed to 
be under the sole control of the State and county governments -and even 
family atfairs — have been made the subjects of inquisition." This re- 
port then vigorously assailed the case made out by the majority. Quot- 
ing the President's declaration that " Mississippi is to-day governed by 
officials chosen through fraud and violence," it declares that this state- 
ment, "come from whom it may, we pronounce to be untrue and unwar- 
ranted by the facts disclosed." It declares that the testimony relied 
U130U by the majority was utterly worthless. 

Every rule (it said) whicli the experience of mankind lias established as essential 
for the regulation of evidence and the establishment of truth has been disregarded in 
the course of this investigation. So that the great bulk of the testimony wliich has 
been taken is such as would not be received in any court of justice in this country to 
convict the meanest felon of the pettiest offense. . . . Opinion, hearsay, wild ru- 
mor, anything and all things whicli excitement, prejudice, hate, love, or fear can 
suggest, have poured in without discrimination or check. No individual, no commu- 
nity, can be safe against such an order of things. The usual tests of discrimination 
between truth anil falsehood ha\ing been abandoned, the insult cannot be satisfactory 
to any just mind. 

However, whatever one might think of the majority report, viewed in 
the light of its attendant circumstances and tested by its own internal 
evidence, or whatever opinion one might form of the failure or success 
of the assault made on it by the minority of the committee, the fact re- 
mained that the report was there, and that it wodld be accepted by a 
majority of the Senate. It was pregnant with ill to Mr. Lamar and to 
the State. If it were true that the Legislature of the State was a rev- 
olutionary body of usurpers, how far would that fact affect the validity 
of Mr. Lamar's election to the Senate? If it were true that Ames was 
the rightful Governor, and Stone only a usurper, then was even a jirliini 
facie right to a seat conferred by any certificate of the latter? The Con- 
stitution of the United States made the Senate the exclusive judge of 
the election of its own members, and the history of the few years last 
past demonstrated that the majority of that body were quite capable of 
the most radical and the boldest action. 

So there stood the party; there was the temptation, and there was 
the excuse. It was by no means certain that the declaration of Mr. Eed- 
path. Clerk of the Commission, that Mr. Lamar would not be seated, 
was not made advisedly. 

What would have come out of all this, if other and greater questions 
had not intervened, it is impossible to tell. But the Presidential elec- 
tion of 1876 gave a wholly new aspect to the case. Whether Mr. Til- 
den was elected or not, still a second, and a very peremptory, notice was 
served on the Radical leaders that their power was waning, and that a 
modification of their high-handed Southern policy was demanded. 



316 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

Moreover, the exigency of the Republican side in the Tildeu-Hayes 
imbroglio would naturally cause a swift but thorough reconsideration 
and alteration of many ideas and tbe abandonment of many smaller de- 
signs. The installation of Mr. Hayes, under the circumstances, and by 
a decision so doubtful, might well have inspired an apprehension that 
the patience of the people had been tried far enough. Either some 
such consideratinns must have caused a change of plans in respect to 
Mississippi affairs and Mr. Lamar's seat, or else the Boutwell Commit- 
tee could never have been intended for any purpose other than the sup- 
plying of a campaign sensation; for the whole investigation, with its im- 
mense mass of testimony, comprising eighteen hundred pages, seems to 
have been tumbled overboard once the elections were past. 

However all tiiis may be, when the time came for the consideration 
of Mr. Lamar's case, it seems that there was no longer any serious in- 
tention or desire to refuse to seat him. The objection had been in no 
respect personal to him. It was based upon the sole alleged ground 
that the State Government was a usurpation. 

The Senate met in executive session on the 5th of March, 1877, after 
the inauguration of President Hayes. Mr. Lamar presented his cre- 
dentials. Under the rules of the Senate, the matter, of necessity, went 
over for one day at least. A meeting of the Committee on Privileges 
and Elections was called for that same evening, informally (although the 
credentials were not before it ), for the purpose of considering the objec- 
tion that had been interposed. After a careful consideration of the 
question, the committee, with only a single exception, came to the con- 
clusion that no good reason existed for declining to swear in Mr. Lamar. 

Mr. Kellogg was present, however, claiming to be the Senator-elect 
from Louisiana. The Republicans were exceedingly desirous of seat- 
ing him, in order to retain their hold upon the Senate, which was im- 
periled. Mr. Kellogg's certificate was signed by Gov. Packard; but 
there was an opposition Governor (Mr. Nicholls), and a rival Legisla- 
ture, which was generally understood to be in fact the stronger body, 
and the only one which could even claim a quorum. So that in Mr. 
Kellogg's case there was a grave doubt, to say the least of it, as to 
whether he had been chosen by the true Legislature of the State. No 
such question existed in Mr. Lamar's case; but the difference between 
the two, in view of the Boutwell report, could easily be claimed as im- 
material. Senator Morton's keen eye saw a prospect of forcing from 
the Democrats, through their anxiety to seat Mr. Lamar, concessions 
or positions which would be helpful to Kellogg, if only Kellogg's case 
should be acted upon while that of Mr. Lamar was in abeyance. 

He therefore caused a caucus of the Republican Senators to be called, in order 
that he might lay before them his plan of action and impress upon them the neces- 
sity for seating Kellogg first. The caucus was held, and the Senator made his state- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 317 

ment. It was agreed to, either openly or tacitly, by all the Senators, and it was (u- 
termined as fairly as anything could be determined, that the Republican Senators 
would give Mr. Kellogg his seat on his /mina facie rigiit, and then seat I\lr. Lamar at 
once. The understanding was that Mr. Kellogg's case should be referred to the Com- 
mittee on Privileges and Elections, that the committee should report back favorably 
in a few minutes, and that Sir. Kellogg should tlien be seate<l on his prima facif right. 
Mr. Lamar would then have been given his seat, and the case of Kellogg could have 
been fully investigated afterwards. The President's commissioners had not then 
gone to Louisiana, the Packard-Kellogg Legishxture was still in session, and "Sena- 
tor " Spollbrd had not been heard of. After the caucus was over, Senator Blaine went 
to Senator Morton, and asked as a personal favor that he might be allowed to take 
charge of the Kellogg case in the Senate, on account of some remarks which he 
wished to make on the President's i>olicy. Senator Morton, seeing no objection and 
no trick in the request, and being anxious to accommodate Mr. Blaine, consented to 
his request. The Democrats in the body were of course determined to seat Mr. 
Lamar, if possible, and to keep Mr. Kellogg out; and the vital point for the Republi- 
cans was to bring the Kellogg case before the Senate first, and to have it referred to 
the Committee on Privileges and Elections, if need be, and reported back at once. It 
was Mr. Bhiine's duty, in pursuance of this arrangement, to have secured recognition 
as early as possible on Tuesday, and offered the resolution that Kellogg be admitted; 
but when the proper hour on Tuesday arrived, Sir. Morton was astounded to observe 
that, instead of the Senator from Maine bringing up the Kellogg case, Mr. Wal- 
lace from Pennsylvania was allowed to obtain the floor, and oH'er a lesolution that 
the credentials of Mr. Lamar be taken from the table, and that he be sworn. Mr. 
Anthony, of Rhode Island, seeing what had happened, at once moved that the Senate 
adjourn, but this dilatory motion was voted down; and Mr. Morton was then aston- 
ished to hear Mr. Blaine take the floor and expre.<=s the hope that the Senate would 
not adjourn without admitting Mr. Lamar. He proceeded to say that his election 
was entirely regular; that there was no contest against him, and that Mr. Lamar had 
the same right to be sworn in that he had ; and he cordially seconded the resolution 
of the Senator fi-om Pennsylvania. Mr. Morton at once called his friends around his 
seat, and said: "We are betrayed." Mr. Spencer, as a dilatory motion, then called 
for tlie reading of the report of Mr. Boutwell's Committee on Afl'airs in Mississippi ; 
but before this was done there was a very interesting debate, in which Sir. Morton 
locked horns squarely with Blaine, and demanded to know what his objections were 
to having Mr. Kellogg sworn in. Mr. Blaine replied that, as soon as the Lamar matter 
was disposed of, he was going to introduce a resolution for the admission of Kellogg. 
The next paragraph in Mr. Morton's remarks is significant. He said: "I want to 
say one word to my friend from. Maine. So far as my record is concerned, I propose 
to take care of that. He will perhaps 'have quite enough to do to take care of his 
own. I was calling attention, not to any new position I have taken— for I do not in- 
tend to change my views becau-e there is a change of case — but I was calling attention 
to the extraordinary revolution in tlie views of others that I witnessed on the flo(jr 
of the Senate this morning. My opinion is that these cases ought to be taken uji in 
the order in which they are called; that Louisiana should be taken up first, and let 
the others follow as they were called." Mr. Spencer insisted on having Mr. Bout- 
well's report read ; and it was read, and consumed considerable time. But the fat was 
in the fire for tlie Republicans, and delay was of no avail, since the Kellogg and 
Lamar cases were on the same footing; and Mr. Morton himself was hound to vote to 
seat Mr. Lamar on the same ground that he would vote to seat Mr. Kellogg. The 
result was that Sir. Lamar was seated, and the Louisiana case was then taken up. . . . 
The action of Mr. Blaine was and is regarded by many of his associates in the cham- 
ber as a gross infidelity to his party. He was fully committed to the agreement in 



318 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAH: 

caucus that tlie Kellogg case should be taken up first. He deliljerately allowed Mr. 
Wallace, of Pennsylvania, who is his friend, to bring up the Lamar case first; and it 
is believed by a large numlier of Kepiil;>lican Senators that he did this in jiursuance 
of an arrangement with the Democratic party, and partly to repay Mr. Lamar for the 
services of the latter in inducing the Democrats of the House of Representatives to 
suspend the investigation of his railroad ojierations at the time when his utter polit- 
ical ruin was impending, and ci.iuld only be prevented by a stoppage of that investi- 
gation. It is a well-known fact that the influence of Mr. Lamar, of Mississippi, and 
Mr. Barnum, of Connecticut, secured the stoppage of the investigation by the House 
Judiciary Committee in the summer of 1876. * 

The foregoing piece of political gossip may or may not be well 
foimded. It is given for what it is worth. Mr. Lamar was sworn in on 
the 6th of I\Iarch, 1877, with only one dissenting vote. 

After his admission to tiie Senate, and during the spring and summer 
of 1877, Mr. Lamar remained quietly at home, recuperating in body 
and mind from the severe strain of the previous eventful winter. In 
June he had the pleasure of entertaining for a week the Hon. Stewart 
L. Woodford, of New York; and of this visit, and of the imi^ressions 
received by him during his stay in Mississijjpi, Mr. Woodford after- 
wards spoke, in an interview, reported by the New York World, in 1879, 
and which is of interest in more respects than one: 

" I indorse the policy of Mr. Hayes with my wdiole heart." 

"What brought about the change of base? " 

" Well, it was not exactly a cliange of base, at least on my part. You see, I knew 
little or nothing personally about the people of the South ; but the summer after 
President Hayes was inaugurated I went to Mississippi to deliver an address at the 
University, where I met many of the leading gentlemen of the State, and I was 
afterwards the guest of Senator Lamar at his home. Then I studied the situation, 
and became convinced that the white people of the State were in earnest in their 
endeavor to conciliate the blacks and secure jieace; and I determined to use all my 
endeavors to leave tliem undisturbed to work out their social pi'oblems for them- 
selves. If they cannot and will not do it, no one else can do it for them. I believe 
that Senator Lamar, Wade Haiuiiton, and most of the Southern Senators and Gov- 
ernors are honest in their promises, and I honor President Hayes for pledging his 
word to give them a fair chance. By the way, I ought to mention tliat while I was 
in Mississippi some of the members of the Republican State Committee called upon 
me and asked my advice as to the course tliat was proper for them to pursue. I 
frankly advised them to make no nominations for State otficers, and let the coming 
election go by default." 

During this period Mr. Lamar seems not to have appeared in public 
at all except on one occasion, that of the Democratic State Convention, 
held at Jackson, on the 1st of August. In the political history of the 
State few gatherings have been of more practical importance than was 
this. It was the first general convention to meet after the political 
revolution of 1875. Less dramatic and striking than the assemblage 

♦Eilmimd Hudson, in The Boston Herald, 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 319 

which ijrecedod and secured that event, its functions and its results 
were hardly less weighty. That overturned a corrupt State govern- 
ment, achieving a great victory; this was charged with the delicate and 
difficult task uf confirming and conserving the victory — nay, more: of 
achieving or constructing its possible and worthiest results. 

The upheaval of 1875 had been produced by an unselfish devotion of 
the whole white people to the public weal, by harmony in counsel, by 
union in action, by a general abandoumeut of personal aspirations and 
personal resentments for the common good. This harmonious and un- 
selfish action had been forced by the ever pressing evils of maladminis- 
tration and by the instinct of self-preservation. That compelling 
pressure had been relieved, liowever; and now a new danger was mani- 
fested — that of discord and disunion. There were differences engen- 
dered by rivalries among men who had been earnest, self-sacrificing, 
and eflfective workers, and who naturally might expect recognition and 
reward. There were differences on minor questions of policy. Under 
all was the natural and almost invincible tendency of the masses to di- 
vide into opposing parties. This tendency manifested itself in Missis- 
sippi in a movement toward the " Independent party," then feebly stir- 
ring in politics; but the movement was looked upon with much distrust. 
It was regarded as the entering wedge for a new Eadical supremacy. 
Already had the Memphis Appeal , a paper which always took a keen in- 
terest and a leading part in Mississippi politics, declared that " any en- 
couragement given to the Independents is so much taken from the 
Democracy to strengthen the defeated Radicals;" that "the success of 
Independency is the success of Radicalism, and that in Mississippi it 
means a return to the methods and crimes of the Ames administration." 

But, after all, these questions were questions of means only. The 
ends to be achieved were the happiness and the progressive prosperity 
of the State, its restoration to the confidence and affections of the Ameri- 
can people, and its worthy and dignified participation in the great march 
of the National Republic. Said Gen. J. Z. George, the Chairman of the 
Democratic State Executive Committee, in his address to the conven- 
tion at its opening: 

The wise and just constitutional policy of President Hayes in respect to our sec- 
tion, beinsr in exact accordance witli tlie principles of the Democratic party, completes 
the restoration of the South to its place in the Union. We are now Americans, with 
no brand of inferiority upon us. This is even conceded by our worst enemies. We 
must, therefore, discharire our duties as American citizens, insisting on an equality of 
beiietits, as we are willina; to bear our share of the common burdens of the govern- 
ment. Our statesmanship must embrace the whole country, seeking to advance the 
common interests, the common happiness, and the general welfiire of the American 
people. 

To this convention Mr. Lamar went as one of the ten delegates from 
Lafayette County. His presence was for the purpose of defending his 



320 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

own jjublic conduct against an attack of which he had been forewarned, 
but which was not made in fact. In conformity with the geuei'al cus- 
tom, immediately after the organization the President appointed two 
delegates from each Congressional District as a Committee on Plat- 
form, and Mr. Lamar was named as one of the members from the Sec- 
ond District. 

On the night of the fii'st day after the adjournment of the conven- 
tion loud calls were made for him. He took the stand, and "delivered 
an eloquent congratulatory address upon the reestablishment of local 
self-government and of liberty regulated by law. He counseled har- 
mony, and suggested several important reasons why the Democratic 
party should maintain a perfect organization and a united front. The 
Republican party had practically disbanded, but was ready and waiting 
to take advantage of any divisions that might appear in our ranks. 
Col. Lamar spoke twenty minutes, and was frequently applauded." * 

In the Memphis Appeal, of the Friday following, is found this report 
of the sijeech: 

Calls were then made for Senator L. Q. C. Lamar, who in response addressed the 
convention. As he ascended the clerk's desk he was greeted with the most deafening 
and long-continued applause, showing that his hold upon the confidence and afl'ection 
of the peojile had not in the least relaxed since his last appearance at the capital. 

After stating that it would be impossible for him to make an elaliorate or set speech, 
because of the lateness of the hour and the fatigue of a sultry day, he congratulated 
them as Mississippians and as American citizens upon the fact tliat tlie South was 
again free. (Applause.) For the tirst time in twelve years they had met together in 
their capital to look upon a country rescued in all its parts from the shackles of tyr- 
anny, and ready to begin a new career of freedom, progress, and prosjierity. After 
dwelling upon this- point with great force, he said : " I congratulate you that this grand 
deliverance is in a large measure the work of the Democratic party." He proceeded 
then to sliow what a salutary influence could be wrought upon the administration of 
the government by a patriotic, consistent, and resolute opposition, even when that 
administration, with all its powers, is in the hands of antagonists. He quoted from 
the recent letter of Senator Morton to show that he confessed that the policy of 
military domination in the South was no longer practicable in the administration of 
the country, and that the Republican jiarty must yield to the inevitable. Strange re- 
sult that one party, in the very flush of victory, sliould see its policy perish ; and the 
other, in the very moment of defeat, should behold its principles enthroned in tri- 
umph ! Recent events had demonstrated to the North that the South was no element 
of disturbance to the tranquility of the American Republic, nor of subtraction from its 
security or strength; and thousands upon thousands of honest and patriotic Republi- 
cans were now convinced of this, and were ready to make her peojile full sharers in 
the benefits and blessings and tlie greatness and glory of that Republic. At the head 
of these (to his everlasting honor lie it spoken!) stands the present President of the 
Tnited States, who, in the discharge of his high duty as the President of the whole 
people, had struck a blow for the restoration of the South to her position of equality, 
which had vibrated to the extremities of the Union, and had carried consternation 
into the ranks of his party. This act of patriotism, justice, and political intrepidity on 
his part merits the approbation and support of Southern men; and this may be be- 

*The Weekly Clarion, Aiifc. 1, 1877. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 321 

stowod by Democrats of the South standing soHdly upon a phitform of Democratic 
principles, and without breaking our alliance with that great national party which has 
so long stood, with unshaken constancy and fidelity, by the rights of the South. 

He did not believe that the American people are prepared to accept the disband- 
ment of the Democratic party. He here spolie of the principles of that party, which, 
he said, were imperisliable, and were the essential elements of every free govei-nment ; 
of the number of its voters, con.-itituting a majority of the people of the nation, and 
the extent of its organization in every section of the country. Nor do the politic'al 
events of the day justify the South in breaking up her unity. He referred to the ef- 
forts of Blaine and Morton to keep the Reijublican party upon its basis of sectional 
aggression. The very existence of such an organization, in open revolt against the 
policy of its own President because of his nationality, is a standing menace to our se- 
curity and prosperity and civilization. He reviewed the recent letter of Senator 
Morton, and the speech of Senator Blaine, made at Woodstock, and replied to their 
arguments. He said that questions of constitutional law, of the relations of tlie States 
to the Federal Government, and of the relations of the people to their State Govern- 
ment, would soon cease to play any very conspicuous part in the issues of American 
politics. Questions of tarifi', trade, commerce, currency, and transportation would 
soon take their places, were already beginning to engross the attention of the people, 
and will tax the intellect of American statesmen. To the discussion and settlement 
of these questions the Southern statesmen must contribute their due share of study 
and thought, or the South will never regain her intellectual and moral prestige in po- 
litical affairs. She has already demonstrated her capacity to rise above the passions and 
prejudices of party when their commands conflict with the safety of the nation or the 
safety and peace of the country. If the time should ever come (may God forbid that 
it ever shall !) when she shall be called upon to choose between her own local interests 
and tlie welfare of the nation at large, he believed that she would sustain her public 
men in subordinating the former to the latter. 

This is a fair outline of his remarks, which were greeted with applause throughout. 

Early on the morning of the 2d the Committee on Platform met. 
Among others, a resolution was introduced on the subject of the re- 
monetization of silver. Several members spoke in opposition to any ac- 
tion, especially at that time, since the convention was about to meet, 
and the committee was hurried. Mr. Lamar said that it was an impor- 
tant question; that no one could hastily give a correct opinion on it; 
that, while he was inclined to favor remonetization, yet he thought the 
subject too vast and important for hasty action; that the subject had 
called forth a great and varied literature 2}ro and con, etc. Some mem- 
ber, probably Mr. Barksdale, then suggested that the committee lay 
over that and all other Federal questions to an adjourned meeting to be 
held at noon; but, while this suggestion was adopted, during the morn- 
ing it was informally agreed to report at once, without a further meet- 
ing, and this was done. 

The platform, as adopted by the convention, contained no deliverance 
on the silver question. 

The first session of the Forty-fifth Congress was a called session, 
which convened on the 15th of October, 1877, and continued until the 
second or regular session began in December. 
21 



322 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

The first public appearance of Mr. Lamar in the Senate was on the 
30th of November, in the debate over the Senatorship from Louisiana, 
of Spofford rs. Kellogg. His speech, however, was not_ made on the 
principal question, but on a substitute offered by Senator Thurman, to 
the effect " that M. C. Butler be now sworn in as a Senator from the 
State of South Carolina." AVhen Mr. Lamar made this speech he was 
quite unwell, and he was forced to suspend before the conclusion of his. 
remarks. The speech is therefore a fragment, and its opening promise 
to "take the occasion to reply to some of the allusions which have just 
been made to the alleged violence and murders in the South" could not 
be fulfilled, which' is much to bo regretted. However, the speech, as 
made in part only, affords an admirable example of his own power of 
lucid and temperate statements of fact in controverted cases. It also 
contains a clear and interesting analysis of the contest for the organiza- 
tion of the Legislature of South Carolina, in December, 1875, as well 
as a fine argument on the relations of the State Legislatures and their 
members to the election of United States Senators, under the constitu- 
tion and laws of the United States. 



CHAPTER XXT. 

The Silver Speech — Summary of the Question— President Hayes' Message — The Bland 
Bill-^Tlie Matthews Resolution — Del)ate on the Resolution — Mr. Lamar's Speech — 
Newspaper Comments — The Legislative Instructions — Correspondence — Refusal to 
Obey Instructions — Speech — Public ami Private Comments — The Double Question 
of Statesmanship Involved — Hurper'K Weehlij — "A Heart Almos-t Mated to Des])air" 
— Campaign Speech of 1879 — Defense of Vote on the Resolutions — The Texas Pa- 
cific Railroad — Report and Speech on the Same. ^^ 

ON the 24th of January, 1878, Senator Lamar delivered his speech 
on " Payment of the Government Bonds," commonly known in 
Mississippi as liis "Silver Speech." This speech and his votes con- 
nected with it, as Senator Walthall said in his own argument of Sep- 
tember 7, 1893, " produced the temporary jar, the only one that ever 
occurred, between the people of Mississippi, or some of them, and Mr. 
Lamar, who before and afterwards was their favorite leader." They 
also afford a most striking and dramatic example of his high and unfid- 
tering devotion to duty as lie saw it, and constitute one of the most 
widely known and greatly admired of his acts. 

Prior to the year 1873 the coinage of the United States was unlimited 
by law, and included, as is commonly known, both gold and silver coins 
of full legal tender capacity. The silver dollar was the standard of 
value, and comprised 412| grains of standard silver. In that year, at a 
period when, as one of the effects of the Civil War, no metallic currency 
was in actual circulation, following the example set by England in 1816 
and by Germany in December, 1871, the Congress of the United States 
passed a statute which stopped the coinage of the standard silver dol- 
lar, took away its legal tender quality for amounts over five dollars, 
and adopted the gold dollar as the sole standard of value. This act at- 
tracted no public attention at the time of its passage, and there seems 
to have been a universal ignorance of its eff'ect. About the year 1876, 
because of the impending resumption of specie payments by the gov- 
ernment, fixed by law to take place in 1879, much discussion arose as 
to the actual legal status of the metallic currency; inquiry into the leg- 
islation of 1873 became common and widespread and censorious, and 
the remonetization of silver " ])ecame a shibboleth and an issue." 

Meanwhile the value of silver had fallen until the bullion content of 
a dollar of 412i grains, standard, was only ninety-two cents. 

The United States Government had outstanding an immense debt, 
evidenced by notes, certificates, and bonds. Some of those obligations 
called for payment in "dollars;" others, for payment in " coin; " and in 
connection with the discussion of the resumption of legal tender silver 

(323) 



324 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

coinage arose a further question as to whether any or all of the govern- 
ment obligations could lawfully, or justly ought to, be paid in the silver 
dollars thus dej^reciated. 

We have already seen how these questions began to touch Mr. Lamar 
politically; that in the State Democratic Convention of the year pre- 
ceding (1877) an unsuccessful effort was made in the Committee on 
Eesolutious to bring that question to the front in State politics. Mr. 
Lamar went to the session of Congress unembarrassed by any party ex- 
lii-ession from his State upon the subject, but he went also a known 
friend of what its advocates called " honest money " and of the most 
jealous protection of the national credit. 

On the 5th of November, during the extra session, the House passed 
a bill, of which Mr. Kichard P. Bland, of Missouri, was the author 
(commonly known thereafter by his name), which provided for the re- 
sumption of the coinage of full tender silver dollars of 412^ grains. 
The vote upon it was one liundred and sixty-three ayes to thirty-four 
noes, ninety-three members not voting. On the next day the bill was 
sent to the Senate, and there referred to the Committee on Finance. 
On the 21st of November that committee reported the bill, with sun- 
dry amendments, and it was placed on the calendar. 

President Hayes presented the suljjeot in his message, December 3d, 1877. He did 
not believe that "the interests of tlie government or the people would be promoted 
by disparaging silver," but held that it should be used only at its commercial value. 
"If," sai<l he, "the Ignited States had the undoubted right to jiay its bonds in silver 
coin, the little benefit from that jirocess Hould be greatly overbalanced by the injuri- 
ous effect of such payments if made or proposed against the honest convictions of tlie 
public creditors." 

Secretary Sherman, in his annual report at the same time, said that in the work of 
reftinding he had informed his associates in an official letter that, "as the government 
exacts in payment for bonds their full face in coin, it is not anticipated that any 
future legislation of Congress or any action of any department of the government 
will sanction or tolerate the redemption of the principal of these bonds, or the pay- 
ments of the interest thereon, in coin of less value than the coin authorized by law at 
the time of their issue, being gold coin." He earnestly urged Congress to give its 
sanction to this assurance.* 

On the 6th of December the Bland Bill, being then on the Senate 
calendar, was by that body made a special order for the following Tues- 
day, the 11th. Immediately afterwards Mr. Matthews, of Ohio, intro- 
duced this concurrent resolution, wliich was laid iq^iou the table to be 
printed: 

Whereas by the act entitled "An act to strengthen the public credit," approved 
March 18, 1869, it was provided and declared that the faith of the United States was 
thereby solemnly pledged to the payment in coin or its equivalent of all the interest- 
bearing obligations of the United States, except in cases where the law authorizing 
the issue of sucli obligations had expressly provideil that the same might be paid in 
lawful money or other currency than gold and silver; and 
* L.iughlin : Miirs " Political Economy," p. 82;! ; Bliuiie's ■• Twenty Years in Congress," v. II., p. 603. 



UIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 325 

Whereas all the bonds of the United States autliorized to be issued by the act en- 
titled "An act to authorize the refunding of tlie national debt," approved July 14, 
1870, by the terms of said act, were declared to be redeemable in coin of the then 
present standard value, bearing interest payable semiannually in such coin; and 

Whereas all bonds of the United States authorized to be issued under the act en- 
titled "An act to provide for the resumption of specie payments," approved January 
14, 1875, are required to be of the description of bonds of the United States described 
in the said Act of Congress approved July 14, 1870, entitled "An act to authorize the 
refunding of the national debt;" and 

Whereas at the date of the passage of said Act of Congress last aforesaid — to wit, 
the 14th day of July, 1870, the coin of the United States of standard value of that 
date included silver dollars of the weiglit of 412o grains each, as declared by the act 
approved January 18, 1837, entitled "An act supplementary to the act entitled 'Au act 
establishing a mint and regulating the coins of the United States,'" to be a legal ten- 
der of payment according to their nominal value for any sums whatever; therefore 

Be it resolved hji llie Senate (the House of Ilepresenlatires concurring therein), That all the 
bonds of the United States issued or authorized to be issued under the said acts of 
Congress hereinbefore recited, are payable, principal and interest, at the option of 
the Government of the United States, in silver dollars, of the coinage of the United 
States, containing 412.} grains each of standard silver, and tliat to restore to its coin- 
age such silver coins as a legal tender in payment of said lionds, iirincijial and inter- 
est, is not in violation of the public faith nor in derogation of the rights of the public 
creditor. 

On the 10th of December (the day previous to that set for the con- 
sideration of the Silver Bill ) Senator Matthews called up his resolution 
and opened the discussion of it, which was resumed the next day. The 
Silver Bill was, in effect, iJOstjDoned by vote until the final action upon 
the Matthews resolution. " The eagerness for debate upon the resolu- 
tion is shown by the Becord. Thirty-four Senators delivered speeches, 
most of them elaborately prepared, goiug over the history of the pre- 
cious metals, the field of American legislation, and international prac- 
tice in money." This discussion was prolonged until the 25th of Jan- 
uary, when the resolution was adopted by a vote of forty-three to 
twenty-two, passing the House three days later by a vote of one hun- 
dred and eighty-nine to seventy-nine. 

Certain of the speeches made in this debate need special notice, for 
the reason that they are alluded to specifically in Mr. Lamar's argu- 
ment. 

Mr. Voorhees supported the resolution in a passionate, brilliant, and 
eloquent speech, the central idea of which was that to adopt a rule of 
paying the bonds in gold to the exclusion of silver would be violative of 
the faith of the government to the people of the country (mainly wcu-k- 
ers) who held the treasury notes, since those notes were exijressly made 
legal tender for all dues of the government except interest on the public 
debt and customs dues. He denounced the whole later financial legis- 
lation of the Congress as a "bull" movement in favor of capitalists 
who held bonds. He especially assailed the demonetizing act of 1873, 



.326 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

declaring that it " liad crawled into our statute books" furtively aud 
noiselessly; that it "was rendered possible partly because the clandes- 
tine movement was so utterly unexpected." He spoke of two classes: 
those who desire money to be plentiful and cheap because they work 
for it, and those who desire it to be scarce and dear because they already 
have it. "And," he said, " it was in the real and actual interest of this 
latter powerful class that silver was demonetized in 1873, not because it 
■was less valuable as money than gold, nor because such a change was 
demanded by the policies of foreign nations, but simply because retired 
capital desired to diminish the amount of money of every kind circulat- 
ing in the hands of the people." 

Senator Cockrell, of Missouri, made a very ingenious, but somewhat 
fanciful, speech in favor of the resolution. He put his argument into 
the shape of a legal proceeding, followed by judgment. Said he: "In 
order to ascertain the exact questions of law and of fact at issue touch- 
ing these bonds, I have preimred and will submit to the high coiirt of 
national honor and public faith, of which we hear so much, a jDetition en 
the jtart of the bondholder, as plaintiff, against the United States, as 
defendants, demanding payment in gold alone. And an answer by the 
United States setting up their rights to pay the liond, principal and 
interest, in silver coin of 412i grains weight, nine-tenths fine, to the dol- 
lar, and a replication by the bondholder denying the right, and setting- 
up his reasons for demanding gold alone. I will then consider the 
qi;estions of law and fact in issue and abide the decision of the high 
court of national honor and public faith." 

Senator Randolph, of New Jersey, spoke in opposition to the resolu- 
tion. He held that the government had the legal right to pay a por- 
tion of its bonds, those of issue prior to February, 1S73, in gold or 
silver coin, at its ojation; but even those bonds could not lawfully be 
paid in either coin, gold or silver, which for any reason had become of 
inferior value to its legal tender mate. "Every Act of Congress," said 
he, " changing our coinage laws has had but one purpose, practically — 
to make the legal tender coins of gold and silver of ecjuivalent value. 
If we are to be taught by our own unbroken action, all we can do 
now, if aught is to be clone, is to adjust our legal tender coins anew." 
Had not our creditors, domestic and foreign, a reasonable right, in 
view of our uniform i)ractice in regulating the coins, to believe that that 
131'actice would remain unchanged? If the bonds should be cleclared 
payable in a coin debased in comparison with the other, would it not 
be in effect repudiation? We cannot afford to rest under even a sus- 
picion of that crime. He continued: 

The Senator from Mississippi CMr. Lamar) will parilon me, I am sure, in milking 
an illustration based upon the history of the great State he represents, a State peo- 
pled by many dear to me as to him. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 327 

In 1852 the State of Mississijjpi practically repudiated its obligations. It did not 
undertake tlie gentler device of these days and "scale" them out of existence; it 
just refuse 1 to pay them. And, sir, it lias kept its promise to itself, though it has 
broken it to others. 

I pass over the years that intervene between this act and those of comparatively 
recent date. Years after the war had closed — years in which every SUite of the South, 
as I thought, had felt the weight of the despoiler's hand — visiting my old home at 
Vicksburg, I asked of Mississippians wliat debt the carpetbaggers had been able to 
fasten upon tlieir unhappy Commonwealth. I knew that some of the most ingenious 
and cruel of all that rapacious horde had settled within the limits of the State, and, 
forgetting its repudiation of twenty years ago, I natui-ally asked what the State debt 
had grown to lie. The answer was: "Practically, sir, we have no State debt! So 
complete was the prostration of our State credit by reason of the repudiation of 1852 
that even the unparalleled ingenuity, the unsurpassable efl'rontery, and the incom- 
parable devices of carpetbaggers have not been able to contrive a scheme giving 
credit enough for the basis of the petty thievery they would have accommodated 
themselves to. Whatever the State's necessities have been, whatever its interests 
have suggested, they found no one willing to give enlarged credit to Mississippi." 

I can say, Mr. President, as if in parenthesis, that this is the single instance within 
my knowledge wheie any people have apparently profited by their own wrongdoing. 

But, sir, what has Mississippi lost since the fatal act which ruined her credit? If her 
citizens have re(iuired large sums, they have obtained them at usurious ratesof interest; 
if her corporations have needed capital, they have purchased it by paying rates abo\e 
those accorded to sister States; if her counties or townships or cities have desired 
to effect local improvements through the aid of capital from beyond their boundaries, 
the same inexorable ]jena!ty has attached to them. Great, cruel injustice has come 
to successive generations because of the wrong of those who preceded them. Free 
and enfranchised, the credit of the new State is becoming second to none. But, sir, 
it is safe to say that the cost to her of the one wrongful act has been more than if 
she had been despoiled by fraud and robbery, even as South Carolina and Louisiana 
have been. 

May we not as Representatives of the United States profit by the history and ex- 
perience of one of our number? 

-^ 
Senator Lamar had bestowed itjDou these qttestions a full and careful ' 

study. He had collected great numbers of pamphlets and books, in 
which both sides of the controversy were elaborately treated, and which 
yet remain, marked and annotated freely by his own hand. He had even 
studied the Minutes of the Paris Conference in the original. His ob- 
ject, however, seemed to be not to prepare for a speech, but rather to 
satisfy his own mind as to the truth of the controversy, his attitude 
toward it being strictly judicial. 

His speech * was delivered on the 24th of January, opposing both the 
Matthews resolution and the Bland Bill. It was directly in reply to the 
argument of Senator Matthews, in which the Senator expressly con- 
fined himself to the qiiestion of the legal and moral right of the gov- 
ernment to frame its legislation so as to conform to the principles of 
the resolution introduced by him, distinctly stating that he would not 

* Appendix, No. 16. 



328 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

consider what the interests of the government and the country re- 
quired. Senator Lamar maintained that the very fact that those grave 
and important considerations were not deemed pertinent to the discus- 
sion constituted a sufficient and conclusive objection to the adoption of 
the resolution. It was from that very point of vievr that he desired to 
consider the proposition, and from which he proceeded to do so. The 
following summary will indicate the general drift of his argument, but 
the strength and beauty of it can only be gathered from a perusal of 
the speech itself: 

1. The resolution, as well as the Edmunds amendment, was objec- 
tionable because it put the whole question on the point of legal right, 

^ ignoring all considerations of sound financial policy. Its adoption 
would be not merely the bare assertion of an abstract right, but more: 
a solemn declaration to the world which, lying upon our records, 
would be pregnant with embarrassments and injurious misconstructions 
along the whole course of our future financial interests. In particular, 
its efi'ect upon the pending attempt to refund the national debt at a 
lower rate of interest would be disastrous. 

2. The amendments and substitutes offered were objectionable be- 
cause they imi^lied a committal against the policy of remonetizing 
silver. Such a course was inoi4)ortune and ill-advised. There was 
more than one method by which silver could be placed upon a solid 
and lasting foundation as a part of the currency of this country. 

3. He was not a monometallist, either for gold or silver. He would, 
at that moment, put the government abreast of those govei'uments which 
favored silver coinage. The efl'ect of the projjosed measure, however, 
would not be bimetallism, but the consolidation of the currency of Europe 
upon a gold basis and the establishment of a silver monometallism in 
America. This is shown by the testimony of ardent bimetallists. 

4. The effect of the bill proposed will be to exi^el gold from the 
country to the extent that silver is used. Why substitute a silver cur- 
rency for a gold one, especially when gold is the more efficient metal 
of the two, and our country produces more gold than silver? 

5. The bill seems to be pressed, not so much as a measure looking to 
the lasting prosperity of the nation by a permanent financial policy, as 
one for relief from present distress among the peojDle. He was pre- 
pared to vote for any measure which would give such relief, but the 
remedy promised by this bill was a delusion. The facts of the world's 
financial history show conclusively that there is no necessary relation 
between a scarcity of money and the demonetization of silver. The 
fact is that in a nation there is JTist so much of capacity for metallic 
currency, and the flowing in of silver after that capacity has been 
reached simply causes an outflow of gold, without increasing the aggre- 
gate of the two metals. The true cause which x^ut a limit to any aug- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 329 

meututiou of our currency that would be commensurate with the in- 
creasing demands of trade, and put a stop to the iutiow of any coin, 
was the presence of an inconvertible depreciated legal tender paper 
currency. Nor would the practical operation of the proposed measure 
be to arrest the process of contraction going- on under the Piesumption 
Act, but rather the contrary. 

6. To the argument that the measure would give increase of compen- 
sation to the laboring classes through the higher prices which it would 
produce, and to the indebted classes increased means of discharging 
their liabilities, he answered: That the laborer's wages do not rise as 
prices rise, and the result would be increase of burdens ui:)ou him for 
the time being; that the farmei-s of the South and West had nothing 
to pay their debts with except their si;rplusover current expenses; that 
the prices for their commodities were fixed by the European market; 
and that it is a law without exception that a people will come to hope- 
less insolvency who sell their products in a low market and are com- 
pelled to buy food, clothing, and shelter in a high one. The indebted 
classes would be crushed down further than before. 

7. In a few years our national bonds would fall due. We could not 
expect to pay them. The question is not, How shall they be paid? 
but. How shall they be carried? The rate of interest depends upon 
our credit. England pays only three per cent, because of the general 
confidence in her sensitive regard for her public credit. The refund- 
ing at four per cent., which has been stopped by the pendency of this 
bill, would save iis i?20,000,000 per annum. This alone should settle 
the question of the policy of paying the bonds in a depreciated coin. 
(In this connection, Mr. Lamar briefly explained the repudiation 
charged against Mississippi.) 

Mr. Lamar closed with a fine peroration, in which he touched upon 
several matters advanced from the other side. He deprecated the dis- 
tinctions made between producers and mind workers; he honored both. 
He repelled the idea that the holders of bonds were necessarily 
"bloated." He touched upon the obligations under which the South 
rested of late to the conservative influence of capital in matters politi- 
cal. He showed that in the earlier days of the Kepublic the commer- 
cial classes and the planters of the South had both been conspicuous in 
all the struggles involving the interests of labor; that the latter, even 
while denounced as bloated slaveholders and efete aristocracy, had al- 
ways been the aure allies of the Northern Democracy, faithful to the 
interests of the laboring classes of the North. He closed with these 
"words : 

Mr. President, we, the successors of these men, are here to-day. By a policy which 
is a notewortliy fiict in the nineteentli century, we liave come to mingle with the repre- 
sentatives from the States of tliis Union in a common council forthe sood of this coun- 
try. We come no longer as representatives of the capital interests of the South. We 



330 LUCIUS Q. C. LAAfAR: 

come not as the mere allies of the laboring men of the North any longer, but as labor- 
ers c lursel ves, every one of us and every one of our constituents taught the stern lesson 
of the necessity of earning our bread in the sweat of our face. But, sir, we come with 
our convictions unchanged as to the necessity of the laboring classes of this country be- 
ing protected in all their rights and in all their interests, for when that class sinks, the 
entire fabric of our society must sink and crumble; but we come believing that they 
are honest, that they are patient, that they are self-reliant and true to their obliga- 
tions, and that what it is their duty to do they will feel it is to their interest to do. 
We have diflere<^l among ourselves upon this great question, but of one thing the world 
may be assured: that no Southern Senator representing Southern people will give a 
vote upon either side of it which is not designed, on the one hand, to protect the labor- 
ing classes of tliis country alike with its capital, or, on the other, that will not preserve 
untarnished the sacred honor of America. [Applause in the galleries.] 

This speech was much discussed iu the newspapers, with varying 
comments, of course, as the papers differed iu sentiment upon the ques- 
tions involved. 

The Ne/rark Daihj Journal, of the 25th, said: 

The country has great cause to thank the Democracy of Mississipiii, yea, the 
"shotgun" "rebel Democracy" of that reconstructed State, for having sent to the 
councils of the nation a man at once so brave, so able, and so truly patiiotic as Sen- 
ator Lamar. This justly distinguished man has followed up Senator Randolph in a 
speech on the financial question, which is declared on all siiles to have been the great- 
est effort of Ins Washington career and a most masterly presentment of the statesman- 
like side of the debate. 

What adds force, not to the speech— f.r it is difficult to imagine anything more 
forcible— but to Senator Lamar personally, is the fact that he has shown the highest 
type of human courage in delivering such a speech: moral courage. The :\Iississippi 
Legislature, unlike the New Jersey Legislature, is possessed of the silver craze, and 
had given evidence of its purpose to instruct Senator Lamar to vote for the Bland Sil- 
ver Bill. At once Lamar resolved to disobey the mandate of his State, should it come. 

Harper's Weeldi/, of February 16, said: 

It is a remarkable spectacle, that of Senators Lamar and Hill, on one side, earnestly 
and eloquently insisting upon keeping faith and redeeming in their full spirit and in- 
tention the promise of the government, and, on the other, that of devoted supi)0rters 
of the Union during the war now insisting that the government shall partially repu- 
diate its oldigations in a way which will necessarily distress industry and labor. . . . 
If the action of Congress is to be accepteil as the test, neither the Republican nor 
the Democratic party is the party of strict maintenance of the national faith. 

Meanwhile the pendency of these measures before Congress attracted 
much attention in Mississippi. The newspapers freely discussed " The 
Eemonetization of Silver" and the ])rnbable course of Senator Lamar 
upon the Bland Bill. The Legislature convened in January, and on 
the 10th Hon. Ben. King, of Copiah County, a member of the State 
Senate, introduced in that body a resolution, the substance of which was 
an instruction to the Senators from Mississippi, and a request to the 
Kepresentatives, to support the Bland Bill and also the proposed re- 
peal of the Kesumptiou Act of 1875. On the 15th Mr. Gibson, of Al- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. b31 _ 

corn County, introduced a similar resolution in the House. Tlio latter 
resolution passed at once, ticiii. coil; but both hung tire in the Senate. 

On the 24th Senator Lamar made his si^eech, and on the 25th voted 
against the Matthews resolution; while Senator B. K. Bruce, the colored 
Republican Senator from Mississippi, voted for it. 

Three days before, Hon. W. A. Percy, the Speaker of the House, had 

addressed to Mr. Lamar this letter: 

Jackson, Miss., January 21, 1878. 

. . . I received a letter a few days since from Mi-. Bayard relative to the action 
of our Legislature upon resolutions to instruct our Senators in regard to the Bland 
Silver Bill. It reached nie after our House, very much to my disgust, had adopted 
the resolutions; but it would have done no good had it come earlier. The peo]ile are j 
under a pressure of hard times and scarcity of money, and their Representatives felt 
bound to strike at something that might give relief, the how or wherefore very few 
of them could explain. I have some hope (very slight) that the resolution may be 
modified in the Senate so as to assume a general form, simply favoring remonetiza- 
tion. While, without any special study of the subject (for I have been too nnich oc- 
cupied to give it study unless it came in the line of duty), I think that an increase 
of currency, of the I'irculating exchangeable medium, would be of service to the whole 
country, and especially to our section; yet I regard it as a presumption for men who 
have given the subject, I judge, no more study than I, to undertake to instruct our 
Representatives, wliose special duty it is to thoroughly investigate the whole subject. 
Especially is this so when those Representatives are men of unusual ability and un- 
questioned integrity. I hope you will read my letter to Mr. Bayard. -_ 

On the 30th one of the members introduced in the House a resolution 

as follows: 

That Hon. B. K. Bruce, Senator of the ITnited States from this State, in his recent 
vote for the resolution ofi'ered by Hon. Stanley Matthews in the Senate, favoring the 
remonetization of silver, has reflected the sentiment and will of his constituents ; and 
the thanks of the Legislature of the State, now in session, are hereby tendered to him 
on the part of the people of Mississippi. 

This resolution, on motion of Mr. Street, was so- amended as to sub- 
stitute for all after the word "constituents" the clause "and said vote 
is hereby indorsed and approved; " and in that shape was passed, greatly 
to the disgust of Senator Lamar's friends. Mr. Speaker Percy, on be- 
ing asked by the author of the resolution, when the 'House adjourned, 
what he thought of it, expressed the view, in language somewhat pun- 
gent, that " it is a damned outrage." In this opinion Mr. Percy did not 
stand alone by any means, and many who would not have employed his 
adjective did not disavow it when they heard of it. Mr. Lamar felt this 
action keenly. He considered that over the shoulder of Senator Bruce 
a blow had been aimed at himself. 

On the 4tli of February the House finally concurred in the Senate 
resolution, as follows: 

Whereas in the judgment of the Legislature of the State of Mississippi and the 
people whom they represent, the act now pending Ijefore the Congress of the ITnited 
States remonetizing silver will restore public confidence and relieve the existing puli- 



332 LUCIUS Q. C. LAM^iR: 

lie distress, and will not violate the fiiitli of the general government, nor impair the 
national credit; therefore, 

1. Be it resolved by the Senate of the State of Mississipiri (the House of Representatives 
concuriing), That our Senators he instructed, and our Representatives requested, to 
vote for the act remonetizing silver, and to use their efl'orts to secure its passage. 

2. Be it further resolved, That the Secretary of State transmit immediately a copy of 
these resolutions to our members of Copgress. 

On the 28tli of Jauuary the Senate took tip for consideration the 
suspended Bland Bill. This gave I'ise to a longer and broader discus- 
sion than that which had occurred on the Matthews resolution. The 
debate was protracted until the 15th of February. 

In the meantime, and while the debate was in progress, Mr. Lamar 
wrote to Hon. James Gordon, a member of the Legislature from Pon- 
totoc County, as follows: 

Washington, February 8, 1878. 

My Dear Sir; ... I recognize tlie right of a Legit-lature to express its opinions 
upon questions of Federal policy, and I think such expressions of opinion are entitled 
to the most respectful and patient consideration of the Federal Representatives; and 
if there be any doubt in the mind of either a Senator or a Representative as to what 
his course ought to be, he should give to the sentiment of his peoj)le, as expressed by 
the Legislature, the full benefit of that doubt, and vote in accordance with their wishes. 
But in this particular case their wishes are directly in conflict with the convictions of 
my whole life ; and had I voted as the House of Representatives directed, I should 
have cast my first vote against my conscience. 

It is impossible for a public man to serve the interests of his people and to secure 
their lasting prosperity if he does not study closely and anxiously the- great questions 
wliich come before Congress, and speak without reserve the honest conclusions to 
which those investigations have brought him. If he allows himself to be governed by 
tlie opinions of Ins friends at home, however devoted he may be to them or they to 
him, he throws away all the rich results of a previous preparation and study, and 
simply becomes a commonplace exponent of those popular sentiments which may 
change in a few days. Without assuming to be a man of any largeness of character 
myself, or intellect, I do know that such a course will dwarf any man's statesmanship. 
. . . Were I to act differently from what I have, I should not be the man that I 
feel I now am in this country. I would be simply considered as a commonplace echo 
of current opinion, not the result of mature deliberations even among the masses who 
entertain that opinion. 

But it was not my purpose to go into this matter. I write simply to express to you 
my warm and grateful appreciation of your kind words. I assure you it is no agreeal)le_ 
position that I now ocupy. Men mistake me if they think I underestimate the confi- 
dence and affection of the people of Mississippi; and nothing can be a greater calam- 
ity, in my estimation, than the estrangement of that people from me, except the con- 
sciousness that I deserve such estrangement. I would rather deserve than have their 
approval. 

Thanking you again for yo\ir consoling letter in this crisis of my political fortunes, 
I am, 

This letter from Dr. Barnard is of interest in this connection: 

Columbia College, N. Y., President's Room, 

February 12, 1878. 
My Dear Lamar: I sympathize with you with my whole heart. Your position is 



H7,S' LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 333 

one of cruel trial. A man in public life could not possibly bave a heavier cross laid 
upon him, yet it rejoices me in the depths of my soul to see that you have the courage 
and the moral strength to bear it manfully. I could hanlly read the notes you sent 
me without tears. In the sad simplicity of their tone they are indescribably touch- 
ing, but there is something about them better than that: in the calm determination 
which they avow to be governeil by the dictates of conscience, and to abide by the 
convictions of your deliiierate judgment, there is something grand and noble. 

My dear friend, if, when the time of trial come.», you utter nothing more nor less 
than those few words which you have here written down, you will have immortalized 
yourself as surely as if you had won a hundred battles. 

I know how much it costs you now, and may cost you yet; but what it costs you 
now to be compelled to act in opposition to the views and instructions of your con- 
stituents is probably the severest of your trials, e\en though the futuie cost may be 
the seat yuu hold in the Senate. But should you suller that loss, it will be a noble 
sacrifice, and one for which you will be honored so long as the political history of 
your country is read. But I will not believe this. Yon have intimated in these notes 
your purpose to appeal to the people of Mississippi, and I believe your appeal will, in 
the end, be successful. You have the confidence of that people to an extent almost 
without precedent among public men. They are devoted to you because they believe 
you to be upright, honorable, and inflexibly true to principle and to duty; and be- 
cause they know you to be able and judicious, elocjuent in speech, and powerful in 
argument. They will listen to you, therefore, with a willingness to be convinced; 
and when the present moral epidemic shall have begun to subside, and they shall be 
once more clothed and in their right mind, it will not, I firmly believe, be very diffi- 
cult to convince them that they have been unconsciously eating of the insane root. . . . 

I have read your great speech a second time. It improved on rejierusal. 

What an astonishing thing that the best statesmanship, and almost the only states- 
manship, we have now is furnished by the South, and that the truest friends to the 
Union are those who honestly tiied once to get out of it! That was a capital hit of 
Hill's where he said he tried his best to make the bondholder who purchased at six- 
ty cents lose the sixty cents that he gave, but now he was for giving him the dollar he 
was promised. 

Sincerely yours, F. A. P. Barnard. 

On the 14th of February Mr. Lamar wrote to his wife: 

The Legislature has instructed me to vote for the Silver Bill. I cannot do it; I had 
rather quit politics forever. 

On the 15th the debate ou the Silver Bill was drawing to a close. The 
final voting was about to begin. Senator Lamar had made no further 
argument, being content with what he had already done; but now he 
arose in his place and said: 

Mr. President: Having already expressed my deliberate opinions at some length 
upon this very important measure now under consideration, I shall not trespass upon 
the attention of the Senate further. I have, however, one other duty to perform; a 
very painful one, I admit, but one which is none the less clear. I hold in my hand 
certain resolutions of the Legislature of Mississippi, which I ask to have read. 

The Vice President: 

The resolutions will be read by the Secretary. 

The Chief Clerk read the resolutions of instruction. 



334 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

Mr. Lamar: 

Mr. J'nsident: Between these resolutions and my convictions there is a great gulf. 
I cannot pass it. Of my love to the State of Mississippi I will not speak ; my life alone 
can tell it. My gratitude for all the honor her people have done me no words can ex- 
press. I am best proving it by doing to-day what I think their true interests and 
their charaoter require me to do. During my life in that State it has been my privi- 
lege to assist in the education of more than one generation of lifr youth, to have giv- 
en the impulse to wave after wave of the young manhood that has passed into the 
troubled sea of her social and jjolitical life. Upon them I have always endeavored to 
impress the belief that truth was Ijetter than falsehood, honesty better than policy, 
courage better than cowardice. To-day my lessons confront me. To-day I nmst be 
true or false, honest or cunning, faithful or unfaithful to my people. Even in this 
hour of their legislative displeasure and disapprobation I cannot vote as these resolu- 
tions direct. I cannot and will not shirk the responsibility which my position im- 
poses. INIy duty, as I see it, I will do; and I will vote against this Ijill. 

When that is done my responsibility is ended. My rtasons for my vote shall be 
given to my people. Tlien it will be for them to determine if ailherence to my hon- 
est convictions has disqualified me from representing tliem; whether a difl'erence of 
opinion upi.m a difficult and complicated subject to wliich I liave given patient, long- 
continued, conscientious study, to which I lia\-e Ijrought entiie honesty and singleness 
of purpose, and upon which I have spent whatever ability God has given me, is now 
to separate us; whether this difference is to override that complete union of thought, 
sympathy, and hope which on all other and, as 1 believe, even more important sub- 
jects, l)inds us together. Before them I must stand or fall ; but be their present decis- 
ion what it may, I know that the time is not far distant wlien they will recognize my 
action to-day as wise and just ; and, armed with honest convictions of my duty, I shall 
calmly await results, believing in the utterances of a great American who never 
trusted his country in vain, that "truth is omnipotent, and public justice ceitain." 

0£ this incident tlie Washinyfon Capital gave this account: 

One of the most interesting incidents in Friday's proceedings in the Senate was 
Senator Lamar's explanatory remarks reganling his nitention to vote against the Sil- 
ver Bill. Allison had just closed his two-hour speech in favor of the bill, and the 
question was about to be put upon the first amendment, when Mr. Lamar arose. Re- 
membering the emban-assing position of this gentleman with respect to the pending 
bill, every Senator immediately save his attention, and the Chamljer became as silent 
as tlie tomb. Mr. Lamar began by saying tliat he had alreaily expressed his views on 
the question before the Senate (giving an abstract of the remarks above). 

In delivering himself of these keenly felt, ennobling sentiments, ilr. Lamar's voice 
grew tremulous with emotion, and his body fairly shook with agitation. The scene 
was an impressive one, and as soon as Mr. Lamar sat down Senators of lioth sides of 
the Chamber crowded around him to shake his hand. Not only did several of his ex- 
tremest political opponents warmly congratulate the Mississippi Senator upon his , 
manly action, but his Southern friends who ditfer radically with liim upon the (]ues- 
tion of finance gathered about his desk; and wlule they tlid not indorse his financial 
views, still they commended him for daring to do what in his mind he believed to be 
right. Among those who were first to grasp Mr. Lamar's hand were Senators Ransom, 
Morgan, Withers, Bailey, and Saulsbury. 

Senator Lamar's course attracted much attention throughout the 
country; indeed, that goes without saying, the American peojjle being 
what they are. His bokl. stand for conscience against popularity and 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 335 

position excited universal interest and comment. No man was less a 
contriver of sensations than he, and yet he could not better have pro- 
duced one had he tried ever so skillfully. Editorial notices and news- 
paper communications poured in on him in schools, as did also letters 
from every quarter — from lawyers, divines, professors, authors, bankera, 
editors, statesmen; from all sorts of men, and men of all politics. The 
great mass of this material is an embarrassment of riches, but a few 
typical selections will be presented. The attentive reader will perceive 
that they not only indicate the reception given to Mr. Lamar's action, 
but also cast interesting and valuable side lights upon this history: 

New York, February 18, 1878. 

Dear Mr. Lamnr : Just from Chicago, and my two days on the cars were made de- 
lightful by the generous praise I heard in every mouth of your bold and nolile act. 
The affecting speoch with which you announced your vote was read aloud in the pal- 
ace car that I was in, and men and women were moved as only good deeds can move 
the human heart. 

Remember, too, that this was going through the West, where most people wanted 
silver and bad money ; but none of them were so far gone as not to recognize the gold 
of an heroic act which is currency throughout the world. I have but a moment, imme- 
diately on my return, to express my delight and my confident assurance that you will 
never regret it. 

Truly your friend, Wm. Walter Phelps. 

Wappingbr's Falls, N. Y., February 19, 1878. 

Respected Sir: I am of a different political party from yourself; you have no ac- 
quaintance with me; I have no right to address you, except as each one of your coun- 
trymen is of your constituents. But I cannot resist the impulse to express to you my 
very hearty admiration and gratitude for the speech which you made in the Senate 
in reference to the resolutions of your State Legislature on the Silver Bill. My eyes 
were suffused with emotion while I read your words. Y'our act helps to bring to an 
end the evil results of the cruel war. It is easier for everybody in the whole land to 
act out the belief that " truth is better than falsehood, honesty better than policy, cour- 
age better than cowardice." 

Respectfully yours, (Rev. ) Jambs Otis De.\'niston. 

New Orleans, La., February 16, 1878. 

My Dear Sir : You have disjilayed on many occasions great traits of head and heart, 
and have won the respect and apiilause of thousands of people who have not always 
agi-eed with you on political que-tions; hut your manliness and courage of yesterday 
is the crowning glory of your illustrious life, and as one of your most ardent admirers 
I want to express to you my delight. 

Sincerely, H. C. Warjiouth. 

Senate Chamber, Washington, D. C, March 7, 1878. 

My Dear Sir: . . . Your manly course in obeying your own convictions of duty 
on the passage of the Silver Bill reflects great credit upon yourself, but will soon be 
claimed bv vour people as a greater credit to the State itself 

With highest regard, 1 am yours very truly, Benj. H. Hill. 



336 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

Dent, O., February 16, 1878. 

Dear Sir: Let me thank you for your remarks on the instructions of tlie Mississippi 
Legislature, because your ccjnduct is the assertion of a principle of political science — to 
wit: that a matured public will must not implicitly obey an immature (inchoate) 
public will. To establish this principle as the guide in our politics is the great work 
of the present and coming generations of America. It means the rescue of true Re- 
publicanism from a false Democracy. 

Truly yours, Chas. Rebmelin. 

Jackson, Miss., February 18, 1878. 

Dear Sir: In view of your recent vote on the " Silver Bill," against ,the instructions 
of our Mississippi Legislature, it will be, perhaps, pleasing to you to know that there 
are many among your constituents here who not only agree with your views on that 
subject, as expressed in your recent speech in the Senate, but who al.-^o heartily ajjprove 
of your whole course in the matter. I write to say that I am one of that number, and 
to express my very great admiration for the honest, courageous, and eloquent utter- 
ance of your convictions on the suly'ect, as reported to us in the press dispatches, just 
before casting your vote. 

Very respectfully, Wm. H. Simms. * 

Grenada, Miss., February 16, 1878. 

3Iy Dear Colonel: With my vague understanding of the subject. I have been in fa- 
vor of the Silver Bill. . . . Therefore, if I were in Congress, I would vote for the 
bill. 

You have calmly reflected on the subject, and liave gone to the bottom of it; and, 
anxiously and earnestly seeking for the truth, have risen from the labor with the 
conviction that it is best for your jieojile that the bill should be defeated. You know, 
too, what it costs you personally to vote against your instructions, that your constitu- 
ents may be henefited; and know as well, and have known all the while, how thejiop- 
ular tide was running. You know, too, the use some people will make of your action, 
though at heart they may know that you are right. And yet you had the jiatri- 
otism and the courage to follow your convictions, and brave whatever storm may fol- 
low. Whatever others may have thought, /knew that you could burn for your prin- 
ciples; and that sublime exhibition of your fidelity and braveness of heart in the 
Senate yesterday, while it gave me no surprise, thrilled me to the soul with the lofti- 
ness and genuineness of your honorable stand. 

Our sentiments are sometimes exemplified by other men's actions, which give them 
a strength and Iteauty with which we have not clothed tlieiu before. With me tliere 
is a sentiment of duty — never fully tested, however — which has never been so wholly 
met by any man's action as by yours yesterday. When I read your speech, sulimit- 
ting the resolutions from Mississippi, I said: " He has done it, but grander even than 
I thought; and now his claim to greatness is permanent and fixed." 

The victory of truth is sure, and your full \indication will come. The people will 
save you from the machine work which lias been set in motion against you, and which 
lias not been moved by their hands. God bless you while you are waiting and stand- 
ing firm! My wife sends her love and hearty approval and sympathy. 

Your true friend, E. C. A^'altiiall. 

On the 18th of February thirteen members of the State Senate wrote 
to Mr. Lamar a joint letter, the substance of which v?as that the confi- 

* Lieutenant Governor, and PresMent of the Senate which gave the instructions. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 337 

dence of the people in his fidelity to their interests and in his sonnd 
statesmanship remained unshaken, and that the people would sustain 
him in the independent exercise of his own judgment. To this commu- 
uicatiou Mr. Lamar made (undated) response about the end of March: 

GenUi'imn : I liave the great pleasure <jf aeknowledgini^ the receipt of your letter of 
the 18th of February. From tlie time when, in tlie discluirge of what I eonsidered an 
imperative duty, 1 voted against the Silver Bill, until the adjournment of the Legii^la- 
ture of Mississippi, I have steadily forborne any correspondence with its members. I 
found myself unable to agree with the majority of them upon a very grave question of 
public policy; and, having done what 1 considered my duty, I felt that it was only 
proper that I should leave them to discharge theirs without explanation or suggestion 
from me. It was for Ihem to decide what estimate they would place upon my action, 
free from any personal deprecation on my part. 

As the Legislature has now adjourned without any expression of opinion upon the 
vote which I cast, I feel myself at lilierty to return my thanks to those who have rec- 
ognized, as you have done, the spirit in which I acted. 

I do not know what your individual oinnions are as to the merits of the Ijill itself; 
and I feel, therefore, only the more grateful for an approval of the independence of 
judgment which I thought it my duty to exercise. 

This confidence in my character and approval of my construction of my Senatorial 
duty are infinitely more valuable to me than any popularity which a vote cast either 
way, on any ]>articular measure, miglit achieve. 

They are worth more, far more, than the personal honor they do me. They will 
serve as an encouragement to othei'S who, representing you hereafter, may feel them- 
selves burdened with similar responsibilities; and they illustrate tlie intelligence, the 
fidelity, the generosity of the State of which it will be, as it ever has been, my high- 
est ambition to be a trusted representative. 

I am, gentlemen, very truly and sincerely yours, L. Q. C. Lamar. 

Of the multitude of newspaf^er notices let these suffice : 
The Vicksburg (Miss.) Herald: "One of our little contemporaries wants to know 
when we intend to begin on Lamar. We li.ardly know. Perhaps not at all; then we 
may cliange our mind any day. But we can hardly see our way clear to attack a man 
who says that he <lid what lie thought to be right. AVe don't mind handling the small 
timber in the Legislature, but dislike to tackle a giant. We can name several little con- 
temporaries who, in all human probability, will be lauding Lamar to the skies before 
the next Presidential election. All of our readers understand fully that Senator La- 
mar voted against the financial policy that this journal has tauglit for years, and we 
were grieved that lie did so. But the future is before us. His vote never hurt his 
State one particle; and if he, with his great ability and eloquence, can aid Mississippi 
in the future, the Herald will not throw one straw in his way. We are not of those 
who believe that he is untrue to the State whose honors he has never yet sought in 
vain, and, mitil we do believe that, we will not harshly censure, for fear that we may 
do an injustice. . . . Although Lamar has boldly voted directly against the wishes 
of his jieople, we still have so much confidence in him that we feel like saying of liim 
that if Lamar is not an able, true, Southern statesman there is no timber in this State 
of which to make one." 

The Jacknon (Miss.) Clarioii : " There will be no room for the clvarge that Senator,,^ 
Lamar is a timeserver, or wanting in the courage of his convictions. Nevertheless, \ 
the Senator who disobeys the clearly expressed will of his constituents, and votes con- 1 
trary to their instructions, assumes a fearful responsibility. In doing so he violates 
the fundamental principle of free, popular government— that the representative is 
22 



338 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

the agent of the people, charged with the execution of their will, which is paramount 
to that of any inilividual, however exalted his office." 

The North American (Philadelphia): "The action of Mr. Lamar, in disregard of the 
instructions of the Mi^sissiiijii Legiislature, is exciting variou;* comment. Senators of 
the United States rejjresent States, and Legislatures are their electoral constituencies. 
The doctrine of instructions ai>ptrtains to that of State rights, as understood at the 
South, though Northern and Western Legislatures have occasionally instructed their 
Senators during the pendency of !mi>ortant Congressional legislation. ... At 
first glance it would seem eminently proper for the people to express their opinions; 
yet, after all, the question of the binding force of such an expression remains un- 
settled. There can be no question toucdiing the right of the i>eople, either by them- 
selves or by their Legislators, to express their will touching any jiroposed or pend- 
ing legislation in Congress. They may by the same right instruct their Senators 
anil Representatives to vote in accordance with their exjiressed will. Nobody ques- 
tions these matters at all. The only variance is as regards the binding force or obli- 
gation of the instructions. . . . The conclusion is therelore inevitalile that the 
doctrine of insti-uctions is a dead-letter doctrine, and can never be anything else un- 
til the constitutional provision creating the Senate shall be radically changed, so as to 
give Legislatures the power to recall a recalcitrant Senator, and replace liira with one 
more pliable and obedient. But there is a broader and deeper question than this of 
amenability to instructions. Technically a Senator of the United States repre.'^ents 
his State: Ijut in a larger, and we Ijelieve in a truer sense, he represents the entire na- 
tion. He is F<'nt to legislate not for any locality, but for the whole country. The peo- 
ple of one State may demand something from which they couM perhaps derive some 
temporary benefit, but which would entail lo s or damage to the )ieoi)le of every other 
State. Under such circumstances a Senator is bound to regard the common interest, 
despite instructions or threats. . . And unless they were selected with especial ref- 
erence to some measure of policy put in issue, we do not see how they are bound to 
violate judgment and conscience simply because the people of their section demand it. 
A man going into a canva=s, pledged if elected to advocate anil vote for certain meas- 
ures, is of course morally and in honor bound to fulfill his pledge, or resign. As to 
questions unforeseen, and not in issue at tlie date of his election, he is bound to vote 
as he thinks the liest interests of the country <lemand. There was no issue maile on 
the unlimited tender of silver when Jlr. Lamar was elected. He went to Washington 
a known advcicate of honest money and honest dealings with national creditors. He 
has not changed his mind, and his vote in disregaril of the instructions of the Missis- 
sippi Legislature was perfectly proper. He was not elected to do the will of the peo- 
ple of Mississippi, but to legislate for the counti-y at large. Mississippi, as a State, has 
nothing to do with the currency. It has no power (nor has any other State) to regu- 
late the currency; that is the business of the Congress of the United States. Any 
State may advise and instruct its Kepresentatives, but there its function ends. It can- 
not conqiel action in accord with its instructions. iMr. Lamar's action is worthy of 
higliest praise, not only because of its manly disregard of self, but because it marks a 
new departure in Southern politics." 

The New Orleans Times: "Some of the Mississippi papers display an animosity 
against Senator Lamar wdiiidi appears lo us to be as unjustifialile as it is unaccounta- 
ble. ... As Louisiana owes her redemption to Senator I^amar as much as to any 
one man in the United State- outside this State, we feel at liberty to manifest our 
gratitude to him by repellina petulant and unjust accusations against him. We esteem 
his action on the Silver Bill both wise and courageous. Had he been a truckling dem- 
agogue, like many of the Senators who consulted only the prospects for reelection and 
supported the bill knowing it to he wrong in principle and unfortunate in its effects, 
he would have got on the popular side and voted for it. There was every inducement 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 339 

for him to disregard liis honest convictions; but he stood by thfm likean honest man, 
and did his best to avert the mischievous consequences of a iirevaUing popular luna- 
cy. .. . Even if wrong in his convictions, liis position is most creditable to him 
as a conscientious Representative." 

nieNatimi: "The leading speakers in the silver debate in the Senate have been 
Messrs. Bayard, Eaton, Randolph, Hill, Lamar, Kernan, Blaine, Chiistiancy, Edmunds, 
and Morrill — si.K of them, and the strongest, being Democrats. Moreover, two of the 
Reijublicans (Messrs. Blaine and Christiancy) proposed compromises which were 
simply trifling improvements on the original proposition. Mr. Lamar is perhaps en- 
titled to more credit than any of them, as his vote will probably cost him his seat. He 
presented to the Senate on Saturday resolutions of the ^Mississippi Legislature instruct- 
ing the State Senators to vote for the Silver Bill, which, however, he announced his 
intention of disregarding, in a short speech, which, for manliness, dignity, ami pathos, 
has never been surpassed in Congress. ... At such a crisis a man of I\Ir. Lamar's 
courage serves his State best by thinking only of his country. But how absurd and 
quixotic his performance must seem to Blaine and Ooukling! " 

Harper's Weekli/, March 9, in a column article upon " Senator Lamar," 
presumably from the pen of its chief editor, George W. Curtis, said: 

The honors of the silver debate and of the defense of the national foith in the Sen- 
ate of the United States have unquestionably rested with the Democrats. ... No 
Senator has shown himself more worthy of universal resiiect than Mr. Lamar; for 
none has stood more manfully by his principles, in the face of the most authoritative 
remonstrance from his State. The dignity and heroism of his position are worthy of 
especial attention. [The article then sets forth the fact of the instnictions, gives Mr. 
Lamar' s speech of refusal in full, and proceed^.] There is a striking contrast to this 
position which has not escapeil the attention of the country. The oiiposition to the 
Silver Bill has been largely Republican. . . . The Democratic Senator from New 
York has ably opposed it in Congress. The Republican Senator from New York has 
contented himself with a few words in presenting petitions. The Democratic Sena- 
tor from Mississippi has shown the manly courage which becomes an American states- 
man ; and his position, apart from its moral dignity, is the true position for a Sena- 
tor in regard to tlie question of instruction. . . . Should Mr. Lamar be requested 
by the Legislature of Mississippi to resign, he may perhaps yield to the strong and 
general public feeling of his State: but we trust that he will see that the reason 
which is good for disregarding instructions to vote in a particular way is good for de- 
clining to resign. 

Any presentation of the speech of Mr. Lamar upon the Silver Bill 
and of his whole course in that matter would be radically defective aud 
altogether inadequate which should fail to emphasize this fact: that he 
was largely inliuenced by the same desire which colored his whole polit- 
ical course— a deep anxiety to restore the South to the confidence and 
good will of the Northern people. Let it be carefiiUy remembered that 
from the close of the Civil War until the time when his speech was 
made there was a strong and constantly manifested tendency among 
that people to look with distrust upon the Southern attitude toward the 
national debt and the national credit. During the troubled and bitter 
period of reconstruction it was a common argument and prophecy of 
politicians and statesmen of that school of which Mr. Morton was the 



340 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

type to deny the wisdom of reestablisbing Soutlieru States in their 
equality of rights withiu the Union for the reason that their people 
would war upon those vital interests, since it was through that credit 
and debt that they had been comjuered. That feeling and that fear had 
been by no means allayed in the Northern mind. 

There was, therefore, in the questions by which Mr. Lamar was con- 
fronted a double problem of statesmanship: First and chiedy, the ques- 
tion for the whole nation, as between the nation, ou the one hand, and 
its citizens and the world, on the other; secondly, the question for the 
South, as between that section and the North — the same old, all-absorb- 
ing problem of the South's complete rehabilitation. He was convinced 
that, apart from all theories and all science of sound finance, the course 
he followed was the truest and wisest statesmanship as a distinctive 
question of Southern policy. 

Yet the reader must not make any erroneous and unjust inference 
here. Senator Lamar's idea was not to buy Northern favor liy a calcu- 
lating and cringing course. The first and indisjjensable point was to be 
right on the main question; but, being convinced that his view was the 
correct one, tlien the wisdom, for Southern statesmen, of standing firm- 
ly and unmistakably by that view, and the good to be derived to their 
section from so doing, although on the whole a secondary consideration, 
was in his eyes of the greatest importance. The evidence of a nation- 
alized South, the proof of a Soutliern people in full and generous sym- 
pathy with the most jealous sentiment of national honor — that was one 
of the great special needs of the hour. Much had been done by tem- 
perate, wise, and patriotic counsel among the Southern members of 
Congress during the previous winter in the controversy over the Pres- 
idential election. It remained to do more, if possible, of the same 
sort. 

The full extent and jjractical importance of this view of Mr. Lamar's 
is to a slight degree indicated by the following editorial from Harper's 
Wccl-hj, of February 16, 1878, being the same number which noticed at 
some length the course of the Southern Senators on the Matthews reso- 
lution. The article was entitled " North and South," and was as follows: 

It has been said for a lon<,' time that there could be no really better underptanding 
between the sections of the country that were divided by the war so long as the old 
party organizations continued. The dominant Southern population, it was argued, as- 
sociate all the suffering that has befallen their States with the Republican party, and 
could have no other politics than the overthrow of that organization. It was assumed 
that Southern leaders in Congress would offer steady and unreasoning aid to every 
])ropo8itiou to embarrass or discredit the national governnient; that they had no pur- 
pose but revenge in any way and at any cost, ami that if they could embroil parties to 
tlie point of violence they would be only too glad to do so. It was this apprehension 
which alarmed " the North " during the summer of 1876 with the prospect of a " solid 
South ;" and there were Republican leaders who relied upim this jealous fear to pro- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 341 

mote their personal advantage in the snccess of tlie party. It is but tlie truth to say 
tliat this apprehension hat:; not been justitied by eventi*, and that tlie conduct of em- 
inent Southern leaders in critical public situations has shown a patriotism, modera- 
tion, and wisdom with whicli they had not been credited. 

Since tlie end of the war there have lieen two questions of vital importance to the 
public welfare. One was the electoral ilispute of last year, and the other is the silver 
scheme which is now under discussion. It is now evident that, had the Southern 
leaders in Congress aciiuiesced a year ago in the schemes of Northern Democrats, pro 
Mc vice, like David Dudley Field, civil commotion would probably have ensued; but 
they did not acquiesce. Many of them voted for the Electoral Bill, and they sustained 
the decisions under it, as they heUl that they were honorably bound to do. Their 
coniluct was certainly not such as had been anticipated by the Northern feeling that 
they awaited only an opportunity of revenge, and they are entitled to all the credit of 
wise and patriotic action. . . . Their comhict was not that of disappointed rage 
and vengeance. It showed that great injustice had been done to them in this part of 
the country. 

... It was still less to be expected that upon a (juestion involving the full and 
fair payment of the war debt some of the most conspicuous representatives of South- 
ern opinion should have so cordially and so powerfully advocated the honorable main- 
tenance of the national faith. . . . The anticipation that Southern leadership, 
after reconstruction, would probably attempt some kind of evasion or repudiation of 
the debt, led to the adojition of tlie fourth section of the fourteenth amendment to 
the constitution. It was to Ijaffle the prol)al)le action of men like Senators Lamar 
and Hill; yet now, when it is proposed virtually to dishonor the l\iith of the United 
States in the payment of the debt. Senators Lamar ami Hill vigorously oppose, and 
Republican Senators like IMessrs. Allison, Ferry, and Howe wai-mly support the prop- 
osition. Such action, with the declarations of the Charleston and New Orleans Cham- 
bers of Commerce, is another great step toward better mutual understanding. It 
shows that mere sectional politics are becoming more and more obsolete. It shows 
also that old party lines are disappearing, and that if good understanding was impos- 
sible so long as they were sharply drawn, another barrier is falling. 

Meantime how fared it witli Mr. Lamar, the subject of so much dis- 
cussion and criticism or praise? It fared ill, indeed; for he was very 
uidiappy. It was not the probable loss of place or of power which 
weighed upon him, but the supposed withdrawal from him of their con- 
fidence by the people whom he loved. By those who knew him well 
then and afterwards it was commonly observed that unjust criticism or 
unfounded suspicion from Mississippi wounded him more deeply than 
could anything else. However, while Mr. Lamar was much distressed, 
he did not proclaim his grief in the marketplaces. It is only in the 
sacred penetralia of his letters to his wife that any utterance of his sor- 
rows is found. One of those letters shows that he was anxiously and 
sadly questioning his heart: 

Can it be true that the South has not the intelligence and public virtue needed to 
meet theemergencies upon her? Can it be true that she will condemn the disinterested 
love of those w'ho, perceiving her real interests, oflfer their unarmored breasts as bar- 
riers against the invasion of error ? Have the spirit of her fathers, the sagacity of Jef- 
ferson, the patriotism of Washington, the virtue of Clay, departed from her? And is 



342 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

she to he the victim of the demagogue— blind leaders of the blind to their common 
destruction? 

In another be speaks of his " heart almost mated to despair." In a 
third he says: 

I have been the, recipient of a good deal of praise here lately, Ijut I take no further 
pleasure iu it. If I thought I could do good by remaining in public life, 1 would care 
very little for either praise or blame; for my eye has long been fixed on objects far 
hio-her than any personal promotion can reach, and whicli, if attained, would be an 
overabundant consolation for any personal failures or defeats. 

The only thing that depresses me (so far as I am personally concerned) is the fact 
that I am not in a pecuniary condition to vacate my office without doing my family 
great injustice. I feel more self-reproach at my not saving something for all of you 
than for anything else. 

I am very thankful to Mr. Murray for his desire to make his paper my defender. 
I would rather, however, that he would not, at the outset of his editorial experiment, 
incur the risk of defending a cause so uni^opular just now. 

Again, he says under date of Marcii 16: 

I wish I was well off enough to quit politics. The South has now her destiny in 
her own hands; and my efforts in her behalf to promote her power and her influence, 
as well as the prosperity of her people, will be ineflectual unless fully and heartily 
responded to. I can quit public life with heart pure and hands clean, and I want to 
get away from it before I become so habituated to it that I can't live happily in my 
family. . . . This world is a miserable one to me except in its connection with 
you. . . . I get a great many comiilimentary letters from the North, very few 
from Mississippi. James Gordon, from Pontotoc, sent me one that gratified me very 
much. He voted against the resolutions commending Bruce and, by implication, cen- 
suring me. 

To Hon. John M. Allen, then a District Attorney, Mr. Lamar wrote 
on the 17th of March: 

Such kind expressions as those contained in your letter tend greatly to lighten the 
burden imi)Ose<l upon me in consequence of my course on the Silver Bill. The trial 
through whicli I am going is one of the most painful of a life that has not been 
free from painful incidents. It is indeed a heavy cross to lay upon the heart of a 
pul)Iic man to have to take a stand which causes the love and confidence of his con- 
stituents to flow away from him. But the lilierty of this country and its great inter- 
ests will never be secure if its public men become the mere menials to do the liiddings 
of their constituents instead of being representatives in the true sense of the word, 
looking to the lasting prosperity and future interests of the whole country. 

In the following year (1879) Mr. Lamar, giving, as he said he would, 
tis reasons to his people for his vote on the Silver Bill, said: 

Soon after my admission into the Senate the question of the remonetization of sil- 
ver came up in thatjjody. [Here he gave a rapid sketch of the financial legislation 
of the United States, and then continued,] 

The Act of Congress stopping the coinage of the silver dollar was passed in 1873. 
At that time the coined value of the dollar of 412S grains was equal to its bullion value 
all over the world, some say three cents higher. At the time when it was proposed 
to be remonetized it had fallen to ninety cents. Now, if it were true that it was the Act 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 343 

of Congress which had caused this fall in the price of silver, all that was needed to re- 
store the former price was to repeal the act of 1873 and remonetize the metal. Un- 
fortunately, however, there were other causes quite independent of the action of Con- 
gress which operated to depress the value of silver. The Empire of Germany, whose 
legal tender money had been silver, discarded that metal as money and adopted the 
gold standard, estaljlishing a gold currency. Other nations followed: Sweden, Nor- 
way, Denmark, and Holland. England had for many years given up silver money 
except as an assistant in the way of change; and in France, Italy, Belgium, Switzer- 
land, and Greece the coinage of silver was indefinitely discontinued. In a word, silver 
ceased to be a money in the commerce of Europe. Along with this general stampede 
of the nations there were other causes which were sapping the foundations of this 
metal considered as money. The increase in the supply of silver was enormous just 
when the demand for it was lessening. In the United States alone, while the jiroduc- 
tion in 1800 was only two millions, in 1876 it was forty millions. The demand for it di- 
minished in almost equal proportion. The supply increased in a very short time one 
hundred per cent., and the demand fell off eighty per cent. 

The result of all this has been a very great shock to the prosperity of mankind. It 
caused an absolute loss of actual productive capital and a depression in the wages of 
labor and in the \alue of property everywhere. In the meantime a large and an in- 
creasing number of able and enlightened authors, who predicted these efl'ects, had 
been laboring to convince Europe that the restoration of silver was necessary to the 
prosperity of the world. In this movement no country had a deeper interest than 
the United States. "We are the greatest producers of silver in the world. I was there- 
fore an advocate of the remonetization of silver. I have always favored its restoration 
to the money of this country, and, while a member of the House, uniformly voted for 
measures looking to tliat end. 

As I have been much misunderstood and misrepresented on this question, I ask you 
to listen to what I said in my speech in the Senate: 

" I believe that there is a method of remonetizing silver — indeed, there is more than 
one method — so as to place that metal upon a solid and lasting foundation as a part of 
the currency of this country. I believe that it can be incorporated into the national 
currency so as to conduce to the ])rosperity of the country, satisfy the popular demand, 
and that, too, without any shock to the great interests involved, and even w'ith 
strengthening effect to the pulilic credit. 

" By concert of action with all those nations toho are favorable to the remonetizaiion of 
silver I believe that a legal ratio Ijetween these two metals can be fixed so as to make 
what is called the double or alternate standard feasible, at least sufficiently so to ad- 
vance all the practical purposes of commerce and trade and business. It must be a 
fair and an honest ratio, one in which the legal relation between these metals corre- 
sponds to their actual relation ; and there must be cooperation in order to insure this 
result, for I think I shall be al)le to demonstrate that we can make but a slight im- 
pression in that direction standing solitary and alone." 

To this end I voted in favor of a projiosition to remonetize silver by opening all the 
mints of the Uniteil States to the coinatre of silver dollars containing 42.5 grains each; 
and for a further proposition directing the President to invite the countries compos- 
ing the Latin Union, and such others as he might see proper, to join the United States 
in a conference looking to the adoption of a common ratio of legal tender as between 
gold and silver, and for the purpose of establishing internationally a metallic money 
with fixity of relation between the two meti^ls. I announced my readiness also to 
place the ITijited States side by side with the nations that had established even the 
ratio of 15* to 1. 

It has been wi.sely said that money is an institution of nations, and not of one na- 
tion. That is true. The thing, the quality which gives money its value and curren- 



344 LUCIUS Q. C. LAiVAR: 

cy as a universal instrument of exchange, that quahty which severs it from all other 
commodities, whetlier in respect of intrinsic or exchaufieable value, is the consent of 
nations; and, say what you may, tlie most autlioritative form in which that consent 
can be given is the laws of those nations i-espectively. \\'ithdraw tliat consent, and 
the material to that extent loses its function as money, and is remanded to the condi- 
tion of a mere commodity. While, therefore, the leading civilized and commercial 
nations of Europe no longer acknowledge silver as money, it is as impossible for one 
nation to raise the mass of the world's silver from its consequent depression as it is 
for one man to raise the level of the sea by lifting up a bucketful of its water. 

But I believed that something could be done by the United States. in advance 
which would induce the nations of Europe to cooperate in the restoration of silver to 
its foi'mer relation to gold. To do this, however, it was necessary to coin a dollar 
which would have enough silver in it to make it equal in value through all the mar- 
kets of the world to a gold dollar. Such a measure would not only have increased the 
volume of our currency, but it would also have made resumption easy. 

Tlie proijosition to coin a depreciated dollar, one that was worth only ninety cents, 
and to make it legal tender for a dollar, I was opposed to, and voted against. I was ■ 
opposed to such a debasement of our coinage, for reasons which I gave in my speech 
on that occasion; but there was one other reason which I desire to call to your special 
attention. 

One of the most prominent points in the debate was as to the effect upon the public 
credit of the proposal to pay the national debt with this dejireciated money so pro- 
posed to be coined. The advocates of tlie short coinage insisted that the acts of Con- 
gress to strengthen the public credit and to fund the publi<: debt only pledged the sol- 
emn faith of the government to pay the bonded debt in " coin," and that the act of 
1870 expressly provided that the bonds.should be redeemed in coin of the then pres- 
ent standard ; that, as the standard coin of the United States at that time included the 
silver dollar of 412A grains, to pay the bonds in such coin was not, for that reason, any 
violation of the public faith, even if the coin had depreciated in value; and that the 
creditors had no riglit to complain, because the legislation on which they based their 
claim to be [laid in gold was passed tlirough fraud, and clandestinely, for the base pur- 
pose of enriching the bondholders at the expense of the people. 

On the other side, the advocates of the full dollar insisted that, while the act in its 
letter said " payable in coin" (which included the silver dollar), yet in point of fact 
less than nine million silver dollars had been coined since the government was formed, 
and even that nine million had disappeared; that no such money as the silver dollar 
existed at the time of the issuance of these bonds or the funding of the public debt. 
It was further urged that a law was passed in 1873 prohibiting the coinage of the sil- 
ver dollar and taking away its legal tender quality, and gold coin made the only stand- 
ard rif value ; that after this law was passed demonetizing silver the government lior- 
rowed §520,000,000 in gold from the people of this country and elsewhere; that the 
government got the money ujjon these bonds in gold, dollar for dollar ; that it received 
the whole amount of them after silver ceased to be the legal coin and the legal tender 
of the country ; that the creditors had loaned this money in gold at four per cent, to the 
government because they expected, and had a right to expect, that they would be paid 
in the same kind of money the government had borrowed and received from them, and 
which then constituted the only legal tender coin of the government; that the nation- 
al honor required the United States to pay its debts in the manner its own legislation 
had authorized its creditors to expect; and that while it might have the power to 
make its creditors take their pay in depreciated coin, which its own action had helped 
to depreciate, and thus make them lose ten per cent, of the gold they had loaned to 
the government, it could not do it without a violation of the public faith and a dero- 
gation from the fame and dignity of the American Kejiublic. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 345 

This issue produced a profound impression, not only in this country, l)ut in Europe. 
It was the first time that the national credit of the United States was ever brought into 
question in the markets of the world; it was the first time that the iiublie faith of 
this government was made in eommeroial circles a matter of argument and specula- 
tion. Before the war the United .States Government had practically no public debt 
abroad. During the war the bonds issued were not regarded as the bonds of the 
United States as an entire nation. They were the bonds of the Northern section of 
the Union, fighting to reestablish national authority ; but the creditors took the chance 
of the result, which depended upon the success of their armies in the field, like the 
Confederate debt depended on the chances of victory or defeat. It was not until the 
war was ended and the Union restored that the debt became national and the credit 
of the whole reunited Republic became pledged to its redemption. 

This deljt spread its connections throughout the whole land. It was incorpor^ited, 
go to speak, through the industrial, social, and political transactions of that vast sec- 
tion which, at the close of the war, represented the strength, the manufacturing indus- 
try, the inventive genius, the accumulated gains, and the commerce of the nation. 

One of tlie great, I may say the chief, apprehensions in the mind of the North about 
the restoration of the South to a participation in this government (an apprehension 
felt not merely by powerful corporations and public institutions, but shared also by 
many in jjrivate homes) was that the South would never sincerely in her heart main- 
tain tlie sacredness of a debt which had been contracted in order to bring her back by 
force of arms into the Union, and yet the trifling with which would lie a fatal injury to 
the great material interests of the country. It was feared, not that the debt would be 
directly repudiated, but that its stability, its full, punctual, scrupulous discliarge wriuld 
be endangered by wild scliemes which would appeal to Southern prejudices and 
promise relief and plenty to an impoverished and heavily taxed section. Let me 
read you what a distinguished Northern man said, who afterwards formed a liigher 
estimate of our people and advocated their restoration to equality in the Union and 
to their rights of self-government. 

[Mr. Lamar here read a letter from Mr. Sumner to President .Johnson in 186.5, in- 
sisting that his policy of conciliation would abandon the freedmen to the control of 
their ancient masters, and would leave the national debt exposed to repudiation by 
returning rebels. He tlien continued;] 

Now, fellow-citizens, I submit to you, on which side of this question should a 
Southern Senator, having due regard to the honor, the dignity, and the lasting inter- 
ests of the Southern people, have ranged himself? I have already said that the eyes 
of the commercial world were turned to America; but their gaze was most especially 
concentrated, and that, too, with the intensest interest, upon the action of the South- 
ern States and their Southern Representatives who had just been admitted back into 
the Union, and have so important a part to bear in shaping its policy. Bear in nnnd 
our solemn pledges that, so far as our influence would go, the national credit should 
be maintained inviolate; remember the pledge that I made as the chairman of the 
Democratic caucus in 187-5; remember that Mississippi elected me to the Senate in a 
few days after that sentiment was uttered; remem1)er our solemn pledge to support 
those amendments to the constitution, one of which declared that the validity of the 
public debt should not be questioned. Gentlemen, as a Representative of the South in 
the American Senate, I felt myself, with my Southern associates, to be a joint heir of 
a mighty and glorious heritage of honor and responsibility. The brightest pages in 
American history— whether colonial, revolutionary, or constitutional— are those which 
record the achievements of Southern statesmanship. Southern patriotism, Southern 
public virtue. Remember the South's Patrick Henry, who fired all hearts to strike 
bravely for liberty; remember her Thomas Jefterson, who penned the immortal Dec- 
laration of Independence; remember her James Madison, who, with his compeer, 



346 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

Hamilton, but he the chief more than any other man, outlined the plan, laid the 
foundations, and reared the splendid fabric of the matchless Constitution of the 
United States; remember her Washington, the man whose equal no naticjn or epoch 
has yet produced. Then, after the constitution was ratilied and the Union established, 
for nearly thiee-fourths of its first century Southern statesmanship conducted the ad- 
ministration of its go\ernment, and Southern eloquence guided and adorned its coun- 
cils. When her representatives surrendered that government into the liands of her 
opponents, it was, in the language of one of the most eminent of those representa- 
tives, " without a stain upon its honor, matchless in its splendor, incalculable in its 
strength, the wonder and admiration of the world." 

Then, during the four years' j.ieriod of the war, with its direful desolations and 
mourntlil memories, Southern honor shone always — in deeds of valor on the stricken 
fields, in unyielding fortitude, in sublime self-sacrifice, and unfailing moral heroism — 
all over our land. I remember once witnessing a debate in the House of Commons, 
in England, when I heard Mr. Gladstone declare that the resistance of the Southern 
people against the tremendous preponderance in numbers and resources of their 
enemy was marked by achievements as heroic as any thai could be found in the sto- 
ried age of Ciireece or in the best days of Rome. And, gentlemen, could you have 
heard this tribute to Southern valor and honor received with cheers and acclamations 
in that great and historic Hall of Parliament, you could not have kept your blood from 
bounding with u quicker throb, or your hearts from swelling with a grander pride; 
and who does not feel, in their memories, some recompense for the struggles and suf- 
ferings of brave years? 

Then the still darker period of the South's final defeat and surrender came, and 
that other and the darkest yet : the promethean agony and horror of carpetbag rule. 
I need not portray to you the hideous spectacle of our sufl'erings under that soul- 
crushing tyranny. I was about to say thatthey are fresh in your minds; but no! they 
are seared upon your brains, they are burnt into your hearts. During the past anx- 
ious summer our people have been praying to God to spare them from a repetition of 
the frightful epidemic which last year filled our land with desolation an<l mourning 
and woe; but if it were to be put to the vote of our citizens to-day, they would wel- 
come the pestilence as a merciful release rather than to be made again the jjrey of 
that most deadly, loathsome, and crushing visitation that once fell upon our people 
from Carolina to Texas. 

But, gentlemen, even in that dolefid perioil when the Southern armies laid down 
their arms and surrendered the claim of their States to independence, e\en in that 
later horror, the memory of which is worse than that of the plague, the people of 
Mississippi gave not up their manhood nor their integrity nor their honor. Year after 
year the State of Mississippi presented the spectacle of a (|Ueen dethroned. The royal 
mantle hud been torn from her beautiful limbs ; the imperial scepter had been wrested 
from her grasp; the diadem snatched from her noble brow. Not unlike the Greek 
Slave she stood. Her lips were sealed ; her helpless hands were crossed and manacled. 
Yet there was in her eye a proud and serene light, upon her palid lips a tender smile, 
of which her ruthless rulers couW not rob her. The memory of all the jiast was hers. 
In her bosom she bore the consciousness of having given princes to the indestructible 
realms of thought. Her sons had won unfading laurels in the broad arenas of politi- 
cal strife, in the intricate labyrinths of legal lore, in the sweet fields of literature, on 
the lofty heights of Christian culture and ministerial toil. Though her bosom was 
naked, though it heaved with mighty sorrows and bore the burden of tears, yet still 
through the sorrow and the tears shone the memory of her children. The royal robe, 
the regal scepter, the jeweled crown, were gone; but she looked proudly upon the 
shining roster of her sons, and, with the Roman matron, exclaimed: " These are my 
jewels ! " 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 347 

But, fellow-i'itizens, that is now all jiast. Mississippi and her sister Southern States 
have now entered ui)on another era in their history. They are rehabilitated in their 
sovereignty. They stand, through their Senators and Representatives in the Congress 
of the nation, each State restored to her proud position of dignity and equality as a 
member of the Union; but she stands there on her parole of honor. And what is 
that parole? " The validity of the public debt shall not be questioned ; " " the public 
credit must be sacredly preserved, and repudiation in every form and guise de- 
nounced." --> 

Now, gentlemen, on the floor of that Senate I stood with this sacred trust in my \ 
hands: to preserve unsullied the spotless legacy of Southern honor, and to pass it on 
to my successors bright and untarnished. Tell me not that the letter of the law and 
of the contract allowed the government to pay those bonds in depreciated silver 
which the government had itself demonetized. It is not worth a moment's time to 
consider whether the contract may be so construed or not. Those who hold the obli- 
gations of the United States do not so construe them, and they were authorized tn con- 
strue them as payable in gold by formal legislation of Congress making it unlawful to 
enforce their payment in silver. Believing that the United States would pay the 
bonds in gold, they took the bonds, giving gold for them, dollar for dollar. I appeal 
to the glorious worth of your Southern descent : should a Southern Senator vote to 
shear off ten per cent, (fifty-two millions of dollars) of its debt to tliose who trusted to 
the honor of this country and invested their money in it, especially when the borrow- 
ing was done in its struggle for national preservation? 

Fellow-citizens, had the South voted against this proposition and insisted that the 
bonds of the government, if paid in silver at all, should be paid in such silver money 
as would be equivalent to their amount in gold, it woulil have given her a power and 
influence with all the ruUng classes of civilization and in all the markets of the world 
that would have been to her a treasure richer than all the mines of Nevada and all 
the gold of California and Australia combined. She would have been regarded as tlie 
firmer supporter of the national credit. There would not have been a man in the 
country who would not have felt that her presence in the councils of the nation 
strengthened the tenure by which lie holds his possessions, and everywhere in the 
civilized world the accession to power of a party of which she formed a part would 
have been regarded with confidence and approval. The appointment of a Southern man 
to a Supreme Judgeshiii or as a INIinister abroad or to the Cabinet at home would 
have been hailed with pleasure by all of those classes. And more: the capital of 
Europe, owing to the disturbed condition of the nations, finds no safe investments ex- 
cept at very low and unremunerative rates of interest. Its liolders were not disposed 
to invest further in Northern mines and manufactures. They were looking to the 
South, especially to the production and the manufacture of cotton and cotton goods. 
However much Northern men may haggle and quibble about their right to pay in 
silver a debt incurred in gold, I know that the South damaged herself in the eyes of 
the commercial world when she helped to enact that bonds understood to be payable 
in gold shall be hereafter payable in silver worth eight per cent less. While our 
lanils are dead for the want of capital to make them boom, this voting is of a kind, in 
ray opinion, to put an end to the cominar of money South, either in the shape of loans 
or investments So long as it is understood abroad that politicians can ride into power/ 
by exciting your passions against capital, by threatening it with hostile legislation, nnd 
by predicting its destruction by violence, the capital will stay away. It is these finan- 
cial agitations which are obstructing the return of prosperity and wealth to our 
section. 

Mr. Lamar closed this branch of his speech by saying: 

I believe that the condemnation of my course has now somewhat abated. Tl e 



348 LUCIVS Q. a LAMAR: 

measure became a law in spite of my vote. I did no harm, at least; but have the re- 
sults so coiitidently predicted from that measure been reached? Not one. No man 
has been enriched, no industry fostered, no delits paid, l:)y tlie light silver dollar. 
Since, however, the policy has been adopted, I shall do all in my power to make it 
successful. I believe in and shall ailvocate bimetalism: an honest silver dollar, and 
the recstablishment of universal bimetalism by the concurrent legislation of all com- 
mercial nations. 

The opinions and the policy thus announced by Mr. Lamar in re- 
spect to his own position lie afterwards spoke and wrote of frequently. 
. For instance, in a letter of November 3, 1885, he said: 

IMy own opinion is that the coinage of silver was so limited by the act that the 
embari-assments have been postponed to a very late day, but that they will surely 
come, sooner or later. I think sooner rather than laier. 

In a subsequent letter to Judge James Jackson, of the Supreme Court 
of Georgia, he wrote on March 1, 1886, that 

The issue between the Presiilent and the Congress on the silver question is one 
which I do not think will be productive of any disintegrating consequences upon the 
organization. . . . The thing to be regretted is that the South, against whom mis- 
trust has been kept alive on this very point of its hostility to the material interests of 
the dominant section, confirms that mistrust, or furnishes additional ground for it in 
its solid opposition to the demand of the commercial and business classes of the 
North for a uniform standard of currency. Apart from the unstatesmanship of such 
a course politically, it is an unsound position financially for them to take. 

Other expressions upon this subject will be found in their aj^propri- 
ate chronological j^laces through this volume. Looking to Mr. Lamar's 
speeches, his subsequent letters and authentic conversations, his views 
ou the coinage question may be thus summarized: 

1. He was opposed to the exclusive use of either gold or silver as the 
sole legal tender metallic currency, but favored the itse of both; and 
he believed this system to be practicable by any of several methods. 

2. He favored the unlimited coinage of silver with legal tender qual- 
ity, even at an arbitrary ratio between gold and silver, iritliiii certain 
limitti, provided that the cooperation of European powers could be se- 
cured by international agreement. 

3. In the formation of such a monetary alliance he was in 1878 will- 
ing to place the United States side by side with those States which were 
favorable to the remonetization of silver, and did not deem it essential 
to wait on either England or Germany. 

4. He was willing to undertake the independent coinage of silver, 
provided, however, that in such case the ratio should be so adjusted as 
to place in a sils'er dollar a gold dollar's worth of silver. 

Mr. Lamar's next speech in the Senate was made on the 28th of Feb- 
ruary, in reference to a bill authori/ing the holding of a special term of 
the United States Court at Scrantou, Miss., iu order to dispose more 
promptly and conveniently of a batch of timber depredation cases. The 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECIIES. 349 

matter was of only terapurary aud local interest, for which reason the 
argument made is not embraced in this volume. 

His speech upon the Texas Pacific Railroad Bill was of more general 
interest. 

Since the year 1845 the question of a great transcontinental railroad, 
connecting the Atlantic aud Pacific Oceans, had been in agitation. From 
almost the beginning of the discussion the South was in the field as a 
competitor for the location of the road, claiming that the Southern 
route was both shorter and more practicable than either the middle or 
Northern routes. The matter attained such dignity as to form planks 
in the party platforms before the Civil War. The exigencies of the 
war caused the actual construction of the present Central-Union lines. 
Upon the termination of hostilities the agitation for a Southern route 
was actively resumed, the principal argument being that the govern- 
ment aid and patronage extended to the Central-Union lines was a dis- 
crimination between sections, and, moreover, the maintenance of a gi- 
gantic private monopoly. The Southern people became very earnestly 
enlisted in the scheme for a Southern competing line and in the ob- 
taining of government aid toward its building, advancing various argu- 
ments of military aud postal aud police and social benetlts to the gov- 
ernment and the people. 

Mr. Lamar was much interested in the cause, and pressed it with all 
his power. It will be remembered that, in his opinion, his advocacy of 
the measure was one at least of the causes of the violent assaults made 
upon him in Washington in the winter of 1876-77, under cover of his 
advocacy of the Electoral Commission compromise. 

The government, acting as the Legislature for the Territories, had in- 
corporated the Texas Pacific Railroad Company in 1871, with a liberal 
laud grant. The financial crisis of 1873 crippled the infant company, 
and in 1874 it appeared before Congress as an applicant for further aid 
in the shape of au extension of time for completion aud a government 
guaranty of the payment of the interest of its construction bonds. This 
application was vigorously, and finally successfully, resisted. The oppo- 
nents were principally the friends aud promoters of the Southern Pa- 
cific of California, which company desired to work into the territory 
covered by the grant to the Texas Pacific. The friends of the latter 
company, however, claimed that the Southern Pacific was nothing but 
a branch of and feeder to the Central Pacific of the middle route, and 
that its success meant only a further continuance of the monopoly; 
while the Southern Pacific people contended that the Texas Pacific was 
being manipulated in the interest of the Pennsylvania Central combi- 
nation, and would not be a Southern road in fact even if built. 

Wlieu the Forty-fourtli Congress was organized in December, 1S75, 
Mr. Lamai-, then being a member of the House, was appointed Chair- 



350 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

man of the Standing Committee on the Pacific Eailroad. He soon 
found that it was au exceedingly troublesome and vexatious office. In 
addition to all of the diverse interests and selfish controversies to be 
reconciled or decided against, in addition to the earnest, almost clamor- 
ous insistence of the Houth, there was the irrepressible question of pol- 
itics. On the 4th of March, 1876, he wrote to Judge H. H. Chalmers, 
of Mississippi, that "The Pacific Eailroad project cannot be pushed 
through this Congress in consequence of the apprehension of each par- 
ty that the other will make capital out of it, and the desire of each to 
make capital against tlie other." 

On the 'iith of January, 1877, Mr. Lamar, as Chairman of the com- 
mittee, submitted a majority report, prepared by himself, accompanied 
by a bill designed to reconcile the differences of the contending parties 
and to extend substantial government aid to the project. His report 
contains an exhaustive review of the principal matters involved at the 
time, and it was highly esteemed in the South. The report fully ex- 
plained the general nature of the proposed bill, and showed that the in- 
terests of the government as guarantor would be fully secured, while 
the rights of the public would be fully guarded against extortion and 
monopoly. Various influences, however, conspired to prevent action by 
Congress, and the proposed bill did not become a law. 

In the organization of the Forty-fifth Congress Mr. Lamar was as- 
signed to the Committee on Piailroads. The situation in respect to the 
Pacific Railroads was substantially unchanged, except that the compro- 
mise expressed in his own report to the House seems to have been 
abandoned, and the rivals were again at war (V oufraiice. Several bills 
were introduced in each House. Among them was one favorable to the 
Southern Pacific, authorizing it to build eastward from Fort Yuma, 
its terminus theretofore fixed thus invading the line of the Texas Pa- 
cific; and others favorable to the Texas Pacific, extending government 
aid to it as a line through to the Pacific. On the 19th of March, 1878, 
Senator Matthews, for the committee, reported a bill in favor of tbe 
latter road; and on the 22d of May Mr. Lamar made his speech in sui)- 
port of that measure. 

The peroration of that speech is here given, because of the forcible 
and statesmanlike manner in which he appealed to the Northeastern 
Senators to support it, and because of its lucid expression of his own 
views as to the position occupied by New England in our governmental 
constitution. It should be remembered, too, in connection with his de- 
bate with Mr. Blaine in December, as set forth in the next chapter. 
He said: 

I am most anxious to commend this measure to the favor of Senators from the East- 
ern States. I regard that section of tliis Union as being now in a sense the especial 
representative of the most precious princijile of our American Constitution at this time, 
the most conservative part of our government, tliat wliicli alone will protect us from 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 351 

democratic absolutiam, which is always the sure forerunner of imperialism. I lucan 
the federal principle of our system, that which coordinates tiie .States of this Union 
and makes them coequal in dignity and power. 

Sir, when we look at the power that the six New England States and two or three 
other Eastern States of still smaller population have in this government, we can but 
be struck with the extent of the political authority they exercise, tlie power of [losi- 
tive, affirmative legislation, to say nothing of theirnegative power, as compared with 
the population upon which it is based. Four millions of people have an actual alfirm- 
ative force in the legislation of the nation as great as, perhaps greater than, that of fif- 
teen millions in other States, simply by virtue of the principle of State sovereignty 
and State equality in this Chamber. It is a principle which is essential, in my opin- 
ion, to the preservation of liberty on the American continent; but the jieople in some 
parts of this country are growing restive under this inequality of popular representa- 
tion; complaints are being made as to this great disparity. I have no sympathy what- 
ever with such complaints. The right of these States to equality here, irresi)ective of 
population, is as sacred as tlie constitution itself; and if impaired in the least, the whole 
system of constitutional lil>erty in America will fall into irretrievable ruin. 

But, Mr. President, this sentiment of reverence for the constitution is not, I fear, as 
deep and abiding in this country as it once was. The thought to which late events in 
our history have given most frequent expression is that " the will of the nation, as 
one people, is supreme;" and that this will must not be subordinated to a political 
form or a political dogma; and that if there be in the constitution any provision 
whercljy the people in their action are prevented from eliecting amendments to it, it 
will not be a revolution when the spirit of the people, in its real strength, breaks 
through the system by which it is gyved. This is the view which is now put forth 
with greatest acceptance by the political philosophers in this country of the pres- 
ent day. I do not concur in it; but if the contest for supremacy ever arises in this 
country (may God forefend that it ever shall!), it is a fact which the history of all pop- 
ular governments attests that constitutional rights must give way before numerical 
power. The mere holders of the symbols of power cannot stand before the actual pos- 
sessors of power. 

■ Such a contest may be averted by exercising these vast powers in a spirit of corre- 
spondence with the will and interests of the whole people, and not as representatives 
exclusively of the local interests of their constituencies. It is in this way, sir, that 
the hereditary principle of the British Government has been preserved and made to 
accord and cooperate with the elective principle in the promotion of the greatness and 
glory of that empire. I would therefore invoke these Senators, when they come to 
act upon this question, to look in a large, liberal, and benignant spirit to the interests 
of the twelve millions of people who are deeply and directly concerned in its success; 
and if they can tind it not inconsistent with the interests of the whole country to give 
it their support, that they will do it. Their constitutional power will thus have, sir, a 
solid foundation in the aflfections and gratitude of a constituency far wider than that 
whose suffrages have sent them here. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

Returns Home— His Reception— The Epidemic of ISTS— Tlie Congressional Elections 
of 1878 and the Solid South— The Cincinnati Interview- -The President's Message 
—Mr. Blaine's Investigation Resolution— The Deljate— Mr. Lamar's Speecli— Press 
Sketches— The Debate Resumed— Anecdote— Jefl'erson Davis' Open Letter on the 
Right of Legislative Instruction— The Bill to Pension the Soldiers of 1812— Senator 
Hoar's Amendment Excluding Jeflfersou Davis — Angry Debate — Mr. Lamar's 
Speech— Mr. Chandler's Speech— Correspondence with Davis— Symposium in A"ort/i 
American Review ou the Negro Question— Pen Sketches and Anecdotes of Senator 
Lamar. 

IN June, 1878, upon the adjournment of Congress, Mr. Lamar re- 
turned home, in order to obtain ueeded rest after the heavy labors 
of the session and also to render to the people au account of his course 
in the Senate. He had observed with much chagrin that, while his Pa- 
cific Railway sijeech met a favorable reception and had been highly 
complimented outside of Mississippi, but few of the compliments ap- 
peared in the papers of his own State. However, he soon had reason 
to know that the people were largely with him and for him, wherever 
the papers were. 

His first appearance in public was at the University Commencement, 
which was in progress when he reached Oxford. On Commencement 
day, as he entered the chapel where the exercises were holding, the 
vast audience, catching sight of him, rose to their feet, and, with cheer 
after cheer and the waving of hats and fans and everything wavable, 
greeted him until the manifestation grew into a storm which was 
only stopped by sheer weariness. A more enthusiastic and magnificent 
ovation he had never received. Shortly afterwards, in a mass meeting 
of the people of Tishemingo County, held at luka, Gen. Reuben Davis, 
then a candidate for Congress on the Greenback ticket, made an assault 
upon him; but the audience stormed at the speaker until he was forced 
to desist — rallying, however, and continuing his address with the re- 
mark that such demonstrations could not prevent him from criticising 
their idol. Again, in the Congressional Convention for tlie Third Dis- 
trict, which convened at Kosciusko on the 1st of August, some criticism 
was made tipon Mr. Lamar by a speaker, and a friend who seized the 
occasion to reply and indorse his course wqs ap]ilauded to the echo. 
Such incidents were constantly occurring, and Mr. Tjamar was soon sat- 
isfied that his place in the popular heart was secure. 

Mr. Lamar's design of making a canvass of the State, in aid of the 
approaching Congressional elections and for the sake of his ]:ersonal 
explanations, was defeated by the outbreak of the great epidemic of 
(352) 




SOME DEMOCRATIC SENATORS. 



ev PER. FSOM PHOTOS, BY C. M, BELL WASH.. D. C 
SENATOR THURMAN'S PHOTO COPVmGMTEO. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 353 

yellow fever. That terrible visitation was announced at New Orleans 
on the 2'2d of July, and thence it spread rapidly, mainly along the Mis- 
sissippi Kiver and the railroad northward. In a few days local qnar- 
antiues were established all over the South, and in Mississippi by 
almost every town and village. Until the middle of November there 
were great distress and terror and an entire suspension of business. 
Even the mails were stopped during much of the time. The towns- 
people largely either left for the North or the mountains, or else took 
refuge in the country. Mr. Lamar, with his family, sought and found 
safety on a little farm ten miles out from Oxford, aud there passed the 
late summer and the fall in unbroken retirement, and in quiet uninter- 
rupted save by the harrowing news of the ravages of the fever. 

The general Congressional elections of 1878 resulted in securing a 
working Democratic majority in the House. This result was mainly 
due to the fact that the South voted " solidly " for that party. Hardly 
•were these facts ascertained when the report went out from Washing- 
ton that the administration had resolved to change "its Southern pol- 
icy, for the reason that pledges made to Mr. Hayes by the Southern 
leaders have not been fulfilled." The Southern newspapers began again 
to discuss and censure the "waving of the bloody shirt" by the Repub- 
lican leaders. 

The New York Tribune said editorially: 

But let the cui-reiicy question pass out of the way and the Greenback element re- 
turn to the parties from whence it came, and what would happen? The solid South 
would then become the overshadowing issue of the canvass. It would be answered 
by a solid North. ... A solid North, with two hundred and thirty-one electoral 
votes, will never be so broken as to be beaten so long as the South remains solid. 
After 1880, that division of parties remaining, the Eepublicans will be prepared to re- 
sume control of the Senate. ... It will then be considered whether States in 
which free elections are not held, and the Constitution of the United States is sys- 
tematically disregarded and defied, are entitled to cast electoral votes or to elect Con- 
gressmen at all. If we are to have forced upon us the luiwelcome issue which a solid 
South invarialily raises, a patient and enduring North will not be found wanting 
when it is settled. ' 

Mr. Lamar, on his way to Washington, about November 20, was in- 
terviewed in Cincinnati, and, in answer to the question, " What are the 
prospects of the Gree*iback party in the South?" is represented as say- 
ing to the reporter of the Evfiirer: 

"\Vell, as to that, so long as the right of the people of the South to self-government 
is made an issue in the national politics the peojile of the South will not, and in my 
opinion ought not, to allow any question as to currency to divide tliem.^ The South 
is more solid in favor of self-preservation than divided as to national policies. 

The New York Tribune made the interview the occasion and the text 
of a very fierce assault upon Mr. Lamar, of the usual nature in such 
cases; and this action elicited the following "special" from the Wash- 
23 



354 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

ington correspondent of the Neic York World, under date of Decem- 
ber 1: 

Much indignation has been excited here among respectaljle Republicans, as well as 
Democrats, by the atrocious attacks of the New York Tribune on Senator Lamar. It 
is considered that Senator Lamar, more than any other man, made the existence of 
the Hayes administration possible, while Conkling was denouncing it everywhere as 
" infamous." He owes Hayes nothing, and Hayes owes him much. All the summer 
through Senator Lamar was at home in Mississippi with his dead and dying, while 
pestilence was busy in all homes. There was absolute peace throughout the State, 
complete acquiesence in the electoral results on the part of all, blacks as well as 
whites. The Tribune now attempts to drive the Southern people into general hostil- 
ity to honest money l^y conspiring with Shei'man and Hayes, whom Sherman now 
openly rules, to create a belief at the North and West of an attempt to revive sec- 
tional controversy. Senator Lamar, when interviewed in Ohio, said very truly that 
if the South found self-government assailed, or attempts made to overthrow order at 
the South by black Kearneyisra, no question of currency could be listened to. The 
course of the Tribune is believed here to be a deliberate attempt of Jay Gould and his 
clique to disturb the business of the country, depress values, and weaken the influ- 
ence of tliose Southern men who have bravely and loyally sup|iorted the keeping of 
public faith in the public treasury. The attack is also connected with the des]ierate 
attempt of the existing Pacific Eailway ring to jirevent any consideration of the 
Southern Pacific Railway, and involves Senator Thurman ultimately also, whose 
great victory over the existing Pacific Railway ring asserted the absolute supremacy 
of the government over all such corporations. The business men of the North and 
the thousands of unemployed laborers in all parts of the country are equally assailed 
by these " dynamite fiends " in politics, who, for purposes of private speculation quite 
as much as party combinations, seek to blacken the best men of the South, to excite 
the worst passions of both sections, to keep the currency troubles inflamed, and to 
prevent the revival of general industry. 

Wlien Congress assembled, the President, in respect to Southern af- 
fairs, said in his annual message that 

In some of those States in which the colored people have been unable to make their 
opinions felt in the elections the result is mainly due to influences not easily 
measured or remedied 1:)y legal protection; l)ut in the States of Louisiana and 
South Cai-olina at large, and in some particular Congressional Districts outside of those 
States, the records of the elections seem to compel the conclusion that the rights of 
the colored voters have l.)een overridden, and their participation in the electi(jns not 
permitted to be either general or free. 

It will be for the Congress for which these elections were held to make such exam- 
inations into their conduct as may be appropriate to determine the validity of the 
claims of members to their seats. In the meanwhile it becomes the duty of the exec- 
utive and judicial departments of the government, each in its jirovince, to inquire into 
and punish violations of the laws of the United States which have oct'urred. 

On the first day of the session, and just before the coming in of the 
President's message, Mr. Blaine introduced in the Senate the following 
resohitions: 

Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary be instructed to inquire and report 
to the Senate whether at the recent elections the constitutional rights of Ameri- 
can citizens were violated in any of the States of the Union; whether the right of suf- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 355 

frage of citizens of the United States, or of any class of such citizens, was denied or 
abridged by the action of election officers of any State in refusing to receive their 
votes, in failing to count them, or in receiving and counting fraudulent ballots in pur- 
suance of a conspiracy to make the lawful votes of such citizens of none effect; and 
whether such citizens were prevented from exercising the elective franchise, or forced 
to use it against their wishes, by violence or threats or hostile demonstrations of armed 
men or other organizations, or by any uther unlawful means or practices. 

Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary he further instructed to inquire and 
report whether it is within the competency of Congress to provide by additional legis- 
lation for the more perfect security of the right of suffrage to citizens of the United 
States in all the States of the Union. 

Resolved, That in prosecuting these inquiries the Committee on the Judiciary shall 
have the right to send for persons and papers. 

On the lltli of December the Blaine resolutions were taken up for 
consicleratioD, and Mr. Blaine made a speech in support of them which 
he had carefully prepared, and read from his manuscrii^t; the general 
argument and sentiment of which was, 

First, to place on record (by the inquiry called for), in a definite and authentic 
form, the frauds and outrages by which some recent elections were carried by the 
Democratic party in the Southern States ; 

Secondly, to find if there be any method by which a repetition of these crimes 
against a free ballot may be prevented. 

We know [said he] that one hundred and six Representatives in Congress were i-e- 
cently chosen in the States formerly slaveholdini;, and that the Democrats elected 
one hundred and one, or possibly one hundred and two ; and the liepuljlicans four, or 
possibly five. We know that thirty-five of these Representatives were assigned to the 
Southern States by reason of the colored population, and that the entire political pow- 
er thus founded on the numbers of the colored people has been seized and appropri- 
ated to the aggrandizement of its own strength by the Democratic party of the South. 
. . . Thus it appears that throughout the States that formed the late Confeder- 
ate Government sixty-five thousand whites (the very people that rebelled against the 
Union) are enabled to elect a Representative in Congress, while in the loyal States it 
requires one hundred and thirty-two thousand of the white people that fought fbrthe 
Union to electa Representative. In levying every tax, therefore, in making every ap- 
propriation of money, in fixing every line of public policy, in decreeing what shall be 
the fate and fortune of the Republic, the Confederate soldier South is enabled to, cast 
a vote that is twice as powerful and twice as influential as the vote of the Union soldier 
North. . . . The colored citizen is thus most unhappily situated. His right of suf- 
frage is but a hollow mockery; it holds to his ear the word of jiromise, but breaks it 
always to his hope; and ho ends only in being made the unwilling instrument of in- 
creasing the political strength of tliat jiarty from which he received ever-tightening fet- 
ters when he was a slave and contenqituiius lefusal of civil rights since he was made 
free. . . . And this injustice is wholly unprovoked. . . . Let me now remind 
you that the government under whose jirotecting flag we sit to-day sacrificed myriads 
of lives and expended thousands of millions of treasure that our countrymen of the 
South should remain citizens of the United States, having equal personal rights and 
equal political privileges with all other citizens. And I venture now and here to warn 
the men of the South, in the exact words of Macaulay, that we will " never suffer them 
to be more." 

Mr. Thurman answered Mr. Blaine. He wondered why these resolu- 
tions were introduced, unless they were to be made a string upon which 



356 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

to hang speches to arouse sectional hatred in one portion of this Union 
against an almost defenseless people in another portion of the Union. 
It seemed as clear to him as anything in American politics conld be 
that there was a deliberately formed pui'ijose, under pretext that there 
Nvas a solid Soutli, to ci-eate a solid North to rule not only the solid 
South, but also nearly one-half, if not more, of the jjeople of the North. 
The amount of the complaint of the Senator from Maine was that there 
were not enough Republican votes in the South, assuming, without a 
shadow of proof, that the negroes of the South were prevented from 
voting, or forced to vote the Democratic ticket. Property, intelHgence, 
and education will rule the land, and ignorance cannot; which the Sen- 
ator should have thought of when he was framing his fourteenth and 
fifteenth amendments. It was the Federal administration, working 
with its Freedman's Bureau, which drew the color line. The Senator's 
action seemed to him to be a note sounded to the Northern people to 
retrace their steps, and, declaring that the right of suffrage was prohib- 
ited to the negro in the South, to exclude Southern Representatives by 
the score. In the North there was a danger to American institutions 
greater than any abuses in the South: in the free use of money to cor- 
rupt elections, etc. 

Before Mr. Thurman concluded it was whispered around by the Dem- 
ocratic Senators that there must be another answer to Mr. Blaine, and 
that Mr. Lamar must make it. Thereupon he consented, and engaged 
in the debate extempore. He said: 

}fr. President : When these resohitions are printed and ready for action, I may have 
something to saj' upon the question of tlieir adoption. Before the question passes off 
now I wish to malie one or two remarlcs, not upon tlie resolutions, but upon one or 
two points submitted by the Senator from Maine. 

Sir, it is not a surprising thing, nor is it an unnatural one, that that distinguished 
Senator should feel and manifest a deep interest in the afl'airs of the Southern States. 
The people of that section have but recently undergone a vast change, social and po- 
litical. It is reasonable, it is eminently fit and proper, that one who bore so con- 
spicuous a part in the adoption of the measures which brought about that vast trans- 
formation, who occupies so consijicuous a position at the present time, and who per- 
haps will occupy a still more distinguished position in the future, shouM scrutinize 
with anxious solicitude the progress of that people to reconstruction and to their re- 
adjustment to the healthy and normal conditions of our national life. Sir, had the 
Senator come forward with some well-devised scheme of jjublic education by which 
this newly enfranchised race, who have had such exulted duties imposeii upon them 
without culture, and without even the trained intelligence of practical experience, 
may be fitted to exercise their great duties as freemen and citizens, and as the partici- 
pants in the sovereignty of Comnionwealtlis, every one would have recognized the 
propriety and the patriotism of such a movement; for he would have proposed to give 
to that people what they av ist need, and what would protect them from every evil and 
wrong which he now alleges that they labor under. 

There are other evils in that country which might call forth the lofty and enlarged 
measures of a patriot and of an American statesman, but I nuist confess to some re- 
gret that a Senator so distinguished, in looking upon this recently dislocated member 



SIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 357 

of this great American empire, instead nf regarding it with reference to those great 
interests that affect the wliole country througli the long track of coming years, should 
have concentrated his whole attention upon its relation to parties and party contests; 
that nothing should have struck the Senator's notice or engaged liis thoughts except 
the connection of that people with the ascendency and defeat of parties and their in- 
fluence in Federal elections. Party organizations are no part of the constitution, 
and they are agencies which work outside of the laws. But, sir, the gentleman's 
remarks were directed exclusively to the mere pai-ty and partisan aspects of this great 
subject; and, with no intent whatever to utter a bitter retort, 1 cannot but feel the re- 
gret that one of such resolute energies, of such tenacious purposes, such daring ambi- 
tion, and such great abilities should have. so narrowed his mind as to give to party 
what was meant for mankind. 

But, sir, whiit is the point at last of the gentleman's argument this morning? It 
was remarkable for its significant omissions. It was directed exclusively to the sup- 
pression of the votes of a particular class of suffragans in the South. Mr. President, if 
I understood the debates at the time of the adoption of the amendment to which he 
refers— clothing the negroes of the South with the right of suffrage— it was to give 
them protection for their freedom and for the civil rights which the fourteenth 
amendment accorded to them. Through the protracted remarks of the Senator he 
could not utter one word (he could not, liecause it would not have been the truth if he 
had) to show that there was a single right of freedom or of citizenship belonging to 
the black race of the South that was not as secure and as well enjoyed as that of the 
proudest and freest white man in tiie land. 

It is also a remarkable fact that in his indictment of the South there is no jiretense 
that there is a single menace in her present attitude to any of the great interests of 
this country, not an imputation of that character; for," solid " (according to the usual 
phrase) as the South may be, she stands in line with a majority of the American peo- 
ple upon nearly every question that is now discussed in this nation or argued here in 
her council chambers. 

But, sir, to come to the direct point, the Senator asserts that, in consequence of the 
suppression of the negro vote at the South l:)y means which he alleges are illegitimate 
and irregular, the South has a disproportionate party power in this government. Sir, 
before this discussion is over I will show that the negro vote has not been sup]iressed 
in the South ; I will demonstrate that this political phenomenon which is the subject 
of so much discussion and misre]iresentation is a j)henomenon that would occur in 
any free society, and that it has been brought about by the influences which intelli- 
gence and virtue and sagacity and the other elements of civilization always bring to 
bear upon the classes that are ignorant and debased. 

But, sir, assuming all that the gentleman says to be true— that there are in the 
House of Representatives one hundred and six Representatives elected of one party 
complexion, and elected by means that are not what he considers legitimate— let us 
see where we stand in this position. Now, sir, what interest of the North, what inter- 
est of this country is endangered by it? Sir, wdth the united vote of tlie South she 
stands a powerless section in this government; she is an impotent minority section 
in any event, unable to protect a single Southern right or to defend a single Southern 
interest. 

But [says the gentleman] under the operationsof these amendments the South has 
a representation not in proportion to the constituency which elect them, and the States 
of South Carolina and Mississipiii and Alabama have much more power than twice the 
numbere of some of the Northwestern States which he mentioned. Mr. President, every 
member of that pojiulation in those States entitled to vote ought to lie counted. You 
have no right to draw the line between tlie black and the white, and assume that the 
black man, because he did not vote the Republican ticket, is therefore a suppressed 



358 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

voter. Is it to be assumed that in every Southern State the property and population 
of the State are in such necessary antagonism that no amount of local misrule can 
teach them the advantage of their natural alliance? What right has he to assume 
that whites and blacks are never to vote and act together as citizens of a common 
country? Now, sir, let me call attention to one point in the Senator's argument. If 
we are to enter upon a system of legislation and political movements in order to ad- 
just representation and political power in tliis government according to the number 
of actually voting constituencies, the iirincijjle may operate further than the gentle- 
man tliinks. 

What is the population of the State of Maine? I believe it is 025,000. It has been 
diminishing within the last twenty years. I cannot now i-ecoUect, but perhaps it is 623,- 
000. Vermont, which is also solid, has not more than :!50,000. And yet the State of 
Maine has as much power in this government with her 000,000 people as the State of 
New York with her 5,000,000. 

A Senator: " You mean in this Chamber? " 

Mr. Lamar: " No, sir ; I mean in this government. Gentlemen correct me by saying 
' in this Chamber; ' l;)ut I adhere to the phrase. I say, and repeat, that they have the 
affirmative power of legislation this day; 625,000 in Maine are equal to 5,000,000 in 
the State of New York. A jjositive eiiuality of States, whatever be their population, 
in either Chamber where concurrent legislation is needed, is positive affirmative power 
in the passage of any law. Why, sir, the whole of New England has not three and a 
half millions of population; and yet under the operation of the constitution and laws 
of the land, of which I make no complaint, and which is a legitimate thing, those 
three and a half millions of population have six times as much power as sovereign 
I Commonwealths that have five millions. They have got as much power as twenty 
I millions in the large Northwestern States that the gentleman called attention to. 

"Sir, why is one man in these Eastern States equal to twenty in the Northwest, ex- 
cept by virtue of the constitution— the constitution which we are intending to abide 
by and to maintain? 

"But as the gentleman has vouchsafed advice to SoutUern men on tliis floor and ^ 
/ outside, in all spirit of fairness and equity I will speak to the people of the New En- 
gland States and tell them that in my opinion the direst foe they have got on earth is 
the Representative or Senator, whether from their own section or any other, that will 
kindle this fire whose subterranean flames will liquefy the very foundations on which 
these proud and free Commonwealths now rear their aspiring heads. Sir, the Senator 
is fishing in troubled waters u)ion this subject; and when you come to agitate ques- 
tions of tins kind you will find tluit changes of a more radical and fundamental . 
. nature will be necessary in order to adjust representation to numbers in this govern- ^ 
' ment. 

"I will not now proceed, sir, any further in my remarks. At another time when 
these resolutions come up, if they are to be discussed, I may participate in the discus- 
sion." 

Mr. Blaine: " Mr. President, I wish to give notice that at the very earliest opportu- 
nity that the business of the Senate will permit I shall ask a vote upon these resolu- 
tions; and I desire merely to say, in reply to the Senator from Mississippi, that in the 
little colloquy between him an<l the Senator from Vermont I understand this to be 
aljout the residuum: that if I move an inquiry into the unconstitutional representa- 
tion of Mississippi in tlie other House he will move one into the constitutional repre- 
sentation of Maine in this branch." [Laughter.] 

Mr. Lamar: " That will do jiretty well for wit and pretty well for the Senator's pe- 

j 1 \ culiar species of perversion, but it will not do for the truth ; for, sir, I protested that 

^/^^^(^H^-At^ J „q(. only .^yould move no such inquiry, but that I would oppose and fight any such 

"'^'^^^ purpose. No, sir ; the doctrine that I stated was that if the right of sufl'rage be invaded 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 359 

anywhere or any constitutional right infringed upon in any quarter or by anybody it 
shall be maintained and enforced, if necessary, by all the constitutional power of the 
government." 

Mr. Edmunds: " Then we are all at one." 

Mr. Lamar: " Exactly so, but not upon the ground that States shall be deprived of 
any of their Representatives, because under the operation of the constitution, either 
in its original pro\'isions or in its amendments, their political power may be not in 
exact proportion to their numerical power in this government. And I repeat the 
warning against this agitation about sectional power based on numbers; I warn Sen- 
ators that in throwing their net into this troubled sea they may drag to the shore a 
vase like that of the fisherman in the 'Arabian Nights,' from which, when the seal was 
once broken, a demon emerged more potent than his deliverer and threatening his 
destruction." 

Mr. Edmunds: " I do not know but he is here now. Now let us have the regular 
order." 

Mr. Lamar: " I suppose that very witty remark was intended for private ears, and, 
as I did not hear it, I leave it without retort." 

This passage at arms vras tlms described by the correspondent of tlie 
New Orleans Pieatjune: 

The announcement tliat ]\Ir. Blaine would call up his resolution drew a great crowd 
to the Senate to-day. The galleries and the floors were full to overflowing. A large 
number of members of the House were present. Blaine spoke with his usual fire and 
animation. His positions were specious and plausible; but, after all, it was only a 
stump speech. 

Judge Thurman was in his best vein wlien he rose to reply. His answer was a 
perfectly triumphant [jiece of logic, and there was about him a sense of easy power 
and strength which formed an impressive contrast to Blaine's eager, ambitious eflbrt 
at display. It was like a wise father rebuking a spoiled child for his petulance and 
foolishness. Mr. Lamar also made some very telling and effective points, which 
brought Edmunds and Blaine to their feet in an impotent attempt to misstate Mr. 
Lamar's jiosition. Lamar's expression of regret that Blaine had not brought forward 
some liberal measure of education for the blacks made Blaine wince and look as if he 
had forgotten something. ... It was well understood all over the floor that 
Blaine's demonstration was merely a Presidential bid — a device to get ahead of Conk-* 
ling and Grant. Mr. Conkling went on writing in his usual contemptuous style dur- 
ing Blaine's speech, and Edmunds would probably have remained silent if Lamar had 
not referred to Vermont. The Republicans will not be willing to let the debate stop 
at this point. Tliey will want to mend their hold. 

Washington special to the Cincinnati Enquirer: 

The brilliancy of the opening day at the Senate end of the capitol is overshadowed 
and forgotten in the greater spectacle of to-day. Admittance to either gallery was al- 
most impossible at noon, and quite so at 1 o'clock, when Blaine walked into the 
Chamber and took his seat. . . . Companiesof fair dames smiled upon him; prel- 
ates and politicians clustered around him; foreign ministers lent their presence; the 
press of the country were watching him and waiting for his words. It was a tribute 
of which any man might well be proud. . . . The entire space-way between the 
Senatorial benches was jiacked with ]iublic men. It seemed that half the House was 
gathered there. It was Blaine's crowd, without a doubt; but it iiad to see its idol 
son worsted liy Thurman. 

Lamar finished the good work in an eloquent speech, which took a broad, states- 
manlike view of the subject. He regretted that a man of so much ability, so wise 



360 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

statesmanship, and so great ambition had neglected to offer a comprehensive plan for 
the education of the negro at the Soutli whicli would strike at the rout of the whole 
evil, but had prostituted his great powers by contracting himself to the narrow limits 
of partisanship. It was the most dignified and cutting rebuke that has been heard 
in the Senate for a long time. . . . His effort was thoroughly impromptu. In the 
short though sharp badinage between himself and Blaine he held his own ; and his 
keen retort that one of Blaine's assertions would do very well for wit, but not for 
truth, made rather a sensation. 

The Washington Post said editorially that 

Senator Lamar was heard from yesterday advantageously. The temperate and 
sensible words that fell from his lips will sorely disappoint and grieve the editors of 
the outrage organs. 

The further debate predicted took place five daj's later, on the 16th 
and 17th. The correspondent of the Boston Post wrote of it that 

The debate in the Senate on the Blaine resolution last Monday and Tuesday was 
one of intense interest and excitement, not so much on account of the subject under 
discussion as the combatants engaged in it. It called out the best talent of the Sen- 
ate, and reminded one of a war among the gods. Blaine stood his ground, almost sin- 
gledianded, and entirely so on the second day. . . . Gen. Ransom had the best of the 
argument, however. He made a very fine point in favor of the amendment that the 
committee slKjuld sit with open doors, showing how very anxious Blaine had been to 
"turn on the lights; " and now that the Democrats were equally anxious to have the 
lights turned on and to have the fullest and freest public investigation, he is equally 
anxious to turn ofl' the lights — that is, to investigate in secret, so that lie can turn the 
light on only such facts as he may select for illumination. 

In his retort Blaine roused Lamar, of Mississippi, and I suspect that he wished that 
he hadn't. It was hke Mars letting slip the dogs of war. Horse, foot, and dragoons 
descended upon him. Grape and canister, shot and shell rattled about his devoted 
head. He attempted resistance, and sped one swift shaft at his adversary, but it was 
instantly returned, tipped with acrimony; and the champion who had so gallantly 
withstood the repeated attacks of fresh ailversaries apparently concluded that this was 
a stroke too much for even his Samsonian strength, and so beat an orderly retreat, or 
at least attempted no further defense. While watching this contlict I mentally char- 
acterized Blaine as the tiger and Lainar as the lion, the closely cropped iron gray 
whiskers and hair, as well as expression and motion of the former, and the flowing 
brown hair and beard of the latter, bearing out the similitude. 

In talking with Senator Lamar afterwards I was somewhat surprised, considering 
the virulence of his attack upon him, to hear him say that he was very fond of Blaine; 
and indeed all of his opponents took occasion in the course of their remarks to bear 
witness to his ability, eviilently feeling a genuine pleasure in jousting with a foeman 
whom they were proud to acknowledge as " worthy of their steel." In this respect 
the Democratic side of the House is more chivalrous than the opposition. 

The "retort" of Mr. Blaine's which "ronsed" Mr. Lamar, and his 
further participation in the debate, are given below: 

Mr. Blaine said: " I beg here to reply to a remark made by the honorable Senator 
from Mississippi [Mr. Lamar] on the day when these resolutions were debated be- 
fore, and that remark implied that even if there might be some advantage for the 
South in the popular branch of Congress it was an advantage more than compensated 
by some countervailing advantage which we held in this branch. Sir, whenever that 
phase is brought to light, knowing that it is held up as a dreadful example, let me tell 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 361 

the honorable Senator from Mis.^issippi, and the country, that I Ciin name six Southern 
States that send twelve Senators to this Hoor with one-half the white population of 
the six New England States and with less than the aggregate population. So that, if 
the remedy hinted at by the Senator from Mississippi should be resorted to, that seal- 
pel would cut more deeply into the South than it would into the North. Let me tell 
him, sir, tluit of the thirty-two Senators who sit here from the Southern States and 
forty-lour from the Xorthern States, a much larger number of constitueuts are behind 
each Northern Senator than behind each Southern Senator. Then, if you take it in 
classes between the North and South, the ad\antage is overwhelmingly against the 
^ South. If you take the frightful example of New England, always held up, I will 
gather together six States of the South that illustrate in a far more striking manner 
what the Senator intimated by the injustice cjf rei)resentation in this branch." 

Mr. Lamar: " Mr. President, the Senator from Maine misunderstood the position 
which I took with reference to the representation of States in this Senate, owing en- 
tirely, no doubt, to the want of clearness in my own statement. If I did not misap- 
prehend the Senator from Maine on that occasion, his argument was that, under the 
amendments which conferred freedom and citizenshii> and suti'rage upon the lilack 
race, the South, through certain irregular methods, had obtained a representation in 
the House of Representatives disproportioned not to her population, but to the actual 
voters at the polls ; and if I did not mistake him, he quoted from the Supreme Court 
Reports of the United States a decision that the power of Congress did not extend far 
enough to remedy that disproportion of representation in the other House. If I un- 
derstood him, he said that that decision which denied the power of Congress to legis- 
late so long as the laws of a State itself did not deny or abiidge any of these rights to 
the negro pojiulation — that Congress was powerless to intervene — was indorsed by 
him as being true to the letter of the constitution which killeth. I understood him 
to say that the constitution as thus construed was a killing constitution, and that the 
letter of it stood up as a barrier to the enforcement of the rights conferred upon the 
colored citizens." 

Mr. Blaine: "The Senator misunderstood me." 

Mr. Lamar: "Owing to my own obtuseness, no doubt." 

Mr. Blaine: "Such might be the ruling of the courts, I said, on the letter which 
killeth ; but I j^rotested against the equity and justice of it. I did not at all admit 
that tliat was what in my judgment the constitution was designed to be." 

Mr. Lamar: " Precisely. He did not admit that it was what it was designed to be; 
but do I now understand the Senator to say that he diflers with the court in its con- 
struction of the constitution?" 

Mr. Blaine: "I do. Th.at may not be a very great shock to the court, but never- 
theless I do." 

Mr. Lamar: " I differ from the Senator. The court will be greatly shocked, but 
perhaps wiJl survive the attack. [Laughter.] Then, sir, I thought that it was not 
amiss to suggest that if there were remedies in the American people to prevent this 
disproportionate representation, and if we could so legislate as to make, not popula- 
tion, Imt actual voters at the polls, to be the limit of the representation of a State; 
and if Congress, or the people by their amending power, should thus interpose to re- 
form the government and to make it a government liased entirely upon numbers, not 
that New England alone, liut that the South also miglit apprehend that you would go 
further and crumble into ruin our entire system. Sir, when the gentleman tells me 
that the South is in the same danger that the East is, that the New England States 
are, he only reiterates a fact that I have attemjited to impress upon both sections, 
and.that is that the inviolability of the constitution is the only shield and safeguard 
of New England, as well as of the South. 
y "Sir, the menace does not come from the weak and impotent South. When this 



?p^^ 



^ 



9 



3G2 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

popular movement, this effort to bring this government to the pure principle of dem- 
ocratic absolutism, trampling down in its relentless strides the barriers of the consti- 
tution, arises, he will find the power not in the South, but in the mighty West, whose 
little finger is greater and more potent than the two thighs of South and East united." 

In one of his short speeches on the last day of the discussion (the 
17th) Mr. Blaiue used this language: 

Senators who have spoken more directly for the South . . . have asked us to 
believe miracles. They have asked us to believe that in a night, in the twinkling of 
an eye, more quickly than Saul was converted on his way to Damascus, vast bodies 
of colored voters were turneil from the Republican into the Democratic fold. In 
what is called the " whiiilash " district in Mississippi, where they placed in those 
cotton counties in the delta all the negro population that they could crowd into one 
district, and four to one— I do not believe I overstate it — as compared with the white 
men, represented at the time by one of their own race, who, I do not hesitate to say, 
is a man of commanding ability, considering his advantages and his birth, John R. 
Lynch, fitted to represent a constituency of white men, naturally and inevitably a 
fav(.)rite of his own color, at the very first election after this miraculous conversion, 
when the Democracy got hold of the State, he was beaten overwhelmingly by Gen. 
Chalmers. Of course the negroes saw it in a moment. They had no doubt the mo- 
ment Gen. Chalmers was put up that it was their duty to support him and to vote 
against Lynch. 

Of this the correspondent of the New Turk World told an enter- 
taining story, which is given for what it is worth : 

Lamar's merciless punishment of Blaine yesterday, which delighted even the Re- 
publicans, brought forth an anuising incident to-day. Lamar left the Senate early^ 
and Chalmers, a Mississippi member of Congress, strolling in to hear what was going 
on, the House being abnormally stupid, sat innocently down in Lamar's seat. Blaine 
espied and recognized him ; and, as Chalmers is not more than half tlie size of Blaine, 
the valiant Senator evidently thought he had a chance to apply the military maxim 
dear to the schoolboy's soul: " I cannot whip you, but I can make faces at your sister." 
He accordingly made a short turn in his speech, ami, fixing his eyes ferociously on 
the unsuspecting Chalmers, began a tremendous tirade on bulldozing in the Vicks- 
burg District, which Chalmers represents. Of course Chalmers could make no leply, 
but he is like Shakespeare's Hermia— though little, he is fierce; and, sternly facing his 
foe, he heard him through, and to-night there is music in the air. Chalmers is hard 
at work packing dynamite for Blaine, and he will explode it in due time on the floor 
of his own House. The drollest thing of the session was to see the care with which 
Blaine inspected the Senate Chamber, to make sure that Lamar had leally gone, be- 
fore he fell upon the helpless Representative seated in his chair. . . . 

The debate being over, Mr. Blaine's resolutions passed without serious 
opposition. Only five Senators voted against them. 

In January, 1879, Mr. Lamar received a severe blow from Jefferson 
Davis. The course of his political life had been such as to bring him 
but little into personal contact with Mr. Davis in the retirement of tliat 
gentleman at Beauvoir. There was but little communication between 
them; but still, through all changes of surroundings and history, Mr. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 363 

Lamar had retained a strong atfectiou for Mr. Davis aud a great admi- 
ration for bis abilities aud character. 

So late as the 28th of August, 1878, Mr. Davis said, in a letter to a 
mutual friend, that Mr. Lamar " has in my adversity remained my firm 
friend." 

During the entire year of 1878 a number of Mississippi newspapers 
had kept up a constant fire upon Mr. Lamar, direct aud indirect, about 
his disregard of instructions from the Legislature. First of them was 
the Clarion. Every now and again would appear editorials bearing on 
the subject, and a shoal of open letters, over various signatures and 
pseudonyms, kept the matter constantly before the public. There was 
an evident determination to break him down with it, if possible. 

Under these circumstances, his amazement and chagrin may be im- 
agined upon seeing in the Clarion, of January 15, under conspicuous 
headlines, the following publication: 

We are gratified to have the opportunity to publish the following letter, written by 
Hon. Jefferson Davis in reply to inquiries designed to elicit his opinion upon a subject 
of vital importance. It will be read by his countrymen with the interest which they 
attach to everything that emanates from its distinguished author: 

Beauvoir p. O., Harrison County, Miss., December 14, 1878. 

My Dear Sir : I this day received vours of the 12th inst., asking for my opinion 
as to the right of the Legislature of a State to instruct her Senators in Congress. 

Personally a disinterested observer, I stand upon the jiolitical river, earnestly 
watching whatever it may bear, but without any purpose ever again to launch my 
bark upon it. My opinions, however, upon any subject wliich interests Mississippi 
are, as they always will be, at the service of my friends who may desire to liave 
them. . , 

The Government of the United States is essentially representative, the necessary 
consequence of the admitted sovereignty of the people and the individuality of the 
State. To deny the responsiljility of the Representative to his constituency would be 
to attack the foundation of our political system. The two Houses of Congress repre- 
sent—the one, the people ; tlie other, tlie States themselves. 

If the people of a Congressional District were to assemble in mass and instruct 
their Representative upon any particular question, who will gainsay their right to do 
so, or liis duty to oV)ev? 

In the compact of the Union it was provided that the Representatives of the 
States, their Senators, should be chosen by their respective Legislatures. Those Legis- 
latures do, in that connection, express the voice of the State; and the Senator who 
accepts his election by the Legislature as such expression of the will of the State 
would seem to be estopped from contending at any future time that the Legislature 
was not the proper cliannel through which the State should speak to him. 

It has tieen the practice of the Democracy either to obey instructions or to resign 
the office held from the people, so that tlieir constituents might, if they so desired, se- 
lect some one else who would more trulv represent them. Nor has this been entirely 
confined to the Democracv. The statesman who has been called the expounder of 
the constitution, when the wild waves of abolitionism were beating against the bul- 
warks of tlie constitution ami threatening its subversion, in view of the prospects of 
receiving instructions wbicli he could not conscientiously obey, said that he hoped 
the event might not arise, and clearly indiciited, though lie did not express it, that m 
such a contingencv he would vacate a sent which lie could not consistently retain. _ 

In the Democracy of (ireece the people assembled in mass to discuss and to legis- 
late. In the Republic of Rome the government was one of orders, the patricians and 
the people having conflicting powers. In neither of these could representation such 
as ours have been the foundation of government. Therefore we had to be a law unto 
ourselves. Whereas all other modern Repulilics were based upon preexistmg feudal 
systems, we had no compromises to make with abuses and with privileged classes; 



364 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

but we offered a clear sheet on which the charter of human liberty and the suprem- 
acy of law might be written. 

"The people of each independent State possessing sovereign power organized each 
for itself a governnient of their own, and by the compact of union delcfiated to the 
general government such powders and functio'ns as they were willing to confide to it. 

In the State governments, as well as in that of the United States, jiower was at- 
tended by a correlativeresponsibilityof tliose who from either received authority and 
trust. It was a wise organism when it was adopted, more wise, perhaps, than the 
builders knew. For our exiierience has taught us that corruption which works in 
darkness and unseen, mav undermine the fabric which could resist direct and exter- 
nal blows. AVe have been by the Divine Master taught the danger of being led into 
temptation. 

In the growth of wealth and luxury we have seen arise, as the consequence, in- 
creased extravagance ; waiting on the necessities of wdiich was an army of lobbyists, 
the agents of powerful corporations, of special interests, and of the monied power. 
Against the influence of these it were safer to trust the liody of the people « lio are be- 
yond the reach of temiitation than the few wdio are immediately exposed to it. 

In opposition to the right of the constituency to instruct, I know of no arginnent 
which deserves notice, unless it be that \\hich denies to the people the requisite 
amount of intelligence. If that be true, the corner stone of ourtemjile is crushed, and 
it were vain to attempt to prop the superstructure. But is it true? I liope not, I 
think not, and I'epel the assumption of any man tliat he has more wisdom than the 
aggregate of his neighbors. 

So, sir, I end, as I began, with the expression of the belief that the coexistence of 
liberty and power require the direct responsibility of the Representative to his con- 
stituency. This is the characteristic and especial merit of our political system, State 
and Federal. 

In conclusion let me express the conviction that, unless this be maintained, and 
the virtue and intelligence of the jjeople keep jiace with the demand for both in the 
exercise of the high power they possess, we must look forward to corruption among 
officials, and anarchv, to be followed by despotism. 

Very truly your friend, Jefferson Davis. 

The letter was widely published, not only in the press of the State, 
but also in that of the nation. For instance, it appeared in the Neic York 
Herald, of January 25, with quite caustic editorial notice. The letter 
was generally understood to be a direct attack upon Mr. Lamar. Of it 
he wrote to his wife as follows: 

IMy enemies have inveigled Mr. Davis into writing an article against my position 
on the instructions of a State Legislature to a Senator. I shall be driven into a can- 
vass of the State. ... I am surprised that I should be surprised at his letter. But 
it is not the first time that such a thing has befallen me. When the war closed I 
knew that there would be men whom we loved and honored who would go over to 

our oppressors ; and yet when and did so, I could not reconcile myself to it, 

and could not keep from being overwhelmed with amazement. So when I went into 
politics I expected to be abandoned and assailed by former friends. But Jeff. Davis! 
I had no idea that he could do such a thing as to put such a letter into Ethel Barks- 
dale's hands. 

His course does not shake my confidence in men at all. I know but few' men in 
polities who would have done what he has done. To strike a mail wdio grew up a 
young man under him, his friend, admirer, and unwavering supi>orter ! If he thought 
I was going wrong, why did he not write to me and advise me not to carry my oppo- 
sition to the extent of disregarding the instructions of the Legislature? But not a 
word of counsel or suggestion did he give me while the question was open. It was 
after I had acted that he struck at me. I can hear it. 

In fact, Mr. Davis' letter did Mr. Lamar no hurt politically. His 
enemies needed no confirmation of their hostility, and his friends were 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. oGo 

either indignant or disgusted. He liimself said a little later to Gen. 
Walthall: 

I wish his letter were stronjier. It does not present that side of the question for 
half its worth. I hate to see anything trashy come from him. 



A few days later, on the 1st of March, the Senate was considering a 
proposition to extend the act of Congress granting pensions to the sol- 
diers of the war of 1812 and their widows, so as to make it applicable 
as well to the soldiers and sailors who served in the war with Mexico. 
Senator Hoar offered this amendment: 

Provided further. That no pension shall ever be paid under this act to Jefferson 
Davis, the late President of the so-called Confederacy. 

The introduction of this resolution precipitated an exciting debate. 
Senators Bailey of Tennessee, Hoar of Massachusetts, Garland of 
Arkansas, Shields of Missouri, Maxey of Texas, and Thurmau of Ohio, 
had taken part; and Mr. Hoar, in his last speech, had said: 

The Senator from Arkansas alluded to the courage which this gentleman had shown 
in battle, and I do not deny it. Two of the bravest olficers of our Rexolutionary War 
were Aai'on Burr and Benedict Arnold. 

These remarks called out Mr. Lamar. He said: 

"Mr. President: It is with extreme reluctance that I rise to say a word upon this sub- 
ject. I must confess my surprise and regret that the Senator from Massachusetts 
should have wantonly, witliout [irovocation, flung this insult" 

Tlie Presiding Officer (llr. Edmunds in the chair): " The Senator from Mississippi is 
out of order. He cannot impute to any Senator either wantonness or insult." 

Mr. Lamar: " I stand corrected. I suppose it is in perfect order for certain Sena- 
^ tors to insult other Senators, but they cannot be characterized by those who receive 
"^ the blow." 

The Presiding Oflicer: "The observations of the Senator trom Mississippi, in the 
opinion of the Chair, are not in order." 

Mr. Lamar: " The observations of the Senator from Mississippi, in his own opinion, 
are not only in order, but perfectly and absolutely true." 

The Presiding Officer: "The Senator from Mississippi will take his seat until the 
question of order is decided." 

Mr. Lamar: "Yes, sir." 

The Presiding Officer: " The judgment of the Cliair is reversed, and the Senate de- 
cides that the words uttei-ed by the Senator from Mississippi are in order, and the 
Senator from Mississippi will proceed." 

Mr. Lamar: " Now, Mr. President, having been decided by my associates to have 
been in order in the language I used, I desire to say that, if it is at all offensive or un- 
acceptable to any meinber of this Senate, the language is withdrawn ; for it is not my 
purpose to offend or stab the sensibilities of any of my associates on this floor. But 
what I meant by that remark was this: Jefferson Davis stands in .precisely the posi- 
tion that I stand in, that e\ery Southern man who believed in the right of a State to 
secede stands." 

Mr. Hoar: " Will the Senator from Missis-ippi permit me to assure him " 

The Presiding Officer: "The Senator from Massachusetts will address the Chair. 
Does the Senator from Mississippi yield to the Senator from Massachusetts?" 



V. 



y- 



N 



366 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

Mr. Lamar: " O yes." 

Mr. Hoar: " Will the Senator from Mississippi permit me to assure him and other 
Senators on this floor who stand like him that, in making the motion which I made, 
I did not conceive that any of them stood in the same position in which I supposed 
Mr. Davis to stand. 1 sliould not have moved to except the gentleman from IMissis- 
sii)ppi from the pension roll." 

Mr. Lamar: "The only ditlerence between myself and Jeti'erson Davis is that his 
exalted cliaracter, his preeminent talents, his well-established reputation as a states- ^^ 
man, as a patriot, and as a soldier, enabled him to take the lead in the cause to which\, 
I consecrated myself and to which every liber of my heart responded. There was no 
distinction between insult to liim and the Southern peojjle, except that he was their \ 
chosen leader, and they his enthusiastic followers; and there has been no dil3erence 
^ince. 

Jefferson Davis, since the war, has never counseled insurrection against the au- 
thority of this govermnent. Not one word has he uttered inconsistent with the 
greatness and glory of this American Republic. The Senator from Massachusetts can \ 
point to no utterance of Jeft'erson Davis which bids the people of the South to cherish 
animosities and hostilities to this Union, nor does he cherish them himself. 

"The Senator — it pains me to say it — not only introduced this amendment, but he 
coupled that honored name with treason; for, sir, he is honored among the South- 
ern people. He did only wh.it they sought to do ; he was simply chosen to leail them 
in a cause which we all cherished; and his name will continue to be honored for his 
participation in that great movement which inspired an entire people, the people who 
were animateil by motives as sacred and noble as ever inspired the breast of a Hamp- ^ 
den or a Washington. I say this as a Union man to-day. The jieople of the South \ 
drank their inspiration from the fountain of devotion to liberty and to constitutional 
government. We believed that we were fighting for it, and the Senator cannot put 
his finger upon one distinction between the people of the South and the man whom 
the Senator has to-day selei'ted for dislionor as the representative of tlie South. 

" Now, sir, I do not wish to make any remarks here that will engender any excitement 
or discussion; but I say that the Senator from Massachusetts connected that name 
with treason. We all know that the results of this war have attached to the peo- 
ple of the South the technical crime of rebellion, and we submit to it; but that was 
not the sense in which the gentleman used that term as applied to Mr. Davis. He v 
intended to affix (I will not say that he intended, but the inevitable effect of it was 
to atfix) upon this aged man, this man broken in fortune, sufi'ering from bereavement, 
an epithet of odium, an imputation of moral turpitude. 

"Sir, it rei|uired no coura.se to do that; it required no magnanimity to do it; it 
required no courtesy. It only required hate, bitter, malignant, sectional feeling, and a 
sense of personal impunity. The gentleman, I believe, takes rank among Christian 
statesnien. He might have learned a better lesson even from the pages of mythol- 
ogy. .//When Prometheus was bound to the rock it was not an eagle, it was a vul- 
ture,'that buried his beak in the tortured vitals of the victim. // 

"I send to the desk a letter written by Mr. Davis upon thi^subject to Mr. Single- 
ton, a gentleman who represents one of the districts of Mississippi in the other House; 
and with the expression of my opinion that the Senator from Massachusetts does not 
represent Massachusetts in the step that he has taken and the sentiments that he has 
uttered this day, I shall take my seat." 

The Presiding Officer: " Does the Senator from Mississippi desire to have the let- 
ter that he sent to the desk rea<l?" 

Mr. Lamar: "I do, sir; I wish it'read as part of my remarks." 

The Presiding Officer: "The letter will be read, there being no objection." 

The Secretary read as follows : 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES 367 

Mississippi City, 1878. 

Dear Sir : I am quite unwilling that personal objections to me by members of Con- 
gress should defeat the proposed measure to grant pensions to the veterans of the war 
against Mexico, therefore request and authorize you, should the fate of tlie bill depend 
upon excluding me from its benefits, in my behalf, to ask my friends and the friends 
of the measure silently to allow a provision for my exclusion from the benefits of 
the bill to be inserted in it. From other sources you will have learned that not a 
few of those wlio then periled their lives for their country are now so indigent and 
infirm as to require relief, and it would be to me sorrowful indeed if my comrades in 
that war sliould sutler deprivation because of their association with me. 

While on this subject I will mention tliat it did not require a law to entitle nie to 
be put on the list of pensioners, but it rather requires legal prohiliition to deprive me 
of that right. As an officer regularly mustered into the military service of the United 
States and while serving as such I was "severely wounded " in battle, and could, un- 
der the laws then existing, have applied for and received a pension. My circum- 
stances did not require pecuniary relief from the government, and I did not make the 
requisite application, therefore ray name has never been upon the roll of pensioners 
and otters no obstruction to the restoration of those names wluch have been stricken 
from it. 

Resiiectfully and truly yours, Jefferson Davis. 

Hon. O. R. Singleton. 

This tilt between Mr. Lamar and Mr. Hoar was thi;s described in a 
Washington news-letter, which was extensively circulated at the time 
by the papers: 

Lamar rose. There was a dead silence as he began to speak. Senators on both 
sides leaned forward expectantly. He had left his seat in the outer row of desks, 
and taken his stand midway on the Democratic side in the front row, with Harris, 
of Tennessee, on one side, and Wallace, of Pennsylvania, on the other. An open vol- 
ume of the Congressional Record lay on the desk before him. He began very delib- 
erately, saying that he must confess his surprise and regi'et that the Senator from 
Mas-achusetts should have wantonly, without provocation, flung this insult. But 
almost the first sentence lie uttered was punctuated by the sharp, quick rap of the 
President's gavel. Edmunds was in the chair, as grim and severe-looking as fate itself. 
He said sharply: "The Senator from Mississippi will suspend, as he is out of order." 

Lamar, with a surprised expression on his face, looked up inquiringly at the Chair. 
Edmunds had risen, and stood with one hand resting on the President's desk, his tall 
form towering above the exhausted clerks below. With great deliberation he said : 
" In the judgment of the Chair the Senator from Mississippi is out of order in using 
unparliamentary language." 

Lamar straightened up, folded his arms, threw back his head, and, deliberately 
enunciating every word, said: " In the judgment of the Senator from Mississippi he is 
entirely in order, and his language is not only parliamentary, but literally and 
strictly true." 

"The Senator from Mississippi will take his seat," sharply retorted Edmunds, em- 
phatically punctuating the command with a rap of the gavel ; " the Chair has decided 
that the Senator from Mississippi is out of order, his language being unparlia- 
mentary." 

Lamar sat down, but quickly came to his feet, and said calmly: " I appeal from the 
decision of the Chair; " and then he took his seat. 

Garland demanded that the words of the Senator from Mississippi should be taken 
down and read. 

Edmunds said : " The reporter will read ; " and Shuey, the assistant Senate reporter, 
read from his notes, in a clear, distinct voice, the interdicted sentence of Lamar's 
speech. 

" Is the Senate ready for the question? Shall the judgment of the Chair be sus- 
tained? " was the formal demand put to the Senate. 



368 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

" The yeas and nays ! " exclaimed a half dozen Democratic Senators. 

" The yeas and nays are demanded ; is there a second? " quietly said Edmunds. 

Up went a score of hands on the Democratic side. 

"The yeas and nays are ordered; the clerk will call the roll," continued Ed- 
munds, almost in the same breath. The roll was called, and by a large majority the 
decision of the Chair was reversed. With great suavity of manner Edmunds turned 
his face toward Lamar, and said : " The Senate decides that the Senator from Missis- 
sijopi is in order. He will proceed." 

There was a faint effort at applause in the galleries ; but Lamar threw up his hands 
deprecatingly, and the President's gavel came down with a quick, shaip sound, and 
perfect stillness reigned. With an effort at self-restraint, and slowly and deliberately, 
Lamar began again. Senator Blaine, who of all men is certainly a competent ciitic, 
says he never saw a man display more tact than Lamar, under the trying circum- 
stances in which he was placed. He made no apology for tlie language that he had 
used, but he said that if there was one Senator who felt aggrieved he would willingly 
withdraw whatever he had said. Pausing an instant, as though for a reply, he pro- 
ceeded as deliberately as before. U.^ually Lamar is an impassioned sjieaker, but on 
this occasion he seemingly weighed every word he uttered. 

In speaking of the motives that insjjired Hoar's motion, Lamar used a singularly 
appropriate figure of speech. He was referring to the persistent attack upon Davis, a 
broken and aged man. He said that the Senator from Massachusetts, he believed, 
classed himself among those who were called Christian statesmen. He might have 
learned more charity even from heathen mythology. 

At this point the speaker paused, turned, and in a stage whisper asked; " Who was 
it that was chained to the rock? " and Thurman, across three rows of desks, whis- 
pered : " Prometheus." 

Without more than a deliberate rest, Lamar went on: "When Prometheus was 
chained to the rock it was not an eagle tliat plucked at his vitals, but a vulture." The 
action was suited to the utterance. As he said, " It was not an eagle that plucked at 
his vitals," the arms were thrown up, and the curving swoop of the king of birds was 
described in the gesture; and as he hissed out, "It was a vulture!" the right arm 
straiglitened out, and the index finger pointed at Hoar. It was as fine anil efiVctive a 
piece of oratory as I ever witnessed. Hoar felt the sting. 

So soon as the reading of Mr. Davis' letter to Mr. Singleton was fin- 
ished, Mr. Blaine entered the discussion. He said, among other things: 

Mr. Blaine: . . . "When the honorable Senator from Mississippi comes to 
his defense the first word he had to speak for Mr. Davis was that he never has 
counseled insurrection against the government. . . . He has never counseled in- 
surrection! Let us be thankful. Why should we not pension a man who has shown 
such loyalty that he has never counseled insurrection? That is from the Repre- 
sentative of his own State. I took the words down when he spoke them. I was 
amazed. . . . Let me tell the honorable Senator from iMissinsippi that in all the 
years that I have served in Congress I have never voluntarily brought the name of 
Jefferson Davis before either branch, lint I tell him that he is asking luimanity to for- 
get its instincts and patriotism to be changed to crime before he will find impartial his- 
tory place Mr. JefJ'erson Davis anywhere in the roil that has for its brightest and great- 
est names George Washington and Jolm Hampden." 

Mr. Lamar: " Mr. President, I shall only say one word in reply tf> the Senator from 
Maine. I was not presenting the title of Jefferson Davis to a pension, or pleading 
for anything in his lieludf, when I made use of the expression that has excited the 
Senator's criticism. I was seeking not to prove the loyalty of Mr. Davis, but to reiiel 
the charge of disloyalty that was made against him by another Senator. I meant to 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 369 

repel the idea that he stood isolated, separate and distinct, representing a different 
order of ideas, a different class of society, from the people of the South at large. I 
stated that his position was that of all in the South who were acquiescing in the re- 
sults of the war and cooperating in giving them a harmonious and successful develop- 
ment. I will stiite a single typical fact in illustration. 

" Two or three years since a riot occurred in a Southern State, where Mr. Davis was 
temporarily residing, in the course of whicli violence was done to several negroes. A 
meeting was called to express the indignation of the community and their determi- 
nation to put down these lawless violations of the rights of the newly emancipated 
portion of our citizens. Among the most prominent and eloquent speakers in that 
meeting was the man who has been singled out for this public reproach, and whose 
name has to-night been characterized by the worst epithets which the vocalndary of 
abuse can furnish. He denounced riots and outrages, showed that violence could not 
and would not be tolerated, and that relief from wrongs must be sought by peaceful 
and lawful means. 

" Mr. President, I state this fact not for the purpose of pleading for Jefferson Davis, 
as the Senator from Maine states it, or of presenting his claim for a pension. We 
only insist that, he being summoned to the leadership of the Southern people in the 
late war, there is no reason why he should be set apart for disgrace and punishment 
on account of a political offense which was the offense of tlie whole people who called 
him into their service. 

"Such a policy is, in my opinion, neither wise nor just; it is not the course that 
even the monarchical governments of Europe, the most arbitrary among them, have 
pursued. Who for years has been the Prime Minister of the Austrian Cabinet? A 
man who was the leader of the Hungarian revolt, and was for a long time a fugitive 
from Austria under sentence of death, and a reward put upon his head. And there is 
the great and eloquent Kossuth, who was the chief of the revolutiijnary government 
of Hungary, the leader of that war, afterwards admitted to a seat in the Parliament, 
the legislative body of Austria. This political intolerance is not worthy of the pres- 
ent age. In all enlightened governments political offenses are dealt with in the light 
of a broad and comprehensive policy looking to the future interests of the whole 
country. They are not regarded in the light of crimes. In great revolutions, where 
large masses of society are arrayed as belligerents against each other, it is now con- 
sidered that to punish the defeated party as criminals, to go a single step further than 
to make secure the results of the victory won, is the dictate of liwarfed statesmanship 
and ignoble vengeance. There is no longer any distinction between the Southern 
peo|)le and the Northern people with reference to any of the results of the late war. 
The relations of the States to the Federal Government, the relations of the people to 
the States, the social, civil, and political rights of the people, are recognized alike at 
the North and the South ; and it is my opinion, sir, that this proposed measure does 
not represent the sentiment of the people either North or South. Witli regard to the 
status of Jlr. Davis in the political history of this country, wliatever may be the opin- 
ion of the Senator from Maine, or whatever may be my own, will have to undergo 
the revision of posterity: and I cheerfully remit the question to that tribunal." 

Mr. Blaine; " Why, Mr. President, does the honorable Senator from ]\Iississipi)i de- 
clare that the policy of the Government of the United States, administered as it has 
been through the Republican party, has been one of intolerance toward those who 
were prominent in the war, if I may use a euphemism, and leave out rebellion, which 
is offensive to his ears? Do I understand the honorable Senator to maintain here on 
this floor that the Government of the United States has been intolerant? Certainly 
the Senator does not mean that." 

Mr. Lamar: " Do you yield, sir?" 

Mr. Blaine : " Certainlv." 
24 



370 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

Mr. Lamar: " Why does the gentleman from Maine ask me that question? It was 
not one that I was discussing." 

Mr. Blaine: " But it is the very language the gentleman used." 

Mr. Lamar: "No, sir." 

Mr. Blaine: " The gentleman spoke of intolerance." 

Mr. Lamar: "I was speaking of the intolerance involved in the legislation now 
proposed. But, sir, I have no disguises whatever on this subject. I do not wish to 
go back now and discuss the policy of the reconstruction laws nor the general policy 
of the Republican party. I have in the other House repeatedly given my views very 
fully upon each of these topics. I will say that a policy which emancipated the serv- 
ile class of the South and disfranchised the Southern people, exclutling them from all 
participation in the governments maintained by force over them, was rank intoler- 
ance. I say, sir, that a harder and more ungracious system of legislation could not 
be devised than to thus disfranchise a whole people and put them under tlie domina- 
tion of their slaves. I assert that it was a i)olicy more severe in its punishment and 
more terrible in its I'onsequences than if a general confiscation had been inflicted 
upon that people. It not only subjected them to that humiliation which is the great- 
est of all tortures to a proud and manly race, but it held them down by force while 
they were being robbed and plundered by their dishonest officers. In these and 
many other respects, which I will not mention, the policy of the Republican party 
was intolerant. 

" But, sir, there were some things in the history of reconstruction to which I can 
refer with pleasure. 

" Many Republicans in this Senate and many in the other House have been always 
willing to remove the political disalulities imjiosed upon the Southern people by the 
proscriptive section of the fourteenth amendment, although they have inexorably 
required a formal petition in every instance to be made by the ]iart\- relieved. I have 
always considered this action by Republicans, with their views in relation to the war, 
as magnanimous. I have so felt it in my own case. I have, therefore, no hesitation 
in saying that there has been in this respect much of an imposing character in the 
action of the victorious section in its treatment of the section that was conquered. 
Sir, the very fact that the Representatives of a people who were in insurrection against 
the national authority— for that is the status to which the fortunes of war have as- 
signed us in history— are now participating in the exercise of that national authority 
is a great, imposing, and inspiring spectacle of the benignant power of free institu- 
tions, and it gives me pleasure to express my admiration of it." 

This debate proceeded after quite a rancorous fashion for some tirae, 
the proposed amendment being finally adopted. Mr. Lamar took no 
further part in the discussion. A very violent and sensational short 
speech was made by Senator Chandler, of Michigan, who said: 

Mr. President: Twenty-two years ago to-morrow, in the old liall of the Senate, now 
occupied by the Supreme Court of the United States, I, in company with Mr. Jeffer- 
son Davis, stood up and swore before Almighty God that I would support the Consti- 
tution of the United States. Mr. Jefferson Davis came from the Cabinet of Franklin 
Pierce into the Senate of the United States and took the oath with me to be faithful 
to this government. During four years I sat in this body with Mr. Jefferson Davis 
and saw the preparations going on from day to day for the overthrow of this govern- 
ment. With treason in his heart and perjury upon his lips he took the oath to sus- 
tain the government that he meant to overthrow. . . . Mr. President, I little 
thought at that time that I should live to hear in the Senate of the United States 
eulogies upon Jefferson Davis, living— a living rebel eulogized on the floor of the Sen- 



flXS- LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 371 

ate of the United States! Sir, I am amazed to hear it; and I can tell the gentlemen 
on the other side that they little know the spirit of the North when they come here 
at this day and witli bravado on their lips utter eulogies upon a man whom every 
man, woman, and cliild in the North believes to have been a double-dyed traitor to 
his government. 

To tliis ouslanght by Mr. Chandler Mr. Lamar made no reply. The 
reason for hi.s silence is obvious: Mr. Chandler's statement was of such 
nature that it opened up, if anything save mere vituperation was in- 
dulged in, the old, often debated, and inexhaustible subject of the right 
to secede from the Union — a (juestiou of manifestly a national, rather 
than a personal, nature. 

The following letter from Mr. Davis needs no interpreter: 

Beauvoir, Harbison County, Miss., March 15, 1879. 

Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar — My Dear Sir: Please accept my thanks for your defense of 
me against the petty malignity of Hoar, Blaine, and others. I am truly thankful for 
the kindness of the other Senators who spoke in my Ijehalf; but it was needful, for 
my entire satisfaction, that Mississippi's Senator should be heard in my vindication. 

The vulgarian, Chandler, has nursed his wrath long, and taken a characteristic 
method to revenge an insult I gave him when we were together in the Senate. No 
one need call him an ass, for he has saved all men that trouble by confounding an 
oath to support the United States Constitution with a like solemn obligation to sup- 
port the government. Such ignorance might relieve from responsibility for aiding 
the government to destroy the constitution it was formed to administer. 

If a convenient opportunity should occur, you will oblige me by giving my cordial 
thanks to those Senators who united with you in repelling the paltry attack so gratu- 
itously made ujion me. • 

I am, as ever, truly your friend, Jefferson Davis. 

In the March (1879) number of the Norfh Auievican Tlevinr appeared 
the symposium on the questions: "Ought the negro to be disfranchised? 
Ought he to have been enfranchised?" 

To this symposium Messrs. Blaine, Lamar, Hampton, Garfield, A. H. 
Stephens, Wendell Phillips, Montgomery Blair, and Hendricks con- 
tributed, the first opening and closing the discussion. The article of 
Mr. Lamar is given in the Appendix.* 

It will interest the reader, perhaps, and forward the purpose of this 
volume, to reproduce a few pen sketches of Mr. Lamar, made about this 
critical and eventful period of his life, showing how he appeared to 
competent and typical observers of different sorts. 

Mr. William Preston Johnson, in January, 1879, published an elabo- 
rate sketch of him, which went the rounds of the papers. From it the 
following extracts are made: 

Among Southern Senators, the man who most interests, puzzles, and influences the 

♦Appendix, No, 17. 



372 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

Northern mind is Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, of Mississippi. He is by all 
odds, " to tlie mind's eye," tlie most pictures(iue figure in tlie Senate. The popular 
imao;ination, dwelling on stime phases of character not commonplace, lias converted 
him into a political sphinx. A few plain, intelligible passages from his life and some 
outline touches of character will solve the riddle which people have chosen to make 
for themselves. 

The Lamara are Huguenot in origin. . . . The fatal dowry of genius was on 
that house. All that came forth from it felt its touch, its inspiration, its triumphs, 
and some share of its wretchedness. Mirabeau B. Lamar is known as the second 
President of the Republic of Texas; as the soul of chivalry on the battlefield; as the 
impassioned orator of the Texas revolution; as a large-hearted, gifted, unhappy, la- 
mented son of the South. A constitutional hypiochondria at times pursued him and 
other members of the family. . . . 

It makes a great difference to men in middle life whether the mighty embattled 
array of thoughts, sentiments, convictions, and active efforts with which they have 
moved and identified themselves is triumphant or overthrown. Life is generally a 
series of skirmishes, and men die of old age expecting the reverse of to-day to be 
made good by the success of to-morrow. In the Confederate struggle it was difl"erent. 
The world was put at stake, and failure meant the final disruption of society and the 
crushing of every material interest and every political i)rinciple esteemed sacred by 
the Southern partisan. Plunder and tyi'anny did their worst. . . . Little do the 
happy sons of the North, who have never felt the bitterness of subjugation or the 
tender mercies of a wicked proconsul, know what the people of the South have had 
to endure since the war. Any other race less intelligent, less manly, or less hopeful 
■would have sunk into utter degradation. It was to face this reign of terror that Col. 
Lamar returned to his home. 

When he entered the House it was still the correct role for the Radical patriot to 
perform on the floor of the House the melodrama of "The Rebellion Crushed," with 
immense applause. . . . Lamar, it will be remembered, administered some of the 
most effective rebukes received by this spurious patriotism. At the same time he has 
conceded to the national sentiment as much as it was possible for any Southern man 
to do. He has, in fact, taken a position in which any man would have failed who 
lacked either the courage of his convictions or the confidence of his constituents. He 
has maintained it because of the Southern estimate of his statesmanship and integ- 
,rity. ... 

Senator Lamar has been recognized as the zealous friend of all measures for inter- 
nal imjirovements in the South, and especially for improvements of the levees of the 
Mississippi and for the Texas Pacific Railroad. He has been a very effective and elo- 
quent champion of this last named enterprise. His views on finance are quite high 
church; he is of tlie straightest sect of the hard money men. His Democracy is as 
unimpeachable as tliat of Andrew .Taekson. . . . 

The writer heard not long ago two anecdotes, from a source absolutely uninijieach- 
able, which seem to evince that Lamar has already secured in part that confidence in 
the best Northern bosoms which is the surest precursor of genuine reconciliation. It 
happens that all the parties in both anecdotes belong to the medical profession, which 
is perhaps that vocation farthest removed from machine iiolitics and nearest set to 
the hearts and hearths of men. An eminent physician of Northern birth said to a 
Southern surgeon of tlie first rank, on a steamer returning from Brazil, that the man 
he most desired to see in America was Sen.ator Lamai'. Again, lately, a Boston gen- 
tleman, who, if named, would be at once recognized as of natiniial reputation in his 
profession, said to a friend that, on being presented to Lamar, he was speechless from 
emotion, and that when he turned away he could not restrain his tears at the thought 
of that man's sacrifices for reconciliation. 



HLS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 373 

— ) 
Lamar is about five feet, nine inclies in height, heavy set, long barrelled, with hand- 
some feet and hands. His profile is regular, his features regular, but rather massive, 
with brown hair and pointed beard, and heavy eyebi-ows over clear, gray, brilliant 
eyes. There is no play to his fai-ial muscles; but i)Ower is not lost thereby, for the 
voice and flashing eyes and ever present evidence of tremendous intellectual activity 
seem to derive an additional force from what is seemingly the expressive force of the 
will controlling the countenance. 

As Lamar walks the streets, cold and impassive in aspect, often abstracted and far 
away in realms of thought outside the living, moving world around him, the casual ac- 
quaintance might believe him hedged by a barrier of unsympathetic reserve and ego- 
tism; but let the circumstances alter a little; let even accidental companionship open 
up some natural avenue of communication, throw open some postern gate and admit 
him within the walls, and he discovers a realm such as when 

"In Xanadu did Kulila Khan 
A stately pleasure-dome decree," 

with its splendors in Oriental profusion all at his behest. He is astonished to 
find poured out for his private behoof and benefit floods of thought and feeling 
beside which the studied efforts of the orator seem pale and cold. He treads 
upon the lava and feels beneath the heat of a volcanic soul. Lamar is at once ardent 
and sagacious, tender, sentimental, and romantic; or metaphysical, analytical, and la- 
borious, as the mooil sways him. In thatfece whicli, submitted to final tests, exhibits 
an antique French type, you imagine that you can read, as under a mask, Abclard 
looking from the luminous eyes and speaking in the full sonorous tones; and again, 
when images of the Gallic breed rise fi-om the historic jiages to confront you, with a 
full armory of poetry and eloquence and epigi'am. Lamar is a man constant in friend- 
ship; and, however much his absence of mind may rnflle an acquaintance or friend, 
such is the power of his generous and genuine contrition that he has rarely lost a 
friend or alienated an ally. He is eminently a public man. In him all private feel- 
ings are subordinated to a broad philosophy which makes the destiny of the nation 
its daily food. The lesser matters of life concern him very little. Success has sought 
him out. May it continue to attend him! 

After Mr. Lamar's death, Mr. John A. Cockerill, of the New York Ad- 
vertiser, published the following reminiscence of him: 

I recall with interest an hour's conversation held with Mr. Lamar in Washington in 
1877. He was then a Senator from Mississippi. At a reception given by Mr. Hutch- 
ins (whom I had aided in founding the Daily Pod) to Senator Thurman and some of his 
colleagues, quite a crowd of the casual Washington flaneurs gathered. Mr. Lamar was 
one of the honored guests. I was sitting on a sofa in a corner contemplating the ven- 
erable Albert Pike, then almost an octogenarian, who, lying supinely in a big chair, 
surrounded by a little coterie of listeners, was indulging reminiscences in his peculiar, 
garrulous way. Senator Lamar came and dropped himself on the sofa beside me, lan- 
guidly and apparently much bored. The little that I had seen of him about Wash- 
ington that winter had not particularly pleased me. I was not drawn to him. He 
seemed to me shrewd, cold, and a shade haughty; and he had, in my eyes, the air of 
a man suffering the pangs of disappointment. On the evening to which I refer he 
was leonine, but kindly. Turning to me, after resting his eyes for a few moments on 
Gen. Pike, whose long white hair and philanthropic face recalled poor Richard in his 
last estate, he said: " Behold the one thing in all this life that I dread." I said : " What's 
that? " Nodding his head toward Pike, he answered: " The calamity of long life, the 
sad penalty of gray hairs, the sinmlated sympathy of the young." He spoke with an 
intensity of feeling which saddened me. Seeing this, he glided into a sunnier mood, 
and told one or two amusing stories of backwoods life which he had picked 



374 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

up when a young lawyer practicing in Cieorgia and Mississippi. He had a Southern 
dialect which he brought to the relation, as quaint as that which has made Proctor 
Knott famous as a raconteur. I was anxious to know something of his experiences 
when the diplomatic agent of the Southern Confederacy seeking the aid of France and 
England. He chatted pleasantly on this phase of his career, and, among other things, 
said: " We lost our cause, but we won the respect of the world by our courage, our en- 
durance, and our devotion. Europe had lonir regarded the Southerners, I think, as a 
lot of braggarts. We had talked and threatened much. When the war came we were 
equal lo it. We made a proud name for ourselves; and I can honestly say that I had 
rather be where we are to-day, with an unexampled record, than to be back where we 
were twenty years ago, with our slaves and the contempt of a great mass of mankind." 
This showed the heroic mold of the man. Sjieaking of Napoleon III., with whom he 
had many interviews, he said that he had gone to France with a natural dislike for 
the man who had grossly betrayed a republic to found an empire. He regarded him 
as a thick-headed, conscienceless, reckless man, who, conjuring with a name, had 
achieved vast power without deserving; but as he came to know him he learned to 
respect him. " I tell you," he said, " that man was forceful, and he had elements of 
true greatness. He astonished me on several occasions by the fertility of his mind, 
his power of assimilating facts, and his grasp on affairs. He was by no means the 
dull, accidental creature that many l)elieved him to be. He was weak in that he 
could not shake off the corrai)tand designing men who had heljied liim to power and 
then dragged him down to ruin and disgrace. The first Nai>oleon would have sent 
some of them to the Temple, would have exiled a half dozen, and shot a dozen more. 
The nepliew feared the knaves who had aided his knavery." 

Mr. Lamar, on this occasion, related an amusing journalistic experience which he 
had in London during the period when he was liegging alternately at the doors of St. 
Cloud and St. James for aid for his Southern cause. He said that he was anxious to 
win the friendshi]) of the London press. He prepared one day a careful article gently 
leading up to the point of interesting the English Government in the struggle for 
Southern independence. He called upon Mr- Delane, of the London Times, and sub- 
mitted it. After a careful reading tlie editor accepted it, and said that he would use 
it as a leader in the Times. " I waited for days," said Mr. Lamar, " for the ajijiear- 
ance of that article, which I fondly hoped would open the way for others more direct 
and forcible. Time rolled on, and the article did not appear. I was anxious, for our 
cause could not well wait. I had kept a copy of the article. Concluding that Mr. De- 
lane had decided on reflection not to use the article, I carried it to the editor of the 
. Telegraph. He accepted it. Two days after he printed it as a leading editorial, and, 
by a most singular coincidence, it came out as an original article in the Times of the 
same morning, word for word. I was never so mortified in my life. I could not ex- 
plain. I never saw either editor afterwards, and I have never been able to estimate 
just wliat the Confederacy lost by that /au.(.- pas. I know that it stopped my writing 
for the London press." 

Hon. T. C. Catcliings, of Mississippi, many years later, in speaking 
of Mr. Lamar as of this period, said: 

During all this time the searching gaze of curious, as well as anxious and just, scru- 
tiny was full upon him. There was a subtle and indefinable influence emanating 
from, rather than exerted by, him that made him an object of interest, even in the 
quietest moments of his private life. In public life it attracted to him an eagerness 
of attention that within all my observation was without a parallel. It made him not 
merely tlio central figure in every event with which he was connected, but so unique 
and imposing that public curiosity regarding him was never satisfieil. His dress, his 
personal habits, his methods of conversation, his peculiarities of manner, in fact, any 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 375 

and everything pertaining to him, directly or remotely, were constant topics of con- 
versation among those who knew him. 

In truth, this gossip about Mr. Lamar began immediately after his 
Sumner eulogy was delivered, and continued so long as he lived. The 
secret of that curious interest was not merely his reputation as a speak- 
er and a bold, independent thinker, but also what Senator Hoar noted 
in him, and after his death commented on in a letter to the writer. He 
said : 

He was a very interesting and very remarkable and noble character. The late 
Matthew Arnold used to say that American public men lacked what he called "dis- 
tinction." Nobody would have said that of Mr. Lamar. He would have been a con- 
spicuous personality anywhere, with a character and quality all his own. 

So it was that people and the newspapers gossiped much about his 
habits and personality; and many anecdotes were in circulation about 
him, some of them true, others having a small foundation of truth, and 
still others without any foundation whatever. One, which was widely 
circulated, and was probably tvne (for he could fence), was this: 

Beneath Mr. Lamar's quiet and dreamy exterior one would not recognize the fact 
that he was a man of passionate nature, and that at one period of his life he was much 
devoted to atldetic sports. He was an excellent swordsman, and was also skilled 
with the gloves. He was always happy to take up the foils with any one who pre- 
tended to be skilled in fencing, and at one time lie was possessed of wonderful phys- 
ical strength. His arms and slioulders were almost as solid as those of a prize fight- 
er. Those who have only considered him as dreamy and scholarly would have been 
surprised if they could have seen Mr. Lamar behind a foil. He had great agility and 
vigilance, and he often crossed swords with professional teachers of fencing, and rare- 
ly could one of them touch him with the button. 

A gentleman who knew him well, and who would not care under the existing cir- 
cumstances to have his name mentioned, once had an amusing experience with Mr. 
Lamar as a swordsman, which he thus descrilies: " I am a swordsman of no mean 
ability myself, and when I was em ployed at the capitol several years ago I had a pair of 
foils which I brought across the ocean with me. I had lots of fun up there with the 
other employees, and occasionally the Senators would take a hand. Conkling and In- 
galls both used them. One day I was in the room of the Committee on Public Lands 
just shaking the foils for my own amusement, when Senator Lamar came in. He had 
just recovered from a seveie illness, and was very weak. He eyed me for a moment, 
then, coming forward, said: 'I used to use the foils myself once, but I have almost 
forgotten.' 

" I then began to twist them with the fancy twists and all that, just to show oti', as 
it were, and he said again: ' Let me feel that.' 

" I did so, and got the other one, noticing in the meantime that he handled his 
blade as though he knew something about it. I struck an attitude, but he said: ' Not 
now ; I will come in some other time.' I told him I wouldn't hurt him, but he 
wouldn't try. 

" It was about a month after that when he came in again, and he had by this time 
fully recovered his strength. He said that he would like to try, and I got the foils 
down and adjusted the buttons, chuckling over the prospect. I changed my mind, 
however, when I saw him take off his coat and pick up the foil to test it. He had a 
very flexible wrist, and he made that Idade cut lightning. Well, when we were 
ready he put up his guard, and I knew then I had bit off a large mouthful. I made 



376 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR. 

some thrusts; but he was always there, and I couldn't get through to save my life. 
Then I resorted to all the tricks I knew, but every thrust was parried as neatly, and a 
grim smile was on the Senator's face. He had been acting on the defensive, but when 
I got through amusing him that room was full of sword cuts. He hit me ten times a 
second, and I might just as well have had a straw to defend myself with. He came 
under and over, and I have an indistinct recollection of seeing the finest constellations 
that man ever looked on. When I got my breath, which I did while he was putting 
on his coat, with that grim smile still on his face, there were thirty chalk njark^ on 
me, tive of which were right over my heart. I was blue for a week afterwards. While 
I was putting up the foils he went out, stopping at the door to say: 'I thought 1 had 
forgotten how to use them, and I sadly needed jiractice.' " 

This anecdote, also commonly circulated, is authentic: 

Mr. Lamar was naturally a very courteous man; but when he became absent-mind- 
ed he often saluted his best friends with a stony stare, and answered questions at ran- 
dom. One day, as Mr. Ellis, of Louisiana, was sitting in his committee room at the 
capitol in Washington, Mr. Lamar walked in, and, seating himself, said in his grave 
and gentle way: 

" Ellis, I don't believe you like me." 

" No," said Mr. Ellis, " I don't. Lately you have hardly spoken to me. I pass you, 
and you don't look at me ; and such conduct has ofiended me." 

" But, Ellis," said the Senator, " you know it's my way." 

" I don't care," said Ellis; " it's a blanked bad way." 

" My dear fellow," said Mr. Lamar, throwing his arms around !Mr. Ellis' neck, " the 
next time you see me in that blanked bad way just come up and punch me in the ribs. 
Now, promise me, and let's be friends." 

Mr. Ellis promised, and punched also. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

struggle in Congress over the Army Appropriations— Troops must not be Used at the 
Polls— The Debate of 1S79— Mississippi Opinion— Senator Conkliu};- The Missis- 
sippi River Commission Bill— Tlie Army Bill— Republicans Filibustering— Senator 
Conkling's Speech — Mr. Lamar's Reply— Exciting Personal Collision — Current 
Comment — Mr. Lamar's Letter to Gen. Walthall — Press Comments on the Incident 
— Etiect in Mississippi — Mr. Lamar's Views on Dueling. 

THE outcome of the Presidential campaign of 1876 called iDublic at- 
tention, and especially Democratic attention, very sharply to the 
abuses possible through the use of United States troops in connection 
with State elections and with controversies over State offices. Accord- 
ingly, at the second session of the Forty-fourth Congress the Democrat- 
ic House, in the Army Appropriation Bill, iucori^orated as Section V. 
a provision which, in substance, forbade the use of the army, or any pai't 
of it, in supporting the claims of any State government, or officer there- 
of, until such government should have been duly recognized by Con- 
gress; and also forbade the use of any of the moneys approiDriated, in 
upholding the claims of any of the contestants in Louisiana. This bill, 
not being acceptable to the Senate, that body, on motion of Mr. Blaine, 
adopted as a substitute the bill passed by the preceding Congress; but 
in this amendment the House refused to concur, and Congress adjourned 
without passing any army bill, the army being supjjorted from July to 
October, 1877, without any lawful appropriations. For this reason Pres- 
ident Hayes convened the Forty-fifth Congress in extraordinary session.* 

In this Congress Mr. Abrani S. Hewitt, former Chairman of the Dem- 
ocratic National Committee, was placed in charge of the Army Bill. He 
felt that it would be unwise, under the circvimstances, to array the Dem- 
ocratic party against the administration which had just come into pow- 
er, and reported into the House a bill without any reductions and with- 
out any provisions restraining the use to be made of troops. For this 
course he was severely criticised in some quarters, but the bill passed. 
At the next session, however, being still in charge of the Army Bill, he 
arranged with Hon. Proctor Knott, Chairman of the Judiciary Commit- 
tee, that Mr. Kuott should offer an amendment to the bill, by which the 
use of the army as a j^osse commifatus for the enforcement of the laws 
was forbidden, except as expressly authorized by the constitution or by 
act of Congress. The bill finally passed in that form. 

At the third session of the Forty-fifth Congress (that of 1878-79) it 
was determined to take the further and final step of repealing the Unit- 

♦ Conyressional Record, Vol. VI.. ji. «; Id.. Vol. V., ijp. 21S1, 2167, 2251, 22,V2. 

(377) 



378 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

eel States statute which, iu effect, allowed the use of troops to preserve 
order at the polls, and which; in practical operation, it was claimed, en- 
abled tlie administration to control elections under pretense of appre- 
hended disorders. Accordiugiy the repealing amendment was offered 
to the Army Bill for that year, and, strange to say, passed without ob- 
jection. The bill went to the Senate, and there the amendment, as well 
as the clause providing for the reorganization of the army, was rejected. 
The two Houses failed to agree; and again Congress adjourned without 
an appropriation for the army, and again the President had to convene 
the next Congress in extra session.* 

The Forty -sixth Congress, therefore, met on the 18th of March, 1879. 
The Army Bill was the first offered in the House. The sixth section 
repealed those clauses of the existing laws which permitted the use of 
troops "to keep the peace at the polls." There was a protracted debate 
in which, in the Senate, thirty-two Senators took jmrt, more or less. The 
bill was finally passed in both Houses by the 25th of April, but on the 
30th the President returned it with his veto. His objections were, 
mainly, that as to State elections it was unnecessary, since the act of the 
preceding Congress prohibited the use of troops therein ; and as to Fed- 
eral elections, the law being so written that it also prohibited civil offi- 
cers from using armed men to preserve peace at the polls, it withdrew 
the legitimate powers of the Federal Government in that respect; and, 
moreover, it was objectionable as incorporating general legislation into 
an appropriation bill. An effort was made in the House to pass the act 
over the veto, but it failed to receive the necessary votes; whereupon 
other bills were introduced, particularly House Piesolution No. 2175, 
which was brought into the House from the Committee on Appropria- 
tions on June 6th, and finally became a law. Tt contained a clause to 
the effect that no money appropriated by the act was to be expended iu 
using the army as a police force fo keep the peace at the polls at any 
election held within any State. This clause again provoked a protracted 
debate, which lasted until the 20th of June. 

This policy of the Democrats in both Houses of forcing a repeal of 
the objectionable legislation by appending such repealing clauses to 
the appropriation bills did not by any means meet with universal ap- 
proval in the South, or with universal commendation from the South- 
ern members. Mr. Lamar, although voting with his party since the 
matter had been determined in caucus, took no part in either of the pro- 
tracted debates. 

The Jackson Clarinii (then, it will be remembered, unfriendly to Mr. 
Lamar) said editorially May 7, after stating the position of the contro- 
versy, that, 

Since the question has been reduced to this complexion, we a re strengtliened in 
•"Three Decades," Cox, p. 630; Congressional Recuril. Vol. VIII., p. S98. 



.^€a#>(s^-. 




c5t:l'nA^10^^BL^l^ilL.^^■'^ ^ 



.cC^I^"^. 



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«;^'(4.r»,)^- 



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^ 



I 




fe^'^)6 Ei^^TORCpWU'HO_^ jj 



SOME REPUBLICAN SENATORS. 



BV PEH. FROM PMOTOS, BY C M, BELL, WASH.. 0. C. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 379 

the opinion heretofore intiniateil that the proposition originally supported hy Sena- 
tors Bayard, Morgan, Lamar, Hill, Coke, Maxey, and others, to introduce separate ap- 
propriation and repealing bills, would have been preferable. It would not have ad- 
mitted of the ini^ane cry of "starving the government," and of 'revolution," which 
the Republican agitators have raised with damaging prospecis to the Democracy in the 
Presidential election; and, tliongh defeated in the present Congress by the veto, they 
would have entered the contest before the people upon the question, pure and simple, 
divested of extraneous issues, of free elections, no Federal interference with voters, 
and the supremacy of the civil over the military j)0wer. In the preliminary skirmish 
for position in the great Presidential battle of 1880 this course would have been better. 

A conspicuous figure in those debates was Senator Conkling, of New 
York. He had much to say, and his speeches were not relished by the 
Democrats. It was not so much what lie said, as his unfortunate man- 
ner, which gave offense. No man was ever a fiercer antagonist or a 
harder hitter than was Senator Blaine; but yet his flowing courtesy, his 
boiilioiiie, his personal maguetism, were such that, as a rule, his politi- 
cal foes liked him, and took his assaults in good part, returning such 
good measure as they were able. Senator Conkling, however, was gen- 
erally regarded differently. He was considered to be, not aggressive 
only, but also contemptuous, overbearing, vain, imi^erious. The rela- 
tions between Mr. Lamar and Senator Conkling were not kindly — an 
exception to the usual terms existing between the former and his fellow- 
members of the opposite side. About two years before. Senator Conk- 
ling had a controversy with Senator Gordon in which, as Mr. Lamar 
thought, he had treated Gordon badly. Eesenting his course in the 
matter, Mr. Lamar had discontinued all personal relations. At the 
same time he expressed great admiration for Senator Conkling's voice, 
oratory, and intellectual jjowers, and respected his rights, as he did those 
of all others. About a year before, one of Mr. Conkling's intimates had 
quarreled with him, and had published several of his private conversa- 
tions in a newspaper. Some of those conversations referred to Mr. 
Lamar; and a friend of his, who had some knowledge of what had real- 
ly been said, proposed to communicate the same to Mr. Lamar, but was 
stojjped at once with the remark: "I do not wish to hear the private 
conversation of any one. Mr. Conkling has been shamefully treated. I 
will not encourage such conduct by listening to what he never intended 
me to hear." About this time he remarked to Gen. Walthall: "1 know 
Conkling is going to jump on me, and I wish he'd keep off. My con- 
servative speeches and position have irritated him, and he will try to 
make me lose my temper and say something foolish and rash. I've a 
dozen things laid away for him, but I'm afraid he won't come at me any 
of those ways." 

Mr. Conkling did at last "come at him," and it was in this wise: 
The second debate of the extra session on the Army Bill was in prog- 
ress. It was the ISth of June. The Democratic majority were eagerly 



380 LVVIUS Q. C. LAMAll: 

pressing the bill to a vote, with the clause iu it iDrohibiting any expend- 
iture of the money voted in usiug trooj^s as police to keep the peace at 
the polls; and the Kepublicaus, seeing defeat ahead, had resorted to 
'• filibustering." Mr. Lamar, it will be remembered, took no part in 
the debate, although voting uniformly with his party. Very early iu 
the day, before the Army Bill was taken up for consideration, and, of 
course, before the liepublicans began to filibuster on it, he called up 
the bill to create a Mississippi River Commission, a bill in which he 
was much interested, reported from a committee of which he was chair- 
man. The consideration of the bill consumed the morning hour, and 
the hour appointed for taking up the Army Bill as the special order ar- 
rived. The following colloquy then occurred: 

Mr. Lamar: " I think we shall get through with this bill in a few moments. I ask 
unanimous consent." 

Mr. Withers: " In view of the fact that I yesterday gave notice that I should ask 
for a vote on the Army Bill to-day l>efore adjournment, I cannot consent that it shall 
be withheld ljy the bill that has been under consideration unless it can be agreed to 
have a vote on that at once witliout further discussion." 

Mr. Allison: " In a few minutes." 

Mr. Withers: " If a vote can lie had at once, I will yield." 

The President ^jco tempore: " The Senator from Mississippi asks unanimous consent 
that the unfinished business, which is the Army Appropriation Bill, may be laid aside 
temporarily, subject to call, and that the bill under consideration may be proceeded 
with. Is there objection? " 

Mr. Conkling: "Are we to understand that, notwithstanding this unanimous con- 
sent, if it is given, the Senator from Virginia will insist on a vote to-day on the other 
bill?" 

Mr. Withers : " That is precisely the position I take. I shall ask the Senate to dis- 
pose of the Army Bill before adjournment to-day." 

Mr. Conkling: ..." I submit to the Senator from Virginia that it is not at all 
likely that he will advance the ultimate completion of the Army Bill by one hour if he 
succeeds in getting a vote this afternoon rather than a vote to-morrow ; and, further, I 
say to him that I understand tliat there are several Senators on this side of the Chamber 
who want to make some remarks on the Army Bill, not, of course, with a view to con- 
suming time, l.nit simply to speak to certain features of that bill, as it stands, which they 
wish to discuss. Inasmuch as the Army Bill has tjeen before the Senate but one sin- 
gle day, and a consideralile part of that day occupied by other business, I see no oc- 
casion for the Senator's demanding that the bill shall be concluded to-day. I see no 
occasion for a night session and no need of attempting to incommode or crowd any 
Senator on either side who wishes to submit remarks on that bill. 

" Therefore I suggest that the Senator from Mississippi had better have his unani- 
mous consent to conclude the consideration of this bill; and if, when a reasonable 
hourof adjournment is reached to-day, there be other Senators who want to be heard 
on the Army Bill, in place of trying to incommode each other and sitting out the bill 
in the night, it had better go over, and the more so, because, for reasons I have given, 
I do not believe it will make one hour's dilference in the end whether we vote this 
afternoon or whether we vote to-morrow U])on the Anriy Bill." 

IMr. AVithers: " I have arrived myself at a different conclusion from that reached 
by the Senator from New York. I think it important that we should have a vote 
upon this bill to-day. He is mistaken, however, in supposing that I demanded a 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 381 

vote. I simply gave notice of a purpose to request tlie Senate to dispose of tlie bill 
before it adjourns. Of course the whole matter remains with the Senate. If they are 
in favor of an adjournment, when that motion is made they can adjourn. I shall, 
however, resist it as tlie organ of the Ap|iropriations Committee." 

Mr. Conkling: " Yes, sir; and if the Senator appeals to his party associates to stand 
with him, that makes a majority against adjournment. If we consent to take up the 
Mississippi Bill, and two or three hours are devoted to it, then the result will be that 
Senators who want to make some observations about the Army Bill will be driven 
into the night or denied the privilege altogether. I do not think that is fair." 

Mr. Gordon: "Mr. President, I have looked into the bill somewhat as to a number 
of amendments that have been acted on and those still pending on the bill now before 
the Senate. I am satisfied that, having acted on all the committee's amendments (as 
there is but one more to be acted on so far as the Senate has been advised), we can get 
through with it in ten or fifteen minutes." 

The President pro tempore : " The Senator from Mississippi asks that by unanimous 
consent the Appropriation Bill may be informally laid aside, subject to be called up at 
any time, and that the Senate proceed with the Mississippi River Bill. Is there ob- 
jection? " 

Mr. Conkling: " For one Senator I will give my consent, and trust to the courtesy 
of the other side of the Chamber, when we reach an ordinary hour of adjournment, if 
any Senator wants to be heard, that he shall not be cut ofl: or pushed into the night." 
Mr. Withers: "The Senator mast not trust to my courtesy in the matter, if he al- 
ludes to me " 

Mr. Conkling: " I did not indicate the Senator from Virginia as one to whose cour- 
tesy I would trust." 

ivir. Withers : " I am on ' the other side of the Chamber ; ' and as the bill is under 
my charge, I supposed that perhaps I was alluded to." 

BIr. Conkling: " I did not select the Senator from Virginia as the Senator to whose 
courtesy I intended to trust. Therefore I do not think there is any occasion for a 
reprimand from him." 

Mr. Harris: " I will say to the Senator from Virginia and the Senator from New 
York that I have the assurance of the Senator from Mississippi that he will not ask 
for more than twenty minutes. This bill can be passed in ten, I think; but he limits 
his request to twenty minutes' time." 
Mr. Lamar: "I do." 

Mr. Harris: "I appeal to those two Senators to consent to the twenty minutes be- 
ing devoted to this bill, regardless of the notice given by the Senator from Virginia 
yesterday." 

Mr. Davis, of West Virginia: "I do not rise to object to the consideration of this 
bill even until half past one; but I want to say, after what the Senator from Virginia 
has said, that I think we ought to sit this bill out this evening, and there was a sort 
of general understanding yesterday that it should be done." 
Mr. Conkling: "O no; not at all." 

Mr. Davis, of West Virginia: "I think there was a sort of general understanding 
that we should remain and sit the bill out to-day. I do not know whether the Sena- 
tor from New York agreed to it or not. I do not say he did; I do not say that other 
gentlemen did. But there is another view of it. The Senator from New York has 
said that it will not forward the a]ipropriation bills to pass the Army Bill to-day 
rather than to-morrow. I beg to differ with him on that. It will be one day in ad- 
vance, I think; and that one day will count in the final adjournment. If we propose 
to adjourn, I think each day we stay here continues the time that much longer. The 
Appropriations Committee that has charge of the adjournment resolution from the 
House has been desirous for several days to propose a day and reyjort the resolution 



382 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

back to tlie Senate; bui they have thought they were not warranted in doing so until 
such time as all the appropriation bills had passed, and we hope to see them con- 
cluded liere to-day." 

The President pro tempore : " Is there objection to the request made by the Senator 
from Mississippi? " 

Mr. Lamar: " For twenty minutes." 

The President pro lempore: "The Chair hears none, and the Mississippi River Im- 
provement Bill is before the Senate as in Committee of the Whole, subject to be dis- 
placed by a call for the regular order." 

On the expiration of the " twenty minutes " devoted to Mr. Lamar's 
bill the Army Bill was taken up, and then came one of the protracted 
sittings which sometimes result from filibustering tactics. The day's 
session was prolonged until noon of the next day. The Republicans 
adopted the method of fictitiously absenting themselves upon roll-calls, 
and thereby breaking the quorum; of making all sorts of dilatory mo- 
tions, and calling for yeas and nays, etc. Late in the sitting ( it must 
have been after midnight) a wrangle occurred between Senators 
Blaine and Saulsbury, in which the latter charged the former and his 
party with obstructing the needed legislation; and then Senator Conk- 
ling arose. He said, among other things, that 

At the end of the morning hour the Demoi'ratic Senator from Kentucky, who had 
occupied twenty minutes in a political speech yesterday, was entitled to the floor. 
Then the Democratic Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Lamai] made to the Senate and 
made to me an appeal which, for one, I regret that I did not refuse. I have been an- 
noyed, since this monstrous and offensive proceeding which we have resisted, that 
I did not refuse an appeal which I was weak enough to listen to. He appealed to us 
to give way to allow him to proceed with his bill about levees upon the Mississippi. 
I rose, and said that if time were to be subtracted from the beginning of the day, as 
we wished to debate the Army Bill, I should repose on the courtesy of Democratic 
Senators for the expectation and in the Ijelief tiiat no final vote would be pressed to- 
day. Looking to that side, I received a nod, not from one, not from two, not from three, 
liutfrom live Democr.atic Senators. Thereupon the Senator from Virginia [Mr. With- 
ers] cautioned me not to rely upon his courtesy, and I promptly informed him that 
his courtesy was not the reliance upon which I rested ; and the Senator from Virginia 
no doubt had technically and individually the right to do what has followed. 

When a little more than thirty minutes after the morning hour had been con- 
sumed by the bill about the levees of the Mississippi, the Chair announced that the 
unfinished business was to be taken up, and tliat the Senator from Kentucky was en- 
titled to the floor. Thereupon the Senator from Kentucky proceeded to devour one 
hour and forty minutes of the Senate's time in a Democratic )iolifical speech, which, 
he said, was designed for the hustings in his State, but which he would regale the 
Senate by delivering. That over, a Senator on this side, the Senator fi-om Maine [Mr. 
Blaine], as I am told by an associate— I did not observe the clock— occupied exactly 
twenty-two minutes, at the end of which time the ornate and eloquent Senator from 
Indiana [Mr. Voorhees] proceeded with a very brilliant speech for something over 
two hours, and sat down at ten minutes after six o'clock ; the entire day, save twenty- 
two nunutes, liaving been consumed by those two Democratic speeches, delivered, one 
by a Democratic member of the Conmiittee on Appropriations, from which the bill 
came; and the other, by tlie Democratic Senator from Indiana. 

Meanwhile the Senator ti-orn Wisconsin [Mr. Carpenter] wished to address the 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 383 

Senate. I may remind the Senate how little time that Senator has consumed during 
this extra session; I may remind the Senate that that Senator has found himself suf- 
fering from ill health; and I may remind the Senate that it was well known before he 
sought the floor that he wished to speak, not at undue length, upon the Army Bill. 
I went to the Senator from Arkansas, who now hears me, wlio then sat in the chair 
[Mr. Garland], and I said to him: " If the Senator from Indiana is to occupy all day, 
even to the hour of adjournment oi- afterwards, I take it for giiuited no vote will be 
pressed to-day." If I do not quote that Senator correctly, I hope he will set me right. 
He said : " I suppose not. I wish myself to make a brief speech upon this bill ; and, if 
need be, I will go down myself and see to it. I do not think there will be any such 
disposition." I spoke to three other Senators, two of whom are within the sound of 
my voice, on the Democratic side, and from each of them received assurance that there 
would be no question about an adjournment, the day having been occupied by these 
two Democratic speeches. I so informed the Senator from Wisconsin who had bor- 
rowed the seat of his friend from Illinois (Mr. Davis), on which his books and papers 
were, and carried them away and dismissed his preparation, and assumed, as he had a 
right to do, that after a day of fasting and more than an hour after the customary hour 
of adjournment, when the Democrats had swallowed the whole day, he should not be 
subjected to a proceeding so insulting as to say to him that he must go on and deliver 
his argument then, or he should not deliver it at all. 

The Senator from Wisconsin had the floor, yielded to the Senator from Maine to 
read something from a book, and, resuming it, I, at his request, made a motion to ad- 
journ, prefacing it with a statement that we had had no opportunity to debate this 
bill whatever, and that therefore I assumed that there would be no objection. The 
Senator from Virginia rose with such a disclaimer as he had a right to make, in order 
that he might keep within the bounds of his instruction from the committee; but 
when I heard every Democratic Senator vote to commit such an outrage as that upon 
the minority of this liody and upon the Senator from Wisconsin, I do not deny that 
I felt my full share of indignation; and during this evening, Mr. President, I wish to 
assume all my own responsibility, and so much more as any Republican Senator feels 
irksome to him, for what has taken place. I have endeavored to show this proud 
and domineering majority— determined apparently to ride roughshod over the rights 
of the mhiority— that they cannot and they should not do it. But I am ready to be 
deemed responsible in advance for the assurance that while I remain a member of 
this body, and, at all events, until we have a previous question, no minority shall be 
gagged down or throttled or insulted by such a proceeding as this. I say, Mr. Presi- 
dent (and I measure my expression), that it was an act not only insulting, but an act 
of bad faith. I mean that. ... 

Mr. Lamar: " Mr. President, I desire to make one statement personal to myself in 
reference to this matter. I do not intend to go into the discussion of the question 
concerning this measure that the Senator from New York has been discussing. I 
learn for the first time that an impression exists on the mind of any Senator on this 
floor that further time was to he extended for the discussion of the bill which the 
Senator from Virginia reported, based upon any proceedings or upon any occurrence 
connected with the measure that I had the honor of reporting this morning, and 
asked unanimous consent to consider and have passed. I am not aware of anything 
that occurred which would produce such an impression. If I had, although I would 
not have lieen instrumental -consciously in producing such an impression, I should 
have felt myself bound by it, and would have made the motion myself for an ad- 
journment, in order to give the Senator from Wisconsin an ©iiportunity to discuss 
this bill. 

" I repeat, sir, that if I had imagined that any Senator had any such expectation 
from anything that occurred in the incidents of that proceeding, it would have been 



384 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

my pleasure to have made that motion. In fact, sir, I was not here. I was not aware 
of the fact tliat the Senator from AVisconsin liad risen for the ]iurpose of addressing 
the Senate. I came in at a later stage of these proceedings. 

" With reference to the charge of liad faith that the Senator from New York has 
intimated toward those of us who have been engaged in opposing these motions to 
adjourn, I have only to say that if I am not superinr to such attacks from such a 
source I have lived in vain. It is not my lialiit to indulge in personalities; but I de- 
sire to say here to the Senator tliat in intimating anything inconsistent, as he has 
done, with perfect good faith, I pronounce his statement a falsehood, which I repel 
with all the unmitigated contempt that I feel for the author of it." 

Mr. Conkling: "Mr. President, I was diverted during the commencement of a re- 
mark, the culmination of which I heard from the member from Mississippi. If I un- 
derstood liim aright, he intended to impute, and did, in jilain and unparliamentary 
language, impute, to me an intt-ntional misstatement. The Senator does not disclaim 
that." 

Mr. Lamar: " I will state what I intended, so that there may be no mistake" 

The Presiding Officer: "Does the Senator from New York yield?" 

Mr. Lamar: "All that I" 

The Presiding Officer: "Does the Senator from New York yield to the Senator 
from Mississippi? " 

IMr. Lamar: " He appealed to me to know, and I will give " 

The Presiding Officer: " The Senator from New York has the iloor. Does he yield 
to the Senator from Mississippi? " 

]\Ir. Lamar: " But the Senator declines to yield to me to know " 

The Presiding Officer: " The Senator from New York has the floor. Does he yield 
to the Senator from Mississippi ? " 

Mr. Conkling: "And I am willing to respond to the Chair. I shall respond to the 
Chair in due time. Whether I am willing to respond to the memljer from Missis- 
sippi depends entirely upon what that member intends to say, and what he did say. 
For the time being, I do not choose to hold any communication with him. The Chair 
understands me now; I will proceed. 

" I understood the Senator from Mississippi to state in plain and unparliamentary 
language that the statement of mine to which he refeired was a falseliood, if I caught 
his word aright. Mr. President, this not being the place to measure with any man 
the capacity to violate decency, to violate the ruUs of the Senate, or to commit any 
of the improprieties of life, I have only to say that if the Senator — the member from 
Mississippi — did impute or intendeil to impute to me a falsehood, nothing except the 
fact that this is the Senate would prevent my denouncing him as a blackguard and a 
coward." [Applause in the galleries.] 

The Presiding Otiicer: " There shall be no cheering in the galleries. If there should 
be any more, the Cliair will order the galleries to be cleared. The Senator from New 
York will proceed." 

Mr. Conkling: " Let me be more S]iecific, Mr. President. Should the member from 
Mississippi, except in the presence of the Senate, charge me, tiy intimation or other- 
wise, with falsehood, I would denounce him as a blackguard, as a coward, and a liar; 
and, understanding what he said as I have, the rules and the proprieties of the Sen- 
ate are the only restraint upon me. 

" I do not think I need to say anything else, Mr. President." 

Mr. Lamar: "Mr. President, I have only to say that the Senator from New York 
understood me correctly. I did mean to say just precisely the words, and all that , 
they imported. I beg pardon of the Senatti for the unparliamentary language. It 
was very harsh; it was very severe; it was such as no good man would deserve, and 
no brave man would wear." [Ajiplause on tlie floor and in the galleries.] 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 385 

The Presiding Officer: "The Senate must be in order, and there can be no cheer- 
ing upon tlie Senate tloor." 

Mr. Conkling: " Wliat is the question before the Senate, Mr. President?" 

This incident created quite a sensation throughout the country. The 
newspapers scattered it broadcast, and their notices of it were many 
and long and varied. Of course all sorts of positions were taken 
about it. Mr. Lamar's mail was filled with correspondence on the 
subject from every direction and from every sort of people. Tele- 
grams and letters came in quantity, many oilering services in the an- 
ticipated duel; little homilies about the obsoleteness and sinfulness of 
the "code of honor;" letters exploding most ecstatically over the "re- 
moval of plantation manners northward " and " the happiness of your 
friends;" others protesting against his violation of the. proprieties or 
against his imperiling the cause of the party by his loss of temper; 
and still others filled with the most savage denunciation and scurrilous 
personal abuse. Among Southern Democrats, however, there seems 
to have been but one sentiment: that Mr. Conkling had received what 
he had been long hunting for, and had received it in full. 

In order to understand justly the position of the two actors in this 
scene it is necessary to note exactly the course of the personalities of 
the debate. Mr. Lamar had taken no part whatever in the discussion 
of the pending measure. Mr. Conkling opened his remarks in response 
to the speech of Senator Saulsbury by a direct reference to Mr. Lamar, 
saying that he had " made to the Senate, ritid iimiJe to nir, an appeal which, 
for one, I regret that I did not refuse." Concluding, he charged the 
Democratic Senators as a body with an effort to gag down and throttle 
and insult the Eepublican members; and then he said: "I say, Mr. 
President (and I measure mij expression), that it was an act not only in- 
sulting, but an act of bad faith. I mean that:' Thus was Mr. Conkling 
careful to exclude the idea that he had permitted either an unconsid- 
ered or an exaggerated expression to escape him in the haste and heat 
of debate. Manifestly he meant, as he himself declared, deliberately 
and advisedly, to fasten upon all. the Democrats, and upon Mr. Lamar 
in particular, a charge of duplicity. Then it was that Mr. Lamar spoke. 
The following accounts, taken from papers of the day, describe the 
reception of the incident in the Senate Chamber: 

The Chicago Tribune (Radical): " Referring incidentally to the course of the Demo- 
crats on the appropriation bills, Conkling said. . . . The extraordinary character 
of these statements startled the Senate. There was breathless silence in the Chamber, 
when Lamar arose and said: 'I have only to say that the Senator from New York 
understood me correctly. I beg pardon of the Senate for the unparliamentary lan- 
guage. It was \'ery harsh and severe. It was such as no good man would deserve, 
and no brave man would wear.' 

" The silence that followed was broken by a sharp clap of the hands from Vance, of 
North Carolina, who had seated himself near Lamar, and was noticed to make sug- 
gestions to him. The excitement overcame the temporary presiding officer (Cockrell, 
25 



386 LUCIUS Q. C. LAiVAR: 

of Missouri), who seemed to try to regain liis equanimity by raps of the gavel. This 
ended at 1 o'clock a. m. Tlie Democratic Senators immediately commenced telegraph- 
ing to all their jiaired colleagues to return. 

" On the floor Senators are talking of nothing else. Southern Senators unanimous- 
ly sustain Lamar, and have overwhelmed him with congratulations. One Senator, 
who is Lamar's most intimate friend, and who, in the event of a challenge, expects to 
act as his second, says: ' I don't think that Conkling will fight. I don't regard him 
as a man of courage. Lamar will only be delighted to have Conkling challenge him. 
Of course everything rests with Conkling, as he is the insulted party. Of one thing 
you may be assured : no effort will be made to fix up the matter, as was the case when 
Conkling had his ditticulty with Gordon. There is no power on earth that will in- 
duce Lamar to withdraw his words.' 

"On the Republican side great regret is expressed; but all agree that Lamar was 
the aggressor, and made his attack on Conkling without requisite provocation. No 
idea is entertained by the Republicans that Conkling will send a challenge, but some 
think it possible that he may call Lamar to account at the first opportunity outside 
the Senate Chamber. The Republicans were too much startled to call Lamar to 
order. 

" Conkling, being asked about the situation to-night, laughingly replied that they 
had a ditferent method of settling personal difhculties in his State, and that he could 
not be led by an ambitious Southern man into a dueling scrape. If assaulted or in- 
sulted outside of the Chamber, lie would know how to take fare of himself. It is cer- 
tain that Conkling will send no challenge." 

Donn Piatt ( WnMngton Capital): " That Conkling's bearing was tliat of a bully 
suddenly brought to taw no Senator present dout)ts or questions. In the dead silence 
that followed Lamar's subtle and fatal stab Conkling was to the last extent unnerved 
and confused. His assumed nonchalance of repose and swagger of acting both de- 
serted him; and, looking wildly about him, he stammered, hesitated, and lost control 
of botli thought and voice. This was evident not only from his vulgar retort, after 
lieing pronounced a liar, of ' You're another! ' but in committing himself to a line that 
he has not since had the courage to carry out. He served notice on Lamar that at 
some other time and at some other place he would attend to the insult. We all 
know what this means. It is either a duel under the code or an assault on the street, 
and there is no getting away from the cruel conclusion: either Conkling did not 
know what he was saying, or lie lacked the nerve to carry out wliat he liad said. 

" The point in the whole affiiir, however, is the fact that the terrible thrust came 
from the coolest, politest, and most self-controlled member of the Senate. Lamar, of 
Mississippi, has been noted for his courteous bearing in botli public and private life. 
... All who know him united in saying that his character and life gave more 
point to his assault than the deadly words in which it was uttered. Exit Conk- 
ling." 

" Mr. Blaine Enjnyed /(.—Mr. Blaine hugely enjoyed the spectacle of Lamar's tor- 
ture of Conkling and the latter's towering rage in tlie Senate last Wednesday. While 
the Maine Senator was descending the steps of the capitol, shortly after the aflair, he 
encountered one of the members of the House from Massachusetts, who questioned 
him in relation to it. 

" 'O, it was exceedingly rich! ' exclaimed Blaine; ' I <lon't tliink I ever saw Conk- 
ling's wattles quite so red.' " (New Ywk Star.) 

Ou the next day (the 20tb) Mr. Lamar wrote to Geu. Walthall as fol- 
lows : 

I send you by this morning's mail a " Record " containing what occurred between 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 387 

me and Conkling. In personal controversies it is the custom to allow the reporter's 
notes, unreristd, to be the sole evidence of what was said. If corrections are made, 
they must be made by statement, or " personal explanation," in open Senate. So you 
will find here almost all that happened, except a few little things that could not well 
be reported. Conkling has been building up tliis trouble for some time. He has no- 
ticed my silence— a disciplined silence— through all the extra session. He knows 
that it is giving me some moral power, which may be of some use hereafter for tlie 
South, and he had determined to make me take part in the silly and unwise discus- 
sions that our party has been carrying on. My success in the morning, in getting the 
Mississippi Rivei- Bill through lay an unprecedented majority, a large number of 
Eastern men voting for it i^avowedly on my account), stum; liim very deeply. It was 
all a lie about my appealing to hiin, except so far as asking unanimous consent made 
it an application to each Senator. I have not spoken to him, privately or personally, 
for two years. I have no purpose of making any call upon him. The Southern 
Senators were delighted at the affiiir, and showed their exultation too much. There 
was a general coming in, yesterday morning, of Southern Representatives to see me 
and congratulate me. But I was not in the Senate. It was not a wise tidng to do. 

Besides, the matter is not yet over. Conkling will probably not send me a chal- 
lenge ; but his friends declaie that he will give me a tremendous beating, which will just 
leave me alive. He is very proud and vain, and terribly sensitive. He has been 
much applauded for his game, and has mixed a good deal with club men and that sort 
of society which makes personal responsiljility an important element in a gentleman's 
status. He cannot well rest under what he has got, and he is a cunning man, all of 
whose abundant res(.iurces of intellect are devoted to the one point of his own per- 
sonal interests and ends. But all this I knew and counted on before I opened my 
lips. The advantage I got of him was not merely what occurred in the Senate, Ijut 
also in having him in a position that he did not ej:pect, and was unprepared for. I doubt 
if he has yet made up liis mind what he will do, and I can judge of his ultiioate 
purpose and the influences which will determine it as well as he can. A great deal will 
depend on wliat the Times, Tribune, Herald, and Sua of to-day will say. If they say 
fight, he will do so; but if tlie sentiment at the North says lie lias done enough, he 
will resort to some other method to get me down. He is no ordinary man, either in 
intellect or energy of purpose, or physical strength and animal spirits. But for once 
in my life I feel that I am right, even in the most extreme alternative. 

One or two letters and editorials from typical Southern sources will 
serve to show that sentiment iu regard to the affair: 

The DaUy DemoercU (New Orleans), June 22, 1879 : "Bully Damon.— Three days have 
passed since Mr. Conkling received the lie, 'with circumstances,' from Mr. Lamar; 
and he has made no response to the insult save the disgraceful one from his place of 
safety in the Senate Chamber. It is therefore safe to conclude that Mr. Conkling does 
not belong to tliat class of brave men who will not bear such epithets, and it is com- 
Iietent to inquire whether he can be assigned to the class of good men who do not de- 
serve them. To this end let us briefly review the quarrel and its consequences. . . . 
Mr. Lamar paused a moment ; and then, amid that profound stillness which always at- 
tends intense but repressed excitement, he deliberately rejoined: 

" ' I have only to say to the Senator from New York that he understood me most 
correctly. I said precisely the words that he understood me to say. My language 
was harsh and unparliamentary, and I beg pardon of the Senate for it; but my lan- 
guage was such as no goo<l man would deserve, and no brave man would wear.' 

"An answer perfect in its temper, tone, and tact. It was final, absolute, conclusive. 
The preparation of a lifetime could not improve on it. It has all the Toledo's keen 
glitter and elastic swiftness, with the ice-brook's temper, ilr. Conkling was silent, of 



388 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

course. The thrust was through the heart. The only sound heard was that of the 
shell against his breast, as the deadly blade was driven home. 

"And Mr. Conkling and his friends — noscitur a soctis— aver that the blow which has 
left him dead on the field of his dishonor was avenged, if not parried, by his brutal 
billingsgate. 

" Better and braver men than ^Ir. Conkling have borne as bitter insult without re- 
taliation ; but they were gentlemen— men of charitable lives and gentle manners, with 
peaceful thoughts in their hearts and words of peace upon their lips. Not of such is 
Mr. Conkling. . . . By general consent he is ' a fighting man.' When Gordon clial- 
lenged him he sought no shelter under the cloak of a civilization ' superior to the code.' 
On the contrary, he, or his friends for him, sought to impress on the gaping public tliat 
' Barkis is willin'.' Even now there is no talk about his unwillingness, on any moral 
grounds, to 'fight a duel.' Mr. Conkling, therefore, not disavowing the code, must be 
judged by the code. What is the verdict? That Conkling is a cad. 

" No gentleman would have spoken of a great political party, his superiors in 
numbers and influence, as 'sneaks and frauds.' None but a man of low instincts 
and mean habits of thought would have charged upon a rival advocating a cause of 
transcendent importance to his people that he was acting in bad faith. If he did 
not lie when he asked what the member said, implying that he did not hear or un- 
derstand him, his duty was to have waited for INIr. Lamar's answer. . . . Like 
the bully that he is, he turned his back upon his man, and broke out into a wild ti- 
rade of abuse, in language such as only vile men use. From the safe security of his 
place in the Senate he vapored about wliat he would say or do if not restrained by a 
sense of that decency which he utterly outraged. 

"And Mr. Conkling contents himself, like Horace's Viargemen, with a tu qvoque. 

" He has placed himself forever beyond the pale of honor. His passive accept- 
ance of a deadly aftront renders it impossible that any gentleman should recognize 
him henceforward. A cartel from such a poltroon would be rejected with contempt. 
He has eaten his leek at the butt of the halberd, and his strut and swagger will here- 
after provoke only derision." 

The foregoing is the view of the duelist and the Southerner; the fol- 
lowing are more pacific in temper, but Southern still: 

From the Louisville Courier-Journal : " The angry pa.ssage between Senators Lamar 
and Conkling is very much to be regretted, and on many accounts. It is, in the first 
place, a rade disturber of the illusion that the Senate is a place of dignified resort and 
the scene of per|)etual courtesy; in the next place, it gives extreme and embittered 
partisans fresh and still more inHammable fuel for the bonfires of hate which they 
have kindled and seek to keep blazing at the North ; and, lastly, it personalizes the 
already too violent issues which divide parties. 

"We all know what that means. A-; long as the private relations of 'honorable 
gentlemen ' are kindly, as long as Mr. Tlurrman can crack jokes with Mr. Edmunds 
in their committee room, and Mr. Voorhees can stick his shins familiarly under Mr. 
Blaine's mahogany, and Mr. Bayard can quiz Mr, Anthony as they go to prayers, and 
Mr. Beck can take a drink with the Rev. Mr. Hoar downstairs in the restaurant, the 
country is measurably safe. . . . But when two party leaders, each popular with 
his class and possessed of a following, not merely ' get mad ' in earnest, but embody 
in their anger the exciting question of the moment, there comes over the minds and 
hearts of men a different and a more serious mood, boding good to no one. . . . 
Each side defends, stands by, its man, unless he be totally at fault; and, as this is 
done with even more heat than the original encounter, the case does not mend its 
tone as the discussion proceeds. Neither set of disputants can finally see any good 
in the other set. 



v*^ 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 389 

" Reading the naked report of the proceeding?, both Senators appear to have been 
liasty. Mr. ConkHng had made an insulting general assertion in coarse words. They 
touched Mr. Lamar more nearly than any one else. . . . He retorted impulsively: 
'If the gentleman says that I acted in bad iiiith, he says what is untrue.' Mr. Conk- 
ling might very well have explained or qualified his ott'ensive language. Instead of 9 
doing so, he advanced in a menacing way, and flowered out in a tirade of vulgar epi- ft fjJ/» *!. -v^*^ 
thets, worthy only of a stable yard or a lish market. Mr. Lamar, by this time quite ^^ ' ^t 
himself, answered with perfect decorum that he had applied to Mr. Conkling that .J . _ ^vl^*"^ ^ 
'which no good man deserves, and no brave man will wear.' . . . 

" Such is the case as it appears on the face of the record; but behind this there is 
a story to tell. The tine inwardness of the occurrence lies back of it. 

" Ko man in America lias a sweeter, gentler, more womanish nature than Lamar. 
He is a dreamer, a poet. His life has lieen passed among books. Just enough of ac- 
tive, practical exijerience as a soldier and as a traveler he has had to give him some- 
what of the knowledge of a politician and a man of the world. But he makes a poor 
figure in either character; he is a statesman and a philosopher, a man of profound 
convictions, and owes his great place in popular esteem to his genius, sustained by his 
physical and moral courage of so high an order that his enemies respect him. All 
men who know him at all know him to be incapable of premeditated discourtesy or 
offense. Known to be a fearless man, he never had a difficulty or altercation in his 
life; and nothing short of the intolerable insolence of Mr. Conkling could have stung 
him into the kind of rejoinder which he made. 

"And who is Mr. Conkling? The country knows him chiefly through the descrip- 
tion of Mr. Blaine. But it is not so familiar with him as his colleagues. . . . Vul- 
gar by nature, and rapidly growing very coarse and common in his exterior — the re- 
sult of habits which are no longer a secret at Washington — he has for two or three 
years attempted to make up his moral and intellectual losses by mere swagger. Se- 
lecting for the victims of his rage an entire people, instead of a single individual, he 
has, like the poor coward that he is, strutted his strut, exploding his miscellaneous 
vulgarity at long range, but carefully avoiding to tread upon approximate toes. This 
sort of thing generally comes to grief. 

" Of course the Republican jiress will take another view of it. Yet there is not a 
Republican editor who has sense enough to carry him to Washington and back who 
does not know that Conkling is what we have rejiresented him to lie." .... 

The Seashore Gazette (edited by Joseph R., nephew of Jefferson Davis), of Pass 
Christian, Miss. : " For about a week some Senatora on both sides have been airing 
their grievances, deriding States and sections represented by their opponents, and 
bragging about themselves and their appurtenances. They were, for the most part, 
men of good temper, who can give and take, and know how to refrain from offensive 
personalities; but they produced a belligerent atmosphere, which was inhaled by the 
Senator from New York to a dangerous degree of inflation, producing the disastrous 
consequences with which the whole country is now familiar. . . . 

" Col. Lamar's quii'k and determined check on the impudent assertion of the dicta- 
torial New Yorker is the best proof that his conduct was unwairantable ; for he is one 
of the quietest of men, and, even when subjected to great annoyance, uses no defense 
but a cold reserve." 

Thus the strophe; hear the autistrophe: 

From a paper the name of which is torn off: "It Had Better Be Stopped. — Roscoe 
Conkling deserves the thanks of his constituents and of all sensible men for the 
promptness with which he met face to face the attempt of Mr. Lamar to revive the 
old fire-eating practices on the floor of the United States Senate. The Mississippi 
Senator violated parliamentary rules in a very gross manner when he denounced a 



390 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAE: 

statement made l^y Mr. Conkling as a falsehood, and accompanied the impertinence 
with tlie declaration that he held the New York Senator in utter contempt. If Mr. 
Conkling had suffered the insult to pass unrebuked, we should next have been enter- 
tained by the production of the revolver and bowie knife as an aid to Southern Sena- 
torial eloquence, ami the ' chivalry ' would have become as rampant as when the 
South Carolina bludgeon wielder, Butler [sir], exercised his prowess on the head of the 
sitting and defenseless Sumner, who was old enough to be his father. Mr. Conkling's 
language was probably a trifle more blunt tlian elegant; but his spirit was aroused, 
and he is not accustomed at such a time to measure his words with nicety. At all 
events, he met an attempt at browbeating in an appropriate manner and witli an 
earnestness and decision that will prubably check the fire-eating tongue in the Senate 
for some time to come. Mr. Lamar got no moi-e than his insolent allusion to the 
leading statesman in the Senate richly deserved. The chivalry may learn from this 
lesson that their attempt to return to the old method of Southern debate had better 
be stopped." 

The New York Evening Post: . . . " It is hard to speak with patience of the Conk- 
ling-Lamar affair. Some of the newspaper correspondents are carefully tracing the 
course of the debate on the Army Bill, as if to find some excuse for the Senators from 
Louisiana [sic] and New York. We are told that the irritating opposition of the Re- 
publicans made Mr. Lamar angry; that the sharp practice of the Democrats in apply- 
ing the gag filled Mr. Conkling with indignation. This is not to the xiurpose. . . . 
What happened before Mr. Lamar and Mr. Conkling set to beating each other about 
the head with the rhetorical bludgeon of personal invective and vituperation is wholly 
irrelevant. For this breach of the peace of the Senate they are responsible, without 
regard to the circumstances of the case. 

" For his share in the scandalous performance Mr. Conkling has an account to give 
to the constituency which he has misrepresented for so many years in so many ways. 
Let there be no mistake aljout the matter. Mr. Lamar has no right to complain. He 
began the scandalous conflict of foul words. He is without the shadow of excuse. 
Surprise that a man so widely known for scholarship, refinement, conservatism of 
opinions, and moderation of expression, should suddenly become envious of the repu- 
tation of a flshwoman, and should be fired with an ambition to excel in scurrility of 
speech, will not mitigate in the slightest degree the general censure which he has in- 
curred. . . . It is said that Mr. Conkling's retort upon Mr. Lamar in kind — of its 
vicious kind a more vigorous si^ecimen — was received in, silence. No doubt the 
silence was partly due to astonishment. We suspect that the Southern members 
were amazed at such words from the side of the Chamber where they have seldom 
been heard. The surprise is a compliment to Northern civilization of which the 
North may well be proud. 

" But the State of New York has a right to com]ilain of the shame which one of her 
Representatives has put upon her. Looking over the list of Senators who have served 
her, sometimes with brilliant ability, sometimes with respectable mediocrity, she sees 
the name of none who ha= conspicuously disgraced her until her eye falls upon that 
of Roscoe Conkling." . . . 

Aud so the quarrel spread and unfolded itself, but there is uo evi- 
dence in Mr. Lamar's papers that he lost any prestige among the Sena- 
tors because of it. The effect, unexpected but none the less welcome, in 
Mississippi, is described in a letter from Hon. S. A. Jonas, editor of the 
Aberdeen Examiner, dated July 1: 

You will remember that I assured you on the night— or rather moining— of that 
memoraljle encounter with the burly braggart of New York that its effect would he 



HIS LIFE, TIMEU, AND SPEECHES. 391 

to crystalize public sentiment in our lieloved State and rally your people in solid pha- 
lanx to you ; but I had no conception of the strength of the sentiment until I reached 
home, and no idea that the enthusiasm which I believed would pervade the hearts 
of all political allies would be shared alike by friends and foes in politics; but so I 
fuunil it. Greenbackers and Republicans were as ready as Democrats to indorse your 
action; and the timely rebuke administered to the man who "measured his words" 
when he sought to insult, but paused to measure Ms antagonist when the insult ^-as 
hurled back compounded beyond the forbearance of any brave man, was regarded as 
a vindication of Mississijipi upon the floor of the Senate, and, as such, entitling you to 
the thanks of Mississippians " without regard to race, color," or political affiliation. 

Mr. Lamar did not cherish any hostility to Mr. Conkling because of 
their collision. He soon recovered of his anger. In later years it was 
no nucommon thing to read iu the newspapers statements to the effect 
that the two men h^d become " boon companions," that they held box- 
ing bouts, etc.; but there seems to have been no truth in those re- 
ports. It is more than doubtful whetiier they ever assumed anything 
like cordial relations. However, Mr. Lamar never failed to do full jus- 
tice to the ability and position of the Senator from New Yoi-k; and in 
1881 he is reported by the Ticksburg Herald as follows: 

While Senator Lamar was in the city Mr. Conkling was casually referred to, and 
Mr. Lamar was asked what he thought the great New York Senator would do. The 
question referred to Mr. Conkling's future political course and his influence and con- 
nection with the present administi-ation. Mr. Lamar answered the question at some 
length. " Mr. Conkling," he said, "does not need to hold official place to wield vast 
influence in the United States. He towers above a vast majority of tlie officeholders; 
and a vast number of the American people have confidence in his ability, his states- 
manship, and his incorruptibility. As the people esteemed and honored Clay, Cal- 
houn, and Webster in their day, and as they honor Seymour now, they honor Conk- 
ling. This, of course, is not spoken in any party sense. Mr. Conkling is a great ora- 
tor, a bold leader; and any man in his own party or the ojiposition who does not take 
him into the account in making up the political calculation will be largely at fault. 
The uncertain condition of his great State, and the great need of both parties to 
secure it, give Mr. Conkling a preeminently commanding position; and the past his- 
tory of the gentleman leaves us no room to doulit his ability to use it. Many sujjer- 
ficial observers do not get beyond Mr. Conkling's mere personal peculiarities. They 
think of him as he is pictured in the cartoons : as tumbed out of the Senate, knocked 
off the railroad track by the administration train of President Garfield, or the way he 
arranges his liair, or his haughty demeanor. These are mere specks on the portrait 
of a really great man. It is a mistake to imagine that a man of such power over men 
must hold a Senatorial position to accomplish great political purposes. While a Sen- 
atorial position has advantages, it also has its drawbacks. How could such a place 
add to the greatness of Horatio Seymour? It is hardly to be doubted that Mr. Conk- 
ling could go into the Caliinet, but it is very doubtful that even a Cabinet (losition 
would increase his power in his party His i>arty would have been overwhelmingly 
defeated last year without Conkling, and it will never be so strong again until Mr. 
Conkling is one of its active, leading spirits." 

In connection with this incident it will be appropriate to consider the 
phase of Mr. Lamar's character brought prominently into view. 

He was a fighting man. Reared in a community where, and at a pe- 



392 LUCIUS Q. C. LA.VAR. 

rioil when, every person who aspired to be regarded as " a man " was 
expected to be prepared to fight on just provocation; when and where 
the only questions were whether the provocation was adequate and the 
fight made was manly, he never rid himself of the inclination to bel- 
ligerency, nor ever sought to do so. At the same time he was not, even 
to the slightest extent, either a braggart, a bully, or a brute. He never 
paraded his readiness to be held personally responsible, or his readi- 
ness to hold others so; he never vapored about what he would or would 
not do; he never pressed personal responsibility upon noncombatants; 
he never used his physical prowess and animal courage as a means to 
humiliate others or to override their rights; he never "punished" his 
adversaries unduly or sought to do them a permanent injury. "When 
aroused he was of fierce temper, and there was that about him which 
warned aggressors that he was a man "not to be fooled with;" but his 
unfailing courage and genuine kindness of heart prevented his using 
any deadly weapons upon any person, or, so far as is known to the 
writer, attempting to do so, although he occasionally carried a weapon 
when anticipating an attack. In his later life he occasionally recalled 
with interest and narrated amusingly the "scrimmages" of his earlier 
days in Georgia and Mississippi, especially those in which he had been 
worsted. On the 15th of May, 1879, for instance, he wrote, among other 
things, to a friend prominent in Washington, who had been assailed 
IDcrsonally : 

No man could have been more indignant and outraged than I was at the ruffianly 
assault made upon j'ou ; and had I been present, I would have knocked that fellow 
down. I may do it yet if he struts and talks around me any. But . . . the truth 

is, my dear , my own dear bought experience in the varying fortunes of such 

scrimmages has perhaps caused me to look upon them in a different light, and to 
think that you attach too much importance to it. Frank Nelms knocked me down 
in the courthouse in Covington, Georgia, and I have to this day a vivid recollection of 
the stunning effect. Frank was a big, six-foot country fellow, whose long arm, when 
it fell upon me, made me think of an elephant's snout. Three days after that I had 
it over again in Dick Burns' grocery: was knocked down again by Newt. Skelton, and 
was beaten until I think I should have " hollered " if my Democratic friends had not 
"took him off." The next night (in the dark) in the courthouse square I whipped 
Newt, like a sack; but the boys had no idea that I had a small pair of iron tongs in 
my hand just as the fight started. 

A short time before I was elected to Congress (since the war) I had the misfortune 
to have to knock down the United States Marshal and dislocate his jaw right in the 
presence of the court. So you see these affairs will happen to the most prudent. My 
dear friend, you must not be morbid. Avoid brooding over such things. Your friends 
admire and love you as much as ever. 

In theory Mr. Lamar was a duelist; in practice, through all his ex- 
citing and eventful life, he never fought one. Standing upon the strict- 
est punctilio of the code of honor, so that he occasionally figured as a 
referee in affairs of that nature, his career was a signal example of that 
working of the code which its better advocates insist upon for its justi- 



ins LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 893 

fication: a teuileucy, when temperately, wisely, aud bravely applied, to 
heal quarrels rather than to inflame them or lead them to deadly conclu- 
sions. He never consented to interfere in such a matter but what, with 
his great tact aud authority, he procured its adjustment. He never 
acted as a second in a duel, and in early life formed a resolution, to 
which he always adhered, and sometimes under very trying circum- 
stahces, that he never would do so. 

Nor did he fail to recognize the fact that there was a higher law than 
the code. He conceded frankly aud fully that every man has a right to 
repudiate it, especially if he be a Christian. It is remembered that while 
in the Senate he said to a young friend who mentioned the fact that he 
anticipated an insulting assault, and was pressed between his nervousness 
about his reijutation and his sense of piety, in substance this: "If that 
misfortune should visit you, stainl by your higher convictions. Every 
Christian man — every true man, even if he be not a Christian — has a 
right to live his own life and to stand upon his own principle of action. 
No just or truly brave man will now respect him the less for doing bo. 
The sentiment of the world has changed in that respect, even here in 
the South. But if called upon so to take your stand, do not make a 
mistake aud utt'end the sensibilities of those who feel differently; for if 
you claim your i)rivilege, you must allow to them their own. Never say 
that you look down upon the code of honor, or that you regard it as 
barbarous, or anything of that sort. Say only that your aspirations and 
your hopes lie in other directions than the achievement of a reputation 
for the combative spirit; that, without detracting from those who want 
to live diflereutly, you have pitched your own life upon a different 
plane, and have other things in view. To that position all right-feeling 
people will respond, whether they be themselves duelists or not." 

The following item was current in the newspapers a few years later: 
In the Senate, Conger, of Michigan, once snarled some innuendo at Lamar about 
his fighting proclivities; but the Mississippian paid no attention to it until the next 
day, when he stepped to Conger's desk, and said: "Conger, you are always talking 
about fighting, but never fight; that's where you and I are a good deal unlike. I don't 
talk about fighting, but I am ready for it any time." Then he made his way back to 
his seat in the coolest manner possible. It was some time before Conger heard the 
last about his " duel," and his Republican colleagues tried their best to egg him on to 
a fight with Lamar. 



CHAPTEE XXIV. 

Mississippi Politics in 1879 — Democratic Party Threatened witii Disruption — Mr. La- 
mar's Position Before tlie People — Letter to Wriirht — The Epidemic of 1S79 — Can- 
vass of 1879 — The Right of Legislative Instruction Again — Question Kept in Agi- 
tation — Mr. Lamar's Argument and Discussion of It — His Power as a Stump 
Speaker — Reception of His Speeches — Death of Mrs. Troutman — The Succession to 
Senator Bruce — Judge George Elected Senator — Mr. Lamar's Illness. 

IN the year 1879 the condition of affairs was very unsatisfactory to 
Mr. Lamar, iu two respects: first, in respect to the general State 
politics of Mississippi; and, secondly, in respect to his own attitude as 
Senator. 

So far as the general aspect of State politics was concerned, his dis- 
satisfaction was of course only such as was shared, iu greater or less 
degree, by all who were of his school. Still, since he was regarded as 
the political leader in tlie State, his was by far the greatest responsi- 
bility. 

The Democratic party of the State was thi-eatened with disruption. 
That party was, as it still is, a fabric in one sense unnatural. It was, 
and to a less extent is still, composed of incongruous and unsympathetic 
elements. It was, however, the necessary creation of the reconstruc- 
tion policy of the Federal Administration by which those discordant 
elements were welded into one mass, in a comuion, all-controlling strug- 
gle fur white supremacy, universally regarded as a struggle for the very 
existence of Southern society. The developments of the preceding five 
years in national politics — mainly the renascence of the national Demo- 
cratic party as evidenced l)y the elections of 1874 and later, and the grad- 
ual substitution to a considerable extent of financial and other kindred 
issues for those of negro citizenship and suffrage — had greatly relieved 
the tension of the situation iu the South, and by the partial removal of 
an overmastering terror had apparently given opportunity for the de- 
velopment and play of those diversities and antipathies between the 
Southern people tliemselves which had been repressed. The Green- 
back party had been recently originated; and, with a view to relieving 
the distresses of the panic of 1873 and the later financial stringency, it 
was advocating an unlimited issue of greenbacks, based upon " the re- 
sources of the country." This movement was drawing away something 
of the Democratic strength, and it had begun its encroachments even in 
Mississippi. Within the party itself there was schism; the class called 
BoNrhonfs, who were characterized as men who neither learned anything 
nor forgot anything, came prominently to the front. They were not con- 
tent to accept the war amendments to the Federal Constitution as fully 

cm) 



LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 395 

and as generously as other Democrats. They were called " unrecon- 
structed." They controlled a large proportion of the newspapers of the 
State, and, through that fact and their aggressiveness and the atten- 
tion -which criticism always attracts, seemed to be both more numerous 
and more potent than they were. Added to all of these centrifugal 
forces was the demoralizing and disintegrating power of the personal 
ambitions of aspirants for office, who began to manifest a new readi- 
ness to foster discord and, in their struggles for personal promotion, to 
pull down patriotic leaders. 

To Mr. Lamar, and to those Mississippians who were of his way of 
thinking, this condition seemed full of peril for the State's future. 
Eecogniziug the fact that, as a general rule, the existence of more than 
one political party among the dominant race of a State is necessary to 
a wholesome and happy working of its government, they still believed 
that the time had not yet come when the Democratic party of Missis- 
sippi could safely be dismembered. Only four years had passed since 
the political revolution of 1875, by which the Eadicals had been ex- 
pelled from power. There were still in the State many of the men who 
had ruled it then by negro votes; and at every subsequent electiou, 
both Federal and State, while the Democrats had been successful, or- 
ganizers had appeared who had marshaled the negroes in great numbers 
and voted them as before. The stalwart wing of the Eepublicau i)arty, 
both by its Representatives in Congress and through the press, was still 
and continually giving forth the most threatening and ill-boding utter- 
ances. The present repose of the South was by no means assured as a 
permanent condition. It was felt, and felt deeply, that in continued un- 
ion alone was safety. 

As regards Mr. Lamar's personal relations to the State as Senator, 
there were certain unsettled balances of account still outstanding. His 
course in respect to the Electoral Commission, his vote wpow the Mat- 
thews resolutions and the Silver Bill, and his refusal to obey the in- 
structions of the Legislature, were all to be answered for or justified. The 
epidemic of 1878 had prevented the canvass of the State which he had 
purposed making in that year, and the work still remained to do. Op- 
portunity for a State canvass more or less extended was never lacking; 
for what with geueral State elections, coiinty elections, and those for 
Congressmen and President, there were elections to hold and canvasses 
to make every year. 

The following letter from Mr. Lamar illustrates the situation in both 

asijects: 

Washington, D. C, Feliruary 21, 1879. 

C E. Wright, Esq. — My Dear Sir: . . . Upon reflection you will hardly censure 

me for my past and present reluctance to seek to control or influence the utterances 

of even my friends at home. Especially have I been unwilling to inspire or to request 

friendly newspaper articles. I have always preferred a support which should be en- 



396 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

tirely voluntaiv, self-sug<:e:^ted, and spontaneous, with perfect freedom of dissent at 
any time. Tlie able sujiport tliat you and others have aiven nie has been much 
more highly prized than if I bad sought it, because it resulted from the accord and 
sympathy created by independent oljservation of my public career. 

Respecting your reference to my personal relations to Mi.^sisi^ippi politics I have 
little to say. I note what you say of the c(3ml>inations hostile to me there. I have 
not been unobservant of their extent and force. My view of the delicate relation of 
the State to national politics (a relation fraught with peril and dithculiy) has re- 
pressed all olitrusion of my own personalism among the grave political questions 
pressing upon our people. It will Ije a sad day for the politics of Mississippi when 
they degenerate into a mere personal conflict of Senatorial aspirants. With my 
views of public duty, I should be guilty of little less than a crime were I to seek so to 
obtrude myself. I need not point out to you the extent to wliicli the politics of the 
State would suffer if pernntted to degenerate into such a conflict. 

Your suggestion of the probability of a split in the Democratic organization in 
Mississippi gives me great concern, for it is the prophecy of unnumbered woes to our 
people. In the contemplation of such a calamity as would be a rupture of the organ- 
ization that has delivered Mississippi from the hand of her ruthless de.spoilers, mere 
declamation would bs in poor taste and of no use; yet I cannot forbear to character- 
ize with the strongest terms of reprobation any measure or steps looking to disinte- 
gration of the Democratic party in Mississippi. Such agencies lead logically to re- 
newed Radical ascendency in the State, and we should soon find ourselves enduring 
all the calamities suffered by civilized society when it permits itself first to be divided 
and then plundered until the plunderers are gorged or the victim utterly impover- 
ished. 

I do not doul.it the presence of these disturbing agencies, or of the selfish aspira- 
tions that threaten the integrity of our organization; but we must not think of seces- 
sion from the organization, or doubt our ability to win such an overwhelming victory 
within the party as shall put at rest the clamor and demagogueism that now disturb 
its unity. Should we surrender the organization into the hands of the Bourbons, who 
unwisely invite upon themselves and the State a restoration of the evils from which, 
since Democratic supremacy was established, we have been slowly recovering by 
means of conservatism and moderation, we shall yield them much advantage in 
I>restige. We shall surrender not merely the organization that is now invincible, 
but we shall also give up the symbols and slogans of our i)olitical faith and all the 
visible tokens of the triumphs that we have won in the name and for the sake of 
Mississippi. Think, too, of the infinite discredit that would be brought upon the 
Democracy of Mississippi in its relation to the Democracy of the country. Double 
delegations contesting for seats in national conventions, unseemly wrangles, and the 
washing of dirty linen in the presence of the whole country, are a few, and not 
the greatest, of the evils that would inevitably follow a division in our ranks. Be- 
sides, who would be our allies in a fight with our present party associates, who, what- 
ever their present error, have fought as valiantly and efficiently as the most cour- 
ageous and able, in the past struggles of MissiFsip|>i for good government? Begin the 

list with , and go through with it; and you will find among the future allies all 

of those Democrats who have abandoned their party organization in the hope of do- 
ing better, every Radical leader in Mississippi who, in the evil davs of the State, was 
active in promoting her humiliation and despair— save the car] letbairgers, who have 
fled from her soil. Let us always remember that the very shortcomings of the Dem- 
ocrats of Mississippi are virtues when compared with the best acts of the men whom 
they have displaced. Another fact which will not fail to strike so intelligent a think- 
er as yourself is the universal lesson of the failure of parties born of coalition, in the 
name of reform, to effect either reform or amelioration of existing evils. Experience, 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 397 

indeed, teaches that they are of all organizations the most exposed to the ap- 
proaches of demaiiogueisni, and the most certain to fall into the hands of bold adven- 
turers, of boisterous brawlers, and rapacious self-seekers. The safety of Mississippi 
lies in the maintenance of the Democratic organization and in its wise direction by 
conservative leaders who will not forfeit the confidence of the country. 

From Washington Mr. Lamar, so .soon as the Coukling incident was 
disposed of, went immediately to Brookliaveu, Miss., at which place, 
on the 2-ith of June, he delivered an address before the students of 
Whitworth College at their annual Commencement. Thence he went 
home, with the expectation of spending the summer; but an outbreak 
of yellow fever in Memphis on the 9th of July causing his family to go 
to Virginia for the summer, and tiu'eatening a repetition of the inactiv- 
ity of the preceding season, he returned to Washington City. Later 
in the summer, however, it became apparent that the epidemic would 
not be so widespread or virulent as before, and that there would be op- 
portunity for campaign work in politics. Numerous letters came to 
him, representing that the party was in a most disorganized and unsat- 
isfactory condition for want of a recognized leader, and urging his 
speedy return to the State. Accordingly he did return about the mid- 
dle of September, and then immediately began a series of speeches at 
different points in tlie State, of which the first was delivered at Oxford 
on the 29th of September. 

In previous chapters account has been given of those speeches in so 
far as they touched upon the Electoral Commission and upon the Sil- 
ver Bill. It remains to notice them in respect to the right of instruc- 
tion, which was the remaining point of difference, and in respect to the 
general "Greenback" and other current politics. 

The Clarion, and a few other papers in sympathy with it, still kept 
the matter of the legislative right of instruction before the people. 
Express allusion was not made to Mr. Lamar, but the intent and ap- 
i:)licatiou were unmistakable. In February Hon. H. H. Chalmers, of 
the Supreme Court, " provoked at seeing Mr. Davis lending his great 
name to so palpable an absurdity," published in the Clarion a communi- 
cation over the noiii dc phiiuf of "A. B. C," in which he argued against 
the right. This led to an animated newspaper discussion between him- 
self and the editor of the Clarion, which was protracted through sev- 
eral weeks. Several other writers appeared on either side. E. D. 
Clarke, Esq., of Vicksburg, under the pseudonym of "Third Citizen," 
summed up the argument against the right, so far as it had then pro- 
gressed, with admirable clearness and conciseness. These gentlemen 
were in constant correspondence with Mr. Lamar upon this subject. 
Their communications were not furnished by him, but he and they were 
in close touch; and his subsequent discussion of the matter embodied 
their views, besides many others of his own conception. 



398 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

Mr. Lamav's own view about the right of instruction was formulated 
by himself thus, in a letter to Gen. Walthall: 

Hesolved, That we believe in tlie right of the Legislature of a State to instruct the 
United States Senators for such State on any question of public policy; that such in- 
structions are addressed to the patriotism and sense of duty of Senators, and to the re- 
spect due from the Senators to the express-ion of any opinion liy the Legislature of 
the State which they repi'esent; and that no Senator should depart in his votes from 
an opinion tlius expressed or given, unless in case of a clear and conscientious con- 
viction that in following such instructions lie would be violating the constitution or 
injuring the interests of the whole country. 

The manuscrii:)t from which it has been possible to present quite a 
full outline of those portions of Mr. Lamar's popular speech of this 
year, which deal with the Electoral Commission and with the Silver 
Bill, unfortunately comes to an abrupt conclusion with the completion 
of those topics. His argument on the right of instruction and his at- 
tack upon the platform of the Greenback party exist only in brief notes 
and in meager newspaper reports. From those sources the general drift 
of his treatment of the right of instruction is given. 

He did not question the right of the Legislature to express to the 
Senator its opinion upon any question of public interest, but lie denied 
that such resolutions are mandatory. 

He did not say that under no possible circumstances shoidd the Sen- 
ator consider the will of the State, even as expressed by the Legislature, 
imperative upon him. There may be, and sometimes there are, supreme 
issues upon which the fate of the country manifestly depends, which 
are so simple, or so intimately known, as to be within the grasp and 
knowledge of any intelligent mind, and which are so positive as to touch 
the personal rights of every citizen. Upon such issues no Representa- 
tive or Senator is more than the mouthpiece of the people to express 
their will, btit in the ordinary functions of legislation the very purpose 
for which the office of Senator was created would be defeated by a right 
of mandatory instruction. 

Nor did he deny that a majority of the Democracy of the United 
States had long held the opinion that such right of peremptory instruc- 
tion does exist; but, on the other hand, he affirmed that a formidable mi- 
nority of the party, led by that greatest of American statesmen, John 
C. Calhoun, had denied it, wherefore it was never a received Democratic 
tenet. Among the Whigs the weight of opinion has been reversed, 
a majority there denying, and a minority asserting it. It might surely 
be said, therefore, that in the existing party, called Democratic, which 
embraced certainly in the South nine-tenths of the old Whigs, it was 
an open question. 

First. The assertion of such a mandatory right would be violative of 
the rights and duties of the Senator as prescribed by the Federal Con- 
stitution. That this is true is shown by the following considerations: 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 399 

The Senators are created, not by State, but by Federal, law. The 
Constitution of the United States is the spring of their existence. That 
constitution was prepared with most careful solicitude, and it was deal- 
ing with, in this respect, a most vital feature of governmental organiza- 
tion. If its sagacious framers intended that Senators should be sub- 
servient to the control of State Legislatures, and should hold their of- 
fices by the tenui'e of obedience to legislative instructions, is it not cei- 
tain that some expi'ession of such intent would be found in the organic 
law, and that some provision would have been made for the ejection 
of unruly and disobedient Senators? It is now said that Senators must 
obey or resign, but numbers of them have refused to do either; and not 
only does the constitution, as originally framed, fail to supply any rem- 
edy, biit also no human being has ever thought of offering an amend- 
ment whereby such recusant Senators might be ejected from ofBce. 

Pursuing this thought, read the constitution. There is not a clause 
in it which gives any countenance to such a theory. 

The negative argument can be pressed miich further. There is no 
such clause in the State Constitution. There was none such in any of 
the constitutions of the old States. Is it credible that, even if it be 
conceived that the framers of the Federal Constitution might slur over 
a matter so important, all of the legislators of the old States should 
have omitted to guard a privilege so weighty as that of virtually con- 
trolling by direct action one of the branches of the Federal Legislature? 

Again: an Act of Congress passed in disobedience of such instructions 
is nevertheless as valid and binding as if no such instructions had been 
given and violated; this none would deny. Nor is there any known or 
conjectured mode by which instructions, when given, can be enforced. 
Such a rule or principle would, then, be utterly without sanction, either 
as respects the validity of the law or the title of the Senator to his term 
of office. It would be futile and inept. Manifestly, then, the right to 
instruct is confined to that influence already pointed out: the Senator's 
respectful consideration under all circiimstances and his obedience un- 
der certain limitations. 

In fact, such a doctrine was unknown to the framers of the constitu- 
tion (referring to the Madhon Papers). It is true that the convention 
refused to " secure the independency of the Senate " to the extent of 
making the tenure for life; but it is also true that a power to recall the 
Senators was proposed as an amendment in some of the State conven- 
tions, and met with but little favor.* If the true theory is that of the 
right of mandatory instruction, then the framers of the constitution 
committed a capital blunder in fixing the term at six years without 
qualification. The right of recall should have been given as a sanction, 
or at least the term should have been made to expire with that of the 

»" Elliott's Debates," Vol. I., p. 257; Jd., Vol. III., p. 303. 



400 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

Legislature which elected the Seuator; but such was not the iutentiou. 
Accordiijgly, we hud Mr. Aladison saying in the Federal if: f (Nos. 62 and 
63) of the Senate, that 

It ought, moreover, lo possess great Jirmness, and consequently ought to hold its au- 
thority by a tenure of considerable duration Vs the cool and deliljerate 

sense of the community ou;j;lit in all governments, and actually will in all free gov- 
ernments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers, S(.> there are particular mo- 
ments in public atlairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion or some 
illicit advantage, or misled by the artful represent-ations of interested men, may call 
for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and 
condemn. In these critical moments how salutary will be the interference of some 
temperate and respectable body of citizens in order to check the misguided career, and 
to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, jus- 
tice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind! What bitter anguish 
w^ould not the people of Athens have escaped if their government had contained so 
provident a safeguard against the tyranny of their own passions! 

So also the great writers on Americau coustitutional law emphasize 
the fact that the Senate was organized, not merely to create an equiva- 
lency between the different States, but also to secure a legislative body 
which should be removed from the impulsive but fugitive movements of 
popular excitement. The three features of mature age, long tenure, and 
gradual change, have been uniformly considered by the ablest commen- 
tators as plainly and directly intended to make of the Senate a stable 
and conservative body so constituted. History had furnished no in- 
stance of a long-lived Kepiiblic which had not such a body, and the 
founders of ours were deeply impressed with the necessity for "an an- 
chor against popular fluctuations," as it was termed by one of them. So 
Chancellor Kent says: 

The small number and loyig duration of the Senate were intemled to render them 
a, safeguard agaimt the influence of those paroxysms of heat and passion which prevail 
occasionally in the most enlightened communities, and enter into the deliberation of pop- 
ular assemblies. In this point of view a firm and independent Senate is justly regarded 
as the anchor of safety amid the storms of political faction.* 

Judge Story, in his work on the constitution, says: 

"It [the Senate] comliiiies the perioil of office of the Executive with that of the 
members of the House, while at the same time, /roH its own biennial changes (as we 
shall presently see), it is silently subjected to the deliberate voice of the States." t Fur- 
ther on he emphasizes the view that the biennial changfs are tiie means reserved to the 
jieople of subjerting the Senate to the influence of their changing opinions.i 

These authorities seem clearly to enforce two conclusions: 
That the Senate was intended to be a body both tshihle and independ- 
eiit in character, free alike from the shifting extravagances of pub- 
lic oi)inion and from the domination of other organized parts of the 
government; and that the opportunity to change bienually one-third of 
its members is the only means provided to the people for subjecting an 

*■' I. Kent's Commentaries," p. 227. f Section 714. t Section 723. 



II IS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 401 

obdurate Senate to the influence of their deliberate convictions, neither 
of which couchisious can stand if the doctrine of instruction be sound. 
Secondly. The positive argument drawn from tiie provisions of the 
constitution is even stronger. Examine that instrument. 

(«) The constilution itself defines the relations between the State 
Legislatures and the Senators. In Article I., sections 1 and 2 declare 
that all of the legislative powers of the United States shall be vested in 
a Congress, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representa- 
tives, and provide for the composition of the House. Then come sec- 
tions 3 and 4, the most pertinent features of which are the provisions 
that " the Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Sen- 
ators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six years; " 
that vacancies occurring during a recess of a Legislature may be filled 
by Executive appointment; and that the times, places, and manner of 
holding elections for Senators and Eepreseutatives shall be prescribed 
in each State by the Legislature thereof, bx;t Congress may at any time 
by law make cr alter such regulations, except as to the places of choos- 
ing Senators. These clauses present all the relations between the Leg- 
islatures and the Senators. There is in them nothing but the right to 
choose. That' function once exercised, the powers and rights of the Leg- 
islature in the jjremises terminate. Even the power of election is but 
a qualified one, for the constitution expressly reserves to Congress the 
right to regulate both the time and the manner of making such choice. 
Congress, for instance, would have the power to direct that the elec- 
tion should be by joint ballot of the two branches of the Legislature, 
or by a distinct ballot of each branch uniting upon one man. 

(h) If the State Legislatures can control the votes of Senators bj' in- 
structions, how can Congress exercise the powers conferred upon it by 
the constitution? "Will not the legislative power of the United States 
be, in effect, vested in the State Legislatures'? If those bodies can 
command the Senators, is not that a most material participation in Fed- 
eral legislation? 

The idea is at war with our whole system of government, under 
which the State and the Federal Governnjents, acting each within the 
scope of its powers, are coordinate and sovereign. If allowed, it would 
lead inevitably to the most glaring inconsistencies and intolerable 
anomalies. 

For instance, the constitution declares that no State shall, without 
the consent of Congress, lay any import or export duties, and that all 
such State laws shall be subject to the revision and control of the Con- 
gress. Can it be said that a State may command its Senators that they 
shall give their consent that it may laj' such duties or direct them in 
their sworn diity to revise and control the State's law? It would be 
absurd. 
26 



402 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

Again, as stated above, the constitution declares that Congress may 
make or alter regulations as to the time and manner of choosing Sena- 
tors and Representatives, thus conferring upon that body a supervisory 
power over the State in those particulars. Can it be claimed that the 
Legislatures may instruct Senators how that supervisory power shall 
be exercised? 

Again, the constitution provides that the Senate shall be the judge 
of the elections, returns, and ciualifications of its own members. Those 
elections are the work of the State Legislatures, and tlieir work is under 
examination. Can they iustriict Senators how they shall decide? 

Such illustrations, of greater or less force, might be greatly multi- 
plied. 

The theory is not, and cannot be, the true theory. The members of 
the Legislatures iind the members of the United States Senate perform 
wholly different duties, and act in wholly different orbits. Each dis- 
charges his duty as the dictate of his conscience under his official oath 
demands, and neither has any control over the other. Both are respon- 
sible at the end of their terms to the peoiile, and to the people alone. 
By that wise system of checks and balances which marks every feature of 
the Federal Government the State Legislatures, rather than the people 
themselves, choose the Senators; but when they have done so, they have 
exhausted their functions in the matter, and have thereafter no further 
control over the Senators than they would have over governors or 
judges whom they might be called upon to elect. 

The doctrine, so far from lieiug salutary in its tendencies, is incon- 
sistent with the true character of our government, which is that of a 
consiitntianid, as distinguished from a pure, democracy, and is opposed 
to its spirit and methods of actioir, all of which are, or were meant to 
be, regulated by laws. It seeks to introduce into the governmental ma- 
chinery a force for which no jjlaee is provided, with the certain conse- 
quence of jarring and confusing its operation. "We have the authority 
of Mr. Calhoun for saying that in none of the free governments of an- 
tiquity can the least trace of the doctrine be found, and that it is incon- 
sistent with the plan and principles of our own. 

Every such attempt is, indeed, nothing less than an attempt to sub- 
ject the goveriHuent to the action of a higher law than the constitution; 
and it is just because the doctrine in question proceeds outside of the 
constitution and independently of it that it has been a source of con- 
tention, irritation, and discord among those who have formally ac- 
knowledged it, and has received the unmeasured condemnation of those 
who have openly denied it. How it would sui-ely tend to corrupt and 
degrade our political system, if it should ever unfortunately become an 
acknowledged feature of it, cannot be more strongly presented than in 
the following noble language of Mr. Burke, when standing the second 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 403 

time for the suffrages of the electors of Bristol, in a speech, of which 
Mr. Calhoun has said: "That mind must be greatly different from mine 
which can read that speech and not embrace its doctrines:" 

//"Depend upon it," said Mr. Burke, "that tlie lovers of freedom will be free. . . ^ 
If we clegrade and deprave their minds by servility, it will be al)surd to expect that^ 
they who are aliject and creepinif toward us will ever be bold and incorruptible as- 
uerters of our freedom aga.inst the most seducing and formidable of all powers. . . . 
If we do not permit our members to act upon a very enlarged view of things, we shall 
at length infallibly degrade our national representation inlo a confused and scuffling 
bristle of local agency." 

The opponents of this doctrine do hot deny "the responsibility of the 
Eepresentative to his constituents." That is a principle which applies 
to all officers, Senators not excepted. They say, however, that when he 
comes to be judged it is not upon any question of obedience to instruc- 
tions or other exjiressions of popular sentiment, but upon the ultimate 
question of the right or the wrong of his conduct under all of the cir- 
cumstances. And when that test comes, instead of compassing his de- 
struction, it may be set down to his credit that he "did not look to the 
flash of the day;" that he did not kindle with the passions of the peo- 
ple, or obey their instructions, but "conformed to the instructions of 
truth and nature, and maintained their iidcrcsts against their opinionx." 

Thirdly. It is said that this mandatory right of instruction arises 
from the relation of Eepresentative and constituent— that is, because 
the Legislature elects the Senator. Hence it is argued that he who, by 
accepting the office of Senator at the hands of the Legislature, has rec- 
ognized that body as uttering the voice of the State is estopped to ques- 
tion its authority when it directs him how to discharge his official du- 
ties. Is it true, then, that power to select an officer carries with it a 
right to control his action? Does the right of election, when conferred 
upon an agency intermediate between the people and the officer to be 
elected, confer the power to control the person so chosen in the dis- 
charge of his official duties? These questions are unhesitatingly an- 
.swered in the negative. Where a fixed term of office is prescribed, and 
there is no express power of control or removal, the authority of the 
appointing agent is exhausted in making the selection; and thencefor- 
ward the person chosen is wholly independent of the body or individ- 
ual making the ai^pointment, and is accountable only to the sovereign 
people, the commdu ruaster. The sovereigns of Mississippi are the 
people of Mississippi, and not her Legislature. By the State laws and 
constitution the Governor is made the agent of the people for the ap- 
pointment of many officers. Can he direct those officers how to dis- 
charge their duties? Can he instruct a judge how to decide a case, or 
direct a sheriff, appointed to fill a vacancy, whom to arrest? Could a 
mass meeting of the people of a county direct the coui't clerks or the 



404 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

county treasurer in the discharge of their duties? Manifestl}' not; aud 
because those duties are prescribed by a power superior to the couuty. 

These considerations apply with especial force to holders of Federal 
offices, and most strongly of all to United States Senators. If the Leg- 
islature may instruct a Senator, why may not a Governor, when he has 
appointed the Senator? In fact, the Senator is not a Ilepresentative of 
the Legislature any more thau he is of the Governor. The office is cre- 
ated, not by the State, nor by the Legislature of the State, but by the 
United States in its constitution. Nor do the laws enacted by Congress 
operate exclusively upon any Legislature, or even any one or all of the 
States. Their operation is coextensive with the limits of the whtile 
Union, and is direct upon the individual citizens. Most strikingly is 
this true in I'espect to the matter of money. 

True, the Federal, no less thau the State Government, derives its au- 
thority from the people; the people constitute the States; the States 
constitute the Union. It therefore remains true that the ultimate au- 
thority of the Federal Government springs from the people; and yet 
it is wisely so ordered by the Federal Constitution that the people have 
almost no direct connection with the government, and its whole vast 
machinery is put in motion by intermediate agents. Though it has a 
countless swarm of officers, no man ever votes for any of them, save 
one. The members of Congress, each in his own district, are the onlj' 
officers connected with the government who are directly chosen by the 
peojDle. All the others are selected by intermediaries. The President 
is selected by the Electoral College; is he subject to their orders? The 
Judges are appointed by the President and the Senate; are they to be 
instructed by the same powers? Of all the departments of the govern- 
ment it was intended that the Senate should be the most independent, 
conservative, and free from violent changes. How then can it be that 
Senators alone, of all Federal officers, were intended to be subject to the 
commands of the appointing agents, the State Legislature in their case? 
How vain the scheme if they can be ejected from their seats or forced to 
violate their conscientious convictions with every change of opinion in 
a Legislature! Senators are delegates, in the nature of embassadors, of 
sovereign States in council assembled. But also each Senator is more 
than that: he is also, in his capacity of a Legislator for the United 
States, a representative of that part of the totality of a perfect sover- 
eignty which, by the Federal Constitution, was conceded by the States 
to the Federal Union. He occupies a twofold rolntion, and owes a 
double duty. He is under a double responsibility, and subject to ac- 
countability therefor. But where does, the sanction for that account- 
ability rest? Certainly with that body where sovereignty resides, and 
with it alone: the people, not tlie Legislatures. Legislatures possess 
power over State affairs only; with Federal matters and in the Federal 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 405 

Govenimeut they have uo concern. United States Senators and State 
Legislators are equally servants of a common master, charged by that 
master with different duties in wholly different spheres. Each is the 
equal of the other, but neither is superior. Both are responsible to the 
common master, but neither is responsible to the other. 

Fourthly. It is a doctrine which has never been asserted in any Dem- 
ocratic national platform. It has frequently been denied by many of 
the most distinguished national and Democratic leaders. The Madison 
Papers may be searched in vain for any indication that it was claimed 
as reserved to the States in the convention which framed the constitu- 
tion. The fathers of the Kepublic, -Washington and Adams, advanced no 
such doctrine; nor, if it be said that they were Federalists and not Dem- 
ocrats, did Jefferson. Madison denied it. In 1810 Senator Giles, of 
Virginia, the bosom friend of Jefferson, the defender of his administra- 
tion, and by many regarded as his organ, was instructed, and, in an 
elaborate speech on the subject, denied the right of instruction, stating 
that his vote was given on the question, and not in obedience to the 
Legislature. 

John C. Calhoun, the great Democratic link between the fathers and 
the present, always denied the right. In a biography of him by R. M. 
T. Hunter, on page 452, is to be found this passage : 

The theory of this government was for many years his study. He was perfectly fa- 
mihar with our foreign relations. Upon the currency question he was especially at 
home; and he discussed it with the sagacity of a philosopher, the foresight of a states- 
man, and the practical skill of a financier. Indejiendence and integrity were con- 
spicuous traits in 3Ir. Calhoun. " I never know," he said, " what South Carolina 
thinks of a measure. I never consult her. I act to the best of my judgment and ac- 
cording to my conscience. If she approves, well and good ; if she does not, and wishes 
any one else to take my place, I am ready ; we are even." 

Nor does this last quoted expression mean that he would resign. It 
was only an allusion to the common rule of ultimate responsibility, to 
the people. In his speech of January 17, 1817, to the House, he said: 

The ear of the House on this subject is closed to truth and reason. What lias pro- 
duced this magic spell? Instructions! Well, then, has it come to this? Have the 
people of this country snatched the power of deliberation from this body? Have 
they resolved the government into its original elements and resumed their primitive 
power of legislation? Are we, then, a body of individual agents, and not a deliberative 
one, without the power, but possessing the form of legislation? If such be the fact, 
let gentlemen iirodvice their instructions properly autlienticated. Let them name the 
time and place at which the people assembled and deliberated on tliis question. O 
no! They have no written, no verbal instructions ; but they have implied instructions. 
The law is unpojiular, ami they are bounfl to repeal it in opposition to their con- 
sciences and reason. Have gentlemen reflected on the consequences of this doctrine? 
.Vre we bound in all cases to do what is popular? If this be true, how are political 
errors, once prevalent, ever to be corrected? Suppose a party to spring up in this 
country whose real views would be the destruction of liberty ; suppose that, by man- 
agement, by the patronage of offices, by corruption of the press, they should delude 



f 



406 LUCIUS Q. a LA.VAR: 

the people and obtain a majority (and surely such a state of things is not impossible), 
what, then/will be the effect of this doctrine? Ought we to sit quiet? Ought we to 
be dumb? or rather, ought we to approve, though we see that liberty is to be engulfed? 
This doctrine of implied instruction ... is very different in its character and 
effects from the old doctrine that the constituents have a right to assemble and for- 
mally to instruct the Representative; and though I would not hold mi/sHf bound lo ohe>i 
any such instructions, yet I conceive that the doctrine is not of a very dangerous char- 
acter, as the good sen-^e of the people has as yet prevented them from exercising such 
a right, and will, in all probability, in future prevent them. 

I too am an advocate for instruction. I am instructed. The constitution is my 
letter of instruction. Written by the hand of the people, stamped with their autiiority, 
it admits of no doubt as to its oljligations. Your very acts in opposition to its au- 
thority are null. This is the solemn voice oi the people, to which I bow in perfect 
sul imission. It is here/ihe vox- popuii is the vox Dei. This is the all-powerful creative / 
voice which spake our government into existence and made us politically as we a.TeJ/ j 
This body is tlie first orb in the political creation, and stands next in authority to the 
original creative voice of the people; and any attempt to give a different direction to 
its movement from what the constitution and the deliberate consideration of its mem- 
bers point out I consider as an innovation on the principles of our government. . . . 

I hope I shall not be misunderstood. . . . The state of public feeling is a fact 
to be reasoned upon and to receive that weight on any particular question to which 
it may foirly be entitled ; but, for my part, I prefer that erectness of mind which, in 
all cases, is disposed to embrace what is in itself just and wise. 

On tlie same subject Mr. Webster said: 

If there be any matter pending in this body while I am a member of it in which 
Massachusetts has an interest of her own not adverse to the general interests of the 
country, I shall pursue her instructions with gladness of heart and with all the effi- 
ciency which I can bring to the occasion ; but if the question be one which affects her 
interest, and at the same time equally tiffects the interests of all the other States, I sha! I 
no more regard her particular wishes or instructions than I should regard the wishes 
of a man who might appoint me an arbiter or referee to decide some question of im- 
portant private right lietween him and his neighbor, and then instruct me to decide 
in his favor./; If ever there was a government upon earth, it is this government; if 
ever there wis a body upon earth, it is this body, which should consider itself as com- 
posed by agreement of all, each member api)ointe(l by some, but organized by the 
general consent of all, sitting here under the solemn obligations of oa,th and con- 
science, to do that which they think to be best for the good of the whole,' (Webster's 
AVorks, Vol. v., p. 356.) 

In 1834 Senator Mangum, of North Carolina, was instructed on a 
question of currency, and refused to obey; while in 1838 the Legislature 
of that State passed resolutions condemning the action of Senators 
Brown and Strange, and giving them certain instructions, which were 
disobeyed; and the Senators addressed the Legislature, giving publicly 
their reasons. Mr. Berrien, of Georgia, also disobeyed instructions; 
wiiile in 1842 Henry Clay refused to follow instructions to vote for the 
repeal of the Bankrujit Law, and said that if the Legislature of his State 
should instruct him in his duties as Senator he would instruct it in its 
duties at home. In 1849 Senator Benton, of Missouri, an Andrew 
Jackson Democrat of the strongest, and Jackson's especial friend and 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AXD SPEECHES. 407 

supporter, was instructed to vote against the Wilmot Proviso, aud re- 
fused. In the same year Senator Lewis Cass was instructed to vote for 
the same measure, aud refi;sed, for which he was extolled to the skies 
by the Democrats of tlie South, aud three years afterwards was the fa- 
vorite candidate of many of them, at Baltimore, for the Presidential 
nomination. Again, in 1854 Senator Cass was instructed to vote against 
the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, aud refused. He was requested to resign, 
and refused contemptously and defiantly. Afterwards, with the entire 
approval of the Democracy throughout the Union, he was appointed 
Secretary of State by President Buchauau. In 1855 Senators George 
E. Pugh, of Ohio, and Jones, of Iowa, both Democrats, were instructed 
to vote for the exclusion of slavery from the Territories, and refused, 
for which they were greatly lauded by the Southern Democracy. In 
1858 John Bell was instructed by the Legislature of Tennessee to vote 
for the admission of Kausas under the Lecomptou Constitution, aud re- 
fused to obey. In 1850 Senator Foote, of Mississippi, disobeyed the 
insti'uctions of the Legislature by voting for the Compromise Measures 
after inviting the expression of its opinion (as narrated in a previous 
chapter of this work), and at the next electiou was chosen Governor of 
the State over Mr. Davis. In later times SenatojJ2a±cuiijofConnecticut, 
perhaps the sternest Democrat in New England, when he was instructed 
in 1877 to vote for the Electoral Commission Bill, declared his purpose 
to disregard the instructions and vote according to his convictions. 
He had no idea of resigning. The Legislature afterwards rescinded 
their instructions, but the Senator had avowed that he would not move 
one inch from the position he had marked out for himself; and, in fact, 
lie was the only Democatic Senator who did vote against the bill. 
Later still. Senator Thurman, when instructed by a Republican Legis- 
lature to vote for the confirmation of Hon. Stanley Matthews as Jus- 
tice of the Supreme Court, took the same position. 

There are precedents the other way, but the point is that there is 
no established rule. Democratic or other, that the Senators are subject 
to such control; and the reason is all against it. 

Better to follow the example of the illustrious men whose names have 
been given than to abandon altogether judgment and conviction in def- 
erence to popular clamor, no matter iu what shape it comes. 

Fifthly. The doctrine of the legislative right of mandatory instruc- 
tion is not only without just foundation in history, and unconstitutional, 
but it is also degrading to the Senator and the Senate. 

If it be correct at all, it must hold good in every case; aud a Senator, 
sitting as a member of the highest court of impeachment known in the 
land, may be instructed as to his vote by the State Legislatui-e. Such 
^ proposition shocks the moral sense, of course; but it is only the reduc- 
• • 'id absurduin of the ijrinciple. 



408 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

The United States Senate, for the first time in eighteen years, has a 
majority of Democratic Senators. Among the latter are many Sena- 
tors from Northern States, but there is only one State Legislature (that 
of Indiana ) which is not Eepublican. Can those Eepublican Legislatures 
command the Democratic Senators to vote against their conscientious 
convictions of duty, or else resign their seats, and thus by new elections 
alter the political complexion of the Senate? If Senator Pendleton be 
instructed to vote for the repeal of the Silver Bill, and Senators Eaton, 
Keruan, Randolph, and McPherson are instructed to vote for the enact- 
ment of a Force Bill and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in 
the South, must they violate the cherished principles of their lives, 
or, by resigning, make way for Republican successors? Suppose that 
in some Southern State the carpetbaggers should, by some untoward 
event, succeed in again capturing the Legislature; may they instriictthe 
Senators out of Congress? 

No doctrine fuller of evil promise for the South could be established; 
and its evil promise for her is but an example of its possible hurtf ulness 
in any other part of the Union, or to the whole Union, at any time. It leads 
to this: that the Senate may be revolutionized and torn to pieces and 
the Federal policy unsettled by even one State Legislature at its will, 
when parties are equally balanced in tliat body; or by two or three Leg- 
islatures at almost any time, practically. It leads to this: that the Sen- 
ator, instead of being the independent, conservative, and honored citi- 
zen and statesman, holding his term for six years as contemplated by 
the constitution, is either reduced to a dependent, insignificant mouth- 
piece, or else he holds his term by legislative^ill. 

It is no answer to this argument to say that the Senator shall only 
obey a Legislature of his own political faith. The question is one be- 
tween the Legislatxire, as the representative of the State, and the Sen- 
ator. It is incontrovertible that, as members of the Legislature, all are 
equal in weight of authority, without respect of politics. No one has 
ever asserted otherwise. 
j' In conclusion, he would say: "I have always thought that the first 
' duty of a public man in a Republic founded iipon the sovereignty of 
the people as the legitimate source of power is a frank and sincere ex- 
^ pression of his opinions to his constituents. I i)rizo the confidence of 

the people of Mississippi, but I never made popularity the standard of 
my action. I profoundly respect public opinion, but I believe that there 
is in conscious rectitude of ])urpose a sustaining power which will sup- 
port a man of ordinary firmness under any circumstances whatever." 

In this canvass Mr. Lamar spoke at Oxford, Coffeeville, Jackson, 
Vicksburg, Meridian, Columbus, and other places. His speeches were 
remarkably successful. In this work he was at his best. Impressive 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 409 

as he was in Congress, and highly as his efforts there were applauded, 
it was before the people that he became fully aroused. Familiar as he 
was with the most refined and exclusive types of modern society, he still 
had a thorough knowledge of the modes of life, the habits of thought, and 
the processes of reasoning of plain people. He united a clear perception 
of the springs of their feelings, an unfailing sympathy with their better 
emotions, and a wide charity for their faults. He had no selfish or sin- 
ister designs upon them, but was possessed of a consuming desire for 
their welfare and happiness. When he stood before them their pres- 
ence and attention were an inspiration to him. He would then rise 
to flights of imaginative and passionate oratory, of graphic and 
thrilling narrative, which his congressional speeches never presented, 
without any sacrifice of their clear, historical statement or strong 
and logical argument. He never spoke down to the people; for he be- 
lieved that, if only their faith wei'e secured, they could and would fol- 
low all "flights of the finest sentiment or fancy or reasoning. 

He was conscious of his power. On one occasion, about this period, 
a friend asked him: "Colonel, how is it that, in the face of the war 
which so many of the leading xjoliticians of the State are making on you, 
you manage so well to hold your ground against them, the passions and 
prejudices of the people being all invoked against you as they are?" 
His response was an amused ejaculation characteristic of him — half 
snort, half laugh — and then: " Well, I'll tell you. When I hear of any 
of those men forming a combination against me anywhere I ji;st go 
there and make a speech to the people, and break it up." 

The speeches of this year, as a group, were the most elaborate, the 
most impassioned, and i)erhaps the best he ever made. The subjects to 
be discussed were so numerous, varied, iutei-esting, and important — im- 
portant both to the people and to himself — that he exerted himself to 
the utmost. For three and a half hours he would hold his audience en- 
chained. It was commonly remarked that he swe^jt all opposition be- 
fore him. Men who were so hostile that they could hardly be persuad- 
ed to hear him at all would mount upon the benches and tables, swing- 
ing their hats, and huzzaing until hoarse. Mr. Catchings said of him, 
some years later, that, 

While his orations in the Senate Chamber were models of elegant diction, ornate 
rhetoric, and resistless logic, yet it was on the luistings before the people that he was 
most ijowerful and superb. 

I doubt if any man ever lived who excelled him in tlie power to touch the hearts, 
stir the emotions, and sway the judgment of such an audience. I have seen assem- 
bled thousands hang l)reathlefs upon his words, laughing, crying, elated or serious by 
turns, as with tlie liand of a master he played with their emotions and subdued their 
judgments. It was not so much by beauty of speech or logical secjuence of statement 
that he did this, for in these respects many, perhaps, have equaled liim ; but there was 
peculiar to him a passion, an intensity, a charm that spoke less from his tongue than 



^ 



410 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

from his soul-lighted and changeful countenance, as he himself was dominated by his 
masterfal emotions. 

The newspapers of the clay were filled with notices like this from the 
Grenada Sentinel about the Coifeeville speech: 

Whenever Lamar touched upon his own political course and action, cheer after 
cheer rang out from his auditor- : which was the most convincing and emphatic jiroof 
of their indorsement of his oourse, belief in his fidelity to his people, and pride in his 
great statesmanship. If the commendation of a people to a pulilic servant be sweet 
and pleasant, ;Mr. Lamar, after his speech at Cotfeeville, must have been highly grat- 
ified in the unanimous and enthusiastic approval of his hearers. 

The speech at Yicksburg was thus noticed editorially in the llirald, 
of October 24: 

The speech delivered by Senator Lamar Thursday night was one of remarkable 
power. . . . The whole address, which was of something near three liours' 
duration, was remarkable for its elevated tone, its lofty [latriotism, and its pure mo- 
rality. There was not a single appeal to the selfishness, the prejudices, or the passions 
of his audience. ... It was evident that Col. Lamar's purpose was not so mucli 
self-vindication as the vindication of the jirinciples upon which he has acted, and to 
recall his constituents to a just and accurate perception of the polilical attitude which 
the South occupies toward the North, and to the essential conditions upon which she 
can hope to enjoy her full .share in the councils, benefits, and advantages of the Un- 
ion. We sincerely wish that every citizen of ^Mississippi had heard this speech, full 
as it was of noble thoughts, grand truths, elevating sentiments, and profound wisdom. 
. . . We believe that if the people of the South would put their destinies in the 
hands of such men as Senator Lamar it would be but a short time before all sectional 
issues would <lisappear from American politics, and we would tie lifted into an atmos- 
phere of tranquillity, confidence, and prosperity, such as it has not been the fortune 
of the South to enjoy since the beginning of the agitation over the subject of slavery. 
It has been a great misfortune indeed that Mississippi has not always stood unani- 
mous and unwavering in her support of Col. Lamar; for, as he said Thursday night, a 
public man with his constituency at his back, indorsing, supporting, and upholding 
him in his purposes, is a power, an institution in the land; but without it he is onlj- 
an integer, often a mere ciphei'. 

The judgment and discrimination, as well as the enthusiasm, with which his re- 
marks were applauded were, we think, something unusual in a jiopular assemblage. 
It is not often that sucli an audience will a|iplaud mere logical and philosophical de- 
ductions, but this was done Thurs-Iay night repeatedly and with great animation. On 
one occasion the manifestations of approval were so loud and continuous as to remind 
one of the enthusiastic encores of a dramatic performance. 

They were not only Democrats whose approval was secured by Mr. 
Lamar's speeches; the admiration of even the political opposition was 
compelled. His speeches opened with a strong arraignment of the 
Greenbackers. He exposed their " boundless, bottomless, and brainless 
sehemes;" and said that, Iiowever those schemes might delude for a time, 
they would eventually, if put into practice, entail upon this country the 
direst calamities from which it had ever yet suffered. He illustrated in 
many ways the utter futility of the fiat money idea, and declared tli-at of 
all humbugs this was the most senseless and the most unfathomable in 
the extent of its folly. He read from Calhoun's works the utterances of 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 411 

that statesman which had been quoted by the Greenbackers in su-pport 
of their theories, and demonstrated by the context and by unmistakable 
convictions, elsewhere repeatedly exprewsed, that Mr. Calhoun never 
countenanced any money not convertible into coin, and that good faith 
to the creditor was with him one of the cardinal principles of govern- 
mental finance. He reviewed the record of the Democratic party on 
the money question, showing that it had been uniformly true to the faith 
of the fathers. He cited Washington, Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Mad- 
ison, Calhoun, and others as great statesmen who had been identified 
with agriculture, and all of whose sympathies and interests were with 
the farming people, and who had yet left beacon lights to warn us 
against the perils of an irredeemable currency. No man would say that 
they were the servile tools of a money power. 

In spite of this arraignment of his party, the most prominent Green- 
backer of the State, said, as Mr. Lamar passed from the speaker's stand 
at Oxford, amid the wild huzzas of the audience and the booming of 
the cannon: "That was the speech of a statesman; only a noble and a 
patriotic man could have made it." 

On the 5th of December Gen. Walthall wrote to Mr. Lamar: 

You ought to be more than satisfied with the results of your canvass in the State. 
You worked a complete revolution wherever you went, which has had a wonderful 
effect in all parts of the State. If your speech had been published in full and gener- 
ally distributed, the work would have l>een eoni|ilete in all quarters. 

The end of this year was made very sad to Mr. Lamar and all mem- 
bers of his family by the sudden death of his noble mother, at Macon, 
Ga., on the 31st of October. Her virtues and the general tenor of her 
life were inadequately touched upon at the conclusion of the first chap- 
ter of this work. 

A question of great interest and importance in the politics of Mis- 
sissippi for this year was that of the succession of Mr. B. K. Bruce, 
the colored Republican Senator for Mississippi, whose term was to ex- 
pire in 1881. The Legislature to be elected would make the choice. 
The Senatorial question, therefore, came early to the front. 

It was Mr. Lamar's most earnest wish — a wish which outweighed his 
personal interests — that Gen. Walthall should be chosen as his colleague. 
So early in the year as the 17th of February he wrote to a friend in 
Vicksburg: 

I think that Gen. Walthall should be the man. I say this not because he is my 
friend, but for the reason which has made rae Ins friend: he is the noblest man that I 
ever knew, in the varied experience of a somewhat eventful life. His intellect is of 
the highest and finest order. There is not a comnion]ilace trait in it. . . . 

Now here I must tell you of a conversation that I had with McCardle a few evenings 
since, as a preface to another view of thi-; matter which I want to impress upon you 
as my friend. . . . He said :" You see, Barksdale and Chalmers and Singleton are 



41'2 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

candidates for tlie Senate. I expect to have a hand in that matter myself. I mean 
to do what 1 can to beat 'em all with a man that (( is not for your interest to have elected. I 
mean Ed. Walthall. The people ain't going to have you and him both in the Senate, 
and his election this time will be your defeat next time." I replied that I was glad 
that he intended to support Walthall, and that I hoped that he would do so without 
anv reference to its effect ujion me ; that I would try to take care of myself when the 
time came, but that if 1 knew that Walthall's election would be my defeat I would 
be glad to give him my place in the Senate. ... I would love to give him my 
place, and my gi-atitude will go out to any man who will help me in his support. 

This ardent wish of Mr. Lamar's was doomed to disappointment. 
When the Legislature assembled in January, 1880, and the Democratic 
caucus took up the Senatorial question, it appeared that three promi- 
nent candidates were in the tield: Messrs. Barksdale, Singleton, and 
Walthall. The support was nearly equally divided, Mr. Barksdale hav- 
ing a slightly larger following than either of the two others. On the 
seventh night of the caucus, when thirty-four fruitless ballots had been 
taken—with the vote ranging from forty-four to sixty for Barksdale, 
thirty-four to forty-four for Singleton, and thirty-two to forty-four for 
Walthall— Gen. Walthall, by letter to the caucus, withdrew his name 
from the contest; and his friends immediately placed in nomination 
Chief Justice James Z. George, of the Supreme Court. The balloting 
then proceeded without change of any consequence, until, on the ninth 
night and after the forty-eighth ballot, Mr. Barksdale withdrew, in or- 
der to break the deadlock and to preserve the party harmony. Judge 
George was then nominated on the next ballot by the united votes of 
the original Walthall and Barksdale following, receiving seventy-nine 
votes to Singleton's fifty. 

The event was without any significance, so far as Mr. Lamar's per- 
sonal relations to Mississippi politics was concerned, although an effort 
was made by certain papers most warmly enlisted for Mr. Barksdale to 
create a different opinion. Judge George was of the same political 
school in State politics, and was brought forward by the supporters of 
Gen. Walthall. 

The interest taken l)y Mr. Lamar in this election, his desire to for- 
ward the cause of Gen. Walthall ( who was not making a personal can- 
vass), and the fact that he had been advised by his friends at Wash- 
ington that no measures were then pressing before Congress which 
recpiired his personal attention, caused him to remain in Mississippi 
and to go t(.) Jackson in order to be near the caucus. This was unfor- 
tunate for him in one respect. The excitement of the contest and the 
anxiety about results, several days before Gen. Walthall's withdrawal, 
brought on anotlier of his apoplectic attacks, quite severe this time, fol- 
lowed by partial paralysis, from which he recovered but slowly. The 
news of it excited much comment, and many of the papers discussed 
the likelilujod of his retirement from i)ublic life l)ecause of it. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 413 

A letter of date January 20, from a friend at Washiugtou (Mr. S. A. 
Jouas, editor of the Aberdeen Examiner), says: 

Every one in Washington rejoices to liear of your improvement, and it would al- 
most have compensated you for the suffering that you have endured to have heard 
the many kind things said of you by even those of your stalwart political opponents 
who have no compliments to pay or kind words to speak when you are in your chair. 

Under date of January 27 Mr. Frank H. Alfrieud wrote: 
I doubt if the political and journalistic community of Washington has ever mourned 
more sincerely over the sickness of any public man. 



CHAPTER XXY. 

Returns to Washington— Interview with Blaine— Tlie Exodus — llr. Lamar's Views — 
The Voorhees Investigation Resolution — The Debate on the Committee's Report 
— Mr. Lamar's Speech — Speech at the Democratic National Convention of 1880 — 
Lafeyette Springs Speech— Letter to Hon. J. W. C. Watson— Mrs. Lamar's Failing 
Health— Holly Springs Speech and Fall Canvass— The " Grant Bill ''- The Execu- 
tive Session of March, 1881 — Political Complexion of the Senate — Virginia Read- 
justers — Senator Mahone — Struggle in the Senate over the Committee? — Struggle 
over the Election of Officers- The Debate— Mr. Lamar's Speech— Its Reception. 

ABOUT the 10th of February Mr. Lamar liad so far recovered from 
his ilhiess as to be enabled to return to Washington^not well, 
however, but walking by the assistance of crutches. 

He wrote to his wife: 

Washixgton, February 17, 1880. 

. . . I took my seat in the Senate yesterday, and received many cordial hand 
pressures. Conkling was not among those who welcopied me. He ^tood aloof and 
eyed me gloomily. . . . 

My own health is good. I am easily fatigued, and writing makes my head sivim_ 
My arm is heavy and weak; but I have thrown aside my crutches, and walk with 
a stick. 

Under date of March 1 he wrote: 

I had a brief conversation with Blaine to-day. Said he was glad to see me, and 
expressed himself with the utmost cordiality. He asked me if I thought Gi-ant could 
get any Southern State. I understood him to refer to the nomination, and not to the 
election; but I soon saw that his mind was running on Grant's chances if nominated. 
He said that he thought the stupidity of the Democratic party would give Grant a 
Southern State in the only Presidential contest which would justify the South in giv- 
ing a solid Democratic vote. He did not express it so strongly as that, but this was 
what I understood him to imply. His words were: "I can see nothing that could 
produce such a result [the giving of a Southern State to Grant], except the unfailing 
stupidity of the Democratic i>arty." I told him that Grant could not get Mississippi, 
and that the only thing that would give him any Southern State would be fear. 
" What would they have to fear? " said he. He expressed the opinion that present 
indications jiointed to Grant's nomination, but -was quite positive that he would not 
get the solid vote of either Pennsylvania or New York, not even on the first ballot. 

In the early part of the year 1879 began the so-called " exodus " of 
negroes "from the Southern to the Northern States"- that is to say, 
an emigration of quite a large number, first from Mississippi and 
Louisiana, and later from North Carolina, to Kansas and Indiana. 
The newsjmpers began to discuss the movement about the month of 
February. The extent of it was consideral)ly exaggerated. It never, in 
fact, attained any very great proportions; but it was treated quite sensa- 
tionally. 

(414) 



LIFE, TIMES, AXD SPEECHES. 415 

The Eepiil)licaiis wrote and spoke of it as being at once the t'liiit and 
the proof of both political and industrial cruelty and oppression inflict- 
ed upon the negroes by the Southern people; and they were prolitic in 
forecasts of the dire results which must follow from perseverance in 
such methods, and in suggestions as to the reversals of policy by which 
only could the ills wrought and threatening be avoided. The Demo- 
crats, on the other hand, asserted that the exodus was an artificial and 
designed phenomenon contrived by Republican leaders for political 
purposes. The stream of emigrants at first set almost wholly to Kan- 
sas, but after a time it was largely diverted into Indiana. It was 
charged that certain Republicans had induced the movement by hold- 
ing out false hopes of better wages and free homos, with the view, in 
the beginning, of affecting the approaching Presidential election by 
creating a revival of the old cry of Southern outrages against the col- 
ored race, and also of reducing the Southern and increasing the North- 
ern representations in Congress and the Electoral College, under the . 
new apportionment of the approaching census; and, later, of accom- 
plishing the vastly important result of changing the political complex- 
ion of Indiana from Democratic to Republican. 

Of Mr. Lamar's personal thought about the social significance of 
this movement, the following letter to Col. W. B. Montgomery, of Stark- 
ville, dated March 24, 1880, will give account: 

From the iirst moment when the agitation of the negro exodus question began I 
have looked upon the movement (if it were only real) as the dawn of a new and 
grand era for the South. I believe it would be an auspicious event for both races, 
white and black— I mean the two races as contradistinguished from the mdivlrluah 
who may lie immediately affected. Doubtless there would be great embarrassments, 
and even bankruptcies, among the larger planters; and no doubt a very large number 
of negro emigrants wonld lie subjected to great suffering and mortality. But these 
would be the incidents of .ill great social transformations. It would be the beginning 
of a veritable reconstruction of the South. If the negro race is destined ever to be- 
come on this continent an integral element of civilization, freedom, and political or- 
der, it must be under other stars than those that have so long looked down upon its 
slavery and degradation. It is a great mistake to suppose that the warm, genial cli- 
mate and bounteous soil of the South are the proper conditions to mold that race into 
active, intelligent, self-sustaining, and self-restraining citizens of a free and enlight- 
ened Commonwealth. They need an isothermal shock (if you will permit the phrase) 
to infuse into them the qualities which do not show themselves in their present con- /f 
ditions. The only mode by which they can ever get rid of tlicir characteristics as a 
parasite race (sticking on^i civilization without partaking of its nature and identity) 
is to remove it from the structure to which it is attached. If incapable of striking its 
own roots into the soil, it must die; but, in my opinion, it would not die out at the 
North. Climatic forces have been much modified in their eti'ects ujion human and 
race life by the modern ajjpliances of science and art. Certainly the negro race 
ought to be placed, if it will voluntarily go, where it will be modifierl by the sur- 
rounding civilization, instead of remaining where it is, with sncli numbers and under 
such influences as cause it to pervert and poison the civilization on which it has been 
superimposed— that is, if it is ever to be redeemed. The disappearance of negro labor 



4HJ LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

has no terrors for me. I would luiil it as the beginning of a glorious Southern renais- 
sance. 

When Congress met, nntler the inspiration, aijparently, of the idea 
that Indiana was being colonized by pauper Kepublican \otes, Senator 
Voorliees, of that State, introduced in the Senate, on the 15th of De- 
cember, 1879, a resolution as follows: 

Whereas large numbers of negroes from the Southern States, and esi^ecially from 
tbe State of North Cai-olina, are emigrating to the Northern States, and especially to 
tbe State of Indiana; and 

Whereas it is currently alleged that they ai'e induced to do so by the unjust and 
cruel conduct of their white fellow-citizens toward them in the South; therefore be it 

Resolved, Tliat a committee of five members of this Ijody !je appointed by its pre- 
siding officer, whose duty it shall be to investigate the causes which have led to the 
aforesaid emigration, and report the same to the Senate; and the said committee shall 
have power to send for persons and papers, compel the attendance of witnesses, and 
to sit at any time. 

The resolution was adopted, and the Vice President appointed as the 
committee: Senators Voorhees, of Indiana; Vance, of North Carolina; 
Pendleton, of Ohio; Windom, of Minne.sota; and Blair, of New Hamp- 
shire. On June 1, 1880, the committee reported; Senators Voorhees, 
Vance, and Pendleton presenting a majority, and Senators Windom and 
Blair announcing a minority rejjort. Some discussion followed, not a 
very protracted one. Senator Voorhees spoke at length, presenting the 
Democratic view outlined above, with elaborate evidence to support it, 
and declaring, in etf'ect, that Senator Windom himself had started the 
movement by a suggestion thrown out in a speech of the previous year 
made in the Senate. Senator Windom then jn-esented the Republican 
view, making the common "Southern outrages" speech. 

Senator Lamar tiien availed himself of the opportunity to make one 
of his best defenses of the South, in which he presented most fully the 
relations between the whites and negroes of the South in industrial 
matters. The argument is one of Mr. Lamar's most excellent, and the 
array of facts most convincing. It attracted universal attention on ac- 
count of its ability, its temperate refutation of tin just charges against 
tlie South, and its proofs that the condition of the Southern laborers is 
equal in comfort, protection, fair treatment, and profitable results, to 
that of any laborers in the world. The sum of the speech may be gath- 
ered from the jjeroration that 

The truth is, all these statements, so far as they represent the condition of things 
at the South, are unjust and deceiving. The South is no such country as is repre- 
sented. I do not deny that there has been violence there. I dejilore it; I condemn 
it. Respecting these cases of \iolence, you will find when you get down to the l.iot- 
tom facts that they are generally precipitated by unscruiuilous jiolitical demagogues 
and tricksters, wlio inflame the prejudices and passions of the races for their own po- 
litical purposes. But these cases of violence no longer occur to any appreciable ex- 
tent. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 417 

The great trouble has been that the inveatif^ating committoes which have been 
sent to the South, and have brought hither tlieir reports, went with purposes hostile 
to tlie character of that people. Accordingly, their entire sociiil and political system 
has been uncovered to hostile eyes. Every evil, every lault, has Ijeen searched out as 
with a microscope, and dragged pitilessly into view; all that is good has been utterly 
ignored. Sir, no society on eartli can undergo t^uch a process of investigation as that 
to which the Soutli has been subjected without becoming a spectacle of shame. 

Sir, you may distort the most perfect specimen of human beauty, by searching only 
for its blemishes and defects and looking at these tlirough a magnifying and refract- 
ing glass, into a hideous deiVirmity. 

Sir, the enendes of the South have pursued this course. Every act of violence, every 
murder, every uprising of an angry mob, which has neither the head to think nor the 
.heart to feel; every instance, every incident, which can bring reproach upon a com- 
munity, has been hunted out and magnified and multiplied and grouped together and 
presented to the world as the portrait of the South. 

The just and equitable operation of equal laws; the administration of justice; the 
constitution, safe in the all'ections of the people; tlie colleges, academies, and schools; 
the busy hum of industry; the plenty that rewards the toil of the laljorer; the wor- 
ship that ascends to heaven from thousands of Christian churches; the flame of do- 
mestic love, ever burning and ever pure upon the altars of happy homes — have been 
steadily ignored and concealed. 

And, sir, I say to-day, with all the emphasis of truth, that if, in the history of the 
•last ten years, the coming of peace has been delayed; if in that time the good have 
been disheartened and the base encouraged ; if the two races have not moved forward 
with the progress which was expected toward a common prosperity, it is because the 
Senators and imblic men who wielded the powers of this great government, and bad 
the confidence of the mighty constituencies beliind them, have not risen to the level 
of their duty and opportunity to bring, as they could have done, rest and quiet and 
love and universal patriotism over this troubled land.* 

The Neir Orleans Times said of this effort that 

Senator Lamar's speech is invested with a melancholy interest by the fact that his 
ill health made it an effort exceedingly dangerous to himself; in fact, physical ex- 
haustion compelled him to leave unsaid many things wnich few men in public life 
could say so well as himself 

The following interesting account of the circnin stances under which 
Mr. Lamar made "the exodiis " speech is taken from the Aberdeen 
(Miss. ) Examiner. The relations at the time existing between the editor 
of that paper, who was in official position at Washington, and Mr. Lamar, 
were sucli as to make the account quite reliable: 

The great event of the late session of Congress was the masterly speech by Col. 
Lamar in reply to Windom and in vindication of the South, and more particularly 
Mississippi, from the foul aspersions of malicious and unscrupulous enemies. 

It had been apparent to the Senate for weeks tliat the Minnesota aspirant for 
" dark horse honors " was preparing an elaborate speech in reply to Mr. Voorhees ; .for 
he was continually writing at his desk during the session, and for days could be 
seen referring, at frequent intervals, to the printed volume of testimony taken before 
the "Exodus Committee;" and it leaked out through his admirers that the larger 
portion of the remarks was to be devoted to our State. Learning this, Mr. Voorhees 

''•' .Vjipenilix, No. 18. 



418 LUCIUS Q. C. LAJLiJi: 

called upon Col. Lamar to reply, a demand which was readily assented to, with the 
understanding that no mention sliould be ma<le of the matter, as Col. Lamar was fear- 
ful that he might not be well enough to take the floor when the time arrived. Prob- 
ably there were not a dozen persons who knew of this agreement ; but somehow or 
other Windom happened to be one of them, and, with the prudence that usually char- 
acterizes those who anticipate crossing swords with the great Southern statesman and 
orator, he abandoned four-flfths of his carefully prepared speech (in fact, dispensed 
with every allusion to Mississippi that could lie eliminated from his manuscript), and 
when he took the floor, on the 14th inst., confined himself in great measure to the 
stale and "oft told tales" of outrages alleged to have occurred in Louisiana years ago, 
and, to the surprise of every one, yielded the floor at a very early hour. This appar- 
ently left Col. Lamar at great disadvantage. He had made no preparation to speak on 
that day, and, relying upon answering the speech as he found it in the next morn- , 
ing's Record, had not taken notes. But the session was so nearly at an end that it was 
"now or never," and, always equal to an emergency. Col. Lamar took the floor only 
fortitiei] by a l)ook he happened to be reading at the time and the clippings and sta- 
tistics he had in his desk; and the result may best be described in the language of 
Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts, who, walking over to the lounge where Bruce sat 
listening witli delight to what he pronounced " the fairest exposition of the Southern 
situation that ever fell from the lips of man," exclaimed : " Brother Bruce, that is a 
gi-eat speech, sir; the greatest speech of the session, sir. It's the very best speech that 
could possibly be made on that side of the question. Your colleague is a very able 
man, sir; a great statesman and orator." This is the universal opinion expressed of 
the speech by all men of al! ]iarties ; and it is generally conceded that, if it shall be 
largely circulated and read in the North, it will have the effect to eliminate at once 
forever the "bloody shirt " from politics and [dace the South and her people of both 
races in a new light before the reading and reasoning world. 

The influence wielded by Col. Lamar in Congress is peculiar and wonderful, and it 
is ftiir to say that no man's utterances are so attentively regarded and considered by 
the members of all parties in both Houses ; while in the North and East he always 
has an audience, and commands a degree of respect and confidence that has not been 
accordeil to any other Southern man of this generation. If it is known that he is to 
speak, the galleries are crowded to their greatest capacity: every official of the capitol 
deserts his office for the Senate Chamber; wlnle all the members of the House of 
Representatives who can get away from their own liall are found on the floor of the 
Senate. It is also noticeable that wlien Lamar speaks it is always to a full Senate 
and to a quiet and attentive Senate. There are no calls to order after he takes the 
floor; no pause at the request of the presiding officer "to enable honorable Senators 
to take their seats or get through with their private conversation ; " no reading of news- 
papers, as is usually the case when other men are speaking: but the " embassadors of 
States " gather as closely around him as possilile, listening attentively, each man feeling 
that, in the remarks that are fidling from the lips of the distinguished Mississippian, 
his peculiar political faith or belief is receiving the strongest possible support, or is 
Ijeing absolutely undermined and crushed. 

At the conclusion of the great speech referred to. Senator McMillan, of Minnesota, 
walked across to Lamar's seat to thank him for the handsome tribute he had jiaid to 
the statutes of his State, and to compliment him otherwise. Col. Lamar shook hands 
with him, and said he was very much prostrated. " Yes, I know you are," replied the 
Minnesota Senator; "but you are not half so badly prostrated as my colleague is." 

At the parnest request of Mr. Bayard, wlidse intimate friend and po- 
litical supporter he was, Mr. Lamar attended the National Democratic 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 419 

Conveution, which met at Ciucimiati, Jnue 22. Oii the second ballot 
the uomiuatiou was made of Geu. Hancock for the Presidency, and Mr. 
English for the Vice Presidency. Among the nnmerons short ratifica- 
tion speeches then made, none was better received than that of Mr. 
Lamar. 

The summer of 1880 Mr. Lamar passed at home. His health was not 
good. Indeed, he was impressed with the idea that he might be sud- 
denly and fatally stricken at any time. About the middle of Septem- 
ber he made at Lafayette Springs a political address of about two hours, 
on the Presidential issues, to the people of his county, in which he 
spoke of his expectation of the summons to the other world, of the 
sword of Damocles suspended over his head by a hair. 

Having been requested to speak at Holly Springs, and having prom- 
ised to do so, he wrote on the 1st of October to Hon. J. W. C. AVatson, 
as follows: 

It was a moment of great weakness in me when I yielded to importunity and 
promised to speak at Holly Springs next Monday, and I cannot think of it without 
dismay. I have been in the room of my invalid wife for twenty-one days, scarcely 
an hour of which has been spent in freedom from pain. She in indeed seriously ill; 
suffers from constantly recurring fevers that seem to defy medical skill. She sleeps 
but little, and in the morning tinds lierself enfeebled and trembling from the effect 
of cold night sweats. She also has a cough that grows worse and more settled. Her 
sister and my sister and my daughter are all depressed with fears of a rapid decline. 
Dr. Isom has said nothing to me that indicated his belief that she has consumption. 
I learn, however, from others that he has some apprehension al)Out her lungs; and in 
this opinion I know that Dr. Branham concurs. What my own feelings are I need 
not state. Yon, who have been lilessed with a good and beloved wife, can under- 
stand how impossible it is for a man in the shadow of such an affliction to think 
about public matters or to discuss political topics. 

The speech that I may mase will have to be offhand in its details; and, I fear, 
will be rambling and disconnected and dry. 

It was not my purpose to refei- at all, in my speech at Holly Springs, to Gen. Gar- 
field's character. I think the issues of the canvass are above party vitujieration or 
personal defamation. The tendencies of these issues, when determined by the elec- 
tion, will be more controlling than the personal characters of the respective candi- 
dates. If I can make the speech which I have as yet only very faintly outlined in 
my own mind, the points will be something like these: 

First, the broad national character of the issues involved ; bearing upon the consti- 
tution; the tranquillity of the Union; the upholding of public virtue in the adminis- 
tration of national affairs ; the protection of liberty, of property, and of the reward.s 
of industry ; the maintenance of the national honor, and the advancement of the pros- 
perity of all sections. I desire then to allude to the fact that the deep and earnest 
interest of the whole American people in the promotion of these objects has led them 
to change tlie majority in both Houses of Congress and in the Electoral College; and, 
in this connection, I should like to quote from your article signed " Observer. " Please 
have it ready for me. The leading Radicals, seeing that the inevitable effect of the 
discussion of these great objects is to bring about this great change in the administra- 
tion, are seeking to bring the canvass down again to the arena of sectional animosity 
and party pa-ssion. I will give, almost in their own language, the Radical argument 



420 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

about a solid South. I do not believe that any plea or defense which the South may 
make will be accepted as a refutation. Tlie North itself must see the fallacy of it if 
her people are in earnest in their desire to effect the great reformatory measures at 
stake in this contest. 

I will show that it is easy for theiu to make the South a minority in the Demo- 
cratic party, as it is ;dready a minority in the government. I will then discuss the 
solid South, and show that it is the result of an imperious local necessity, having no 
connection with schemes of sectional aggrandizement in tiie Federal Government. I 
then propose to show that its support of tlie Democratic part}' is in the line of the 
best interest and the most earnest aspirations of the Northern people themselves. Of 
course this brings me to a discussion of the principles and character of the two par- 
ties. I hope I may be able to say something on this latter sulyect which will tend to 
bring all our friends to the support of Hancock and of Manning. 

I am, however, so liable to attacks of vertigo tliat I cannot prepare a detailed 
speech. I cannot study documents without a painful swimming in the head, nor 
bend over to write without a rush of blood to the brain. 



On the same day when the foregoing letter was written Mr. Lamar 
received a sad confirmation of his worst fears about his wife. Tlie 
physician informed him that, without doubt, hers was a case of con- 
sumption. Thus upon that simple and happy home fell the supreme 
calamity of the almost, or quite, hopeless decline of the central fig- 
ure: the devoted and beloved wife and mother. To one constituted as 
was Mr. Lamar, whose heart was great and tender and true, in whom 
all of the domestic instincts were constant and strong, no other grief 
could have been so poigukut. More than thirty years of married life 
had left with him still the subtle and romantic sentiments of the lover; 
and the sorrow which came to him now was of that complex sort which, 
apart from the unapiDroachable spectacles of the higher religious ex- 
perience, is at once life's noblest spiritual achievement and its heaviest 
burden — the rending asunder of ties which combine the blooming ideal- 
isms of love still young and fresh, with the clinging tenacity of a life- 
time habitude. Indeed, that was a cruel ordeal — to watch the jocund 
spirit in whose pure brightness his own soul for a lifetime had re- 
freshed itself like a jaded bird in some sparkling fountain of summer, 
sadden and fail; to witness, month by month, the slow but sure fading 
away of a life which had blessed and crowned his own! During the 
next four years (until the end came in December, 1884) Mr. Lamar 
devoted himself to his wife with extraordinary constancy, patience, and 
tenderness. There were periods when she appeared better, and hope 
stirred faintly within him for her recovery; hut they were brief. At 
such times as her illness was more distressing he stayed much with 
her, day and night, nursing and comforting her with all of his man's 
strength and a woman's loving sympathy. As for himself, his own in- 
firm health, his sleepless and anxious nights, his ever present grief 
about his wife, his political complications and annoyances, his party 




tJacKson,/ni5S. ^ 

in ii iuj ■ =■■ '~ ' — ' 



MR. LAMAR'S CHILDREN 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 421 

and his official duties—all made this period one of extraordinary phys- 
ical and mental distress. 

Mr. Lamar's Holly Springs speech was made, according to appoint- 
ment, on the 4th of October. Of it The South (Holly Springs), a pa- 
per not then friendly to him, said: 

Mr. Lamar has done us the honor of a welcome visit on Monday to address our 
people on the subject of politics; or, to speak more truly, to advise us as to our real 
duty and the promotion of our true interests in a manner just to all. . . . The 
speech was leally a great one, of the most patriotic character, and worthy of himself. 
... He lias tlie thanks of our community, and has withal made his mark, and 
led some to think somewhat more seriously as to their duty in this great issue. . . . 

A " si)ecial " to the Memphis Appeal gave this account of the speecli 
and of the occasion: 

By invitation of the Hancock and English Club, Senator Lamar spoke in the court- 
house to-day to an audience of five liundred persons, the negroes being largely repre- 
sented, and, like the whites, were deeply interested. Mr. Lamar's speech was one of 
the ablest efforts of his life, being logical in style, comprehensive in scope, replete 
with data, admirably delivered, and thoroughly unanswerable. His eulogy on Han- 
cook is the best yet uttered. He said that there was nothing in the English language 
equal to Hancock's Order, No. 40. Although learned men for centuries have written 
on the science of government, Hancock in a few short sentences stilted the true tlieory 
of government, viz.: The right of trial by jury, tlie habeas corpus, the liberty of the 
press, the freedom of sjieech, the natural rights of jjersons, and the rights of property, 
must be preserved. He said that English was an honest, upright, and able states- 
man, never found wanting, and would fill the position with satisfaction. He ar- 
raigned the Republican party for its crimes, venality, and corruption, his castigation 
of Garfield being cruel, though true. In criticising the corruption and dishonesty of 
the carpetbag governments of the Southern States, he, in support of his denuncia- 
tions, read extracts from the speeches and testimony of Gov. Foster of Ohio, Con- 
gressman Hall, Senator Hoar of Massachusetts, ex-Gov. Stevenson and Judge Shel- 
labarger of Pennsylvania; all showing them to be the most inicjuitous and oppressive 
governments that ever existed, and this, too, upon Republican authority. 

He also read an extract from President Grant's last message on this subject, and 
reviewed the jilatforms of the Democratic and Republican parties. He showed that 
Garfield and the Republican party were for strong government, bottomed on corrup- 
tion. He read from Jeflerson and Hamilton, to show the difierence in the parties 
and to prove that Garfield and his party are Federalists. He demonstrated con- 
clusively that the Republican party could not correct the abuses of government. To 
do so would be contrary to its creed. He said that among the things most needed 
by the people were the rectification of the abuses of the government, with its one 
hundred thousand officeholders, honest civil service reform, and honesty and econo- 
my in its administration. The country also needeil a reduction of taxation. He dis- 
cussed the tariff, and proposed a tariff only for revenue purposes. He discussed the 
solid South, showing the cause of the South being solid. The South was.driven to it 
by the corruptions, oppressions, and outrages of the Republican party. 'The Demo- 
cratic party is national, and draws no sectional lines. When it carries into effect its ^ 
tendencies and jirinciples, it will be the same from one end of the country to the other.' 
The solid vote of the South should be cast for Hancock and English. He appealed to 
the Greenbackers to abandon their organization, even if they deemed their views to 



422 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

be right, and to vote the Democratic ticket; as this, under existing circumstances, was 
their duty as patriots and fi'iends of tlie South, the sreat struggle Ijeing only between 
thu Democratic and Republican parties. . . . Senator Lamar's speech was atten- 
tively listened to, and made a deep impression. 

Mr. Lamar's speech at Holly Springs was followed, duriug October, 
by an active cauvass along tlie Mobile and Ohio Eailroad, in which he 
spoko at West Point, Macon, Meridian, and other places. 

The result of the election was, of course, a disappointment to the 
Democrats; but Mr. Lamar, by his labors, had still further strength- 
ened liimself in the State. The West J'oiut Netis, for instance, brought 
out a biographical sketch of him, with a portrait, which was reproduced 
in many of the State papers. Its conclusion was this: 

The whole South feels a pride in Senator Lamar, and the Badical North confesses 
that in him its theory of government finds a foeman who can parry its heaviest at- 
tacks and rebut its .strongest arguments. He stands a great, central, conservative 
power in himself, able to repel force with force when the attack is ilirected against his 
people, able to restrain impolitic imiietnosity when his own people rush to the at- 
tack. In heart, in interest, in high commission, a ilississippian, he is a great national 
conservator of the peace, whose sphere and influence are almost limitless. 

In December, after escorting his wife and her sister to New Orleans, 
at which place Mrs. Lamar, who seemed to be improving, intended 
spending the colder months of winter, Mr. Lamar repaired to Wash- 
ington about his ofhcial duties. On the 25th of January, 1881, he 
alone, of all the Democratic Senators, supported the motion of Senator 
Logan, of Illinois, to take up a pending bill to place ex-President 
Grant on the retired list of generals of the army, making a short speech 
upon the cpiestion.* For his course in this matter he again encountered 
a good deal of criticism at the hands of certain jNIississippi and other 
papers. On the 16th of February he wrote to his wife: 

I am glad that you liked my speech on Grant. It was very short, but it had a good 
deal in it; and its pure English has been remarked upon. It has not enstranged any 
Democratic Senator from me. They speak of it kindly. 

If I had an income that would furnish you and Jennie with tiie comforts of life, 1 
would quit politics forever, and live at home. I think that I am entitled to have 
" Emeritus" written oi)posite my name. I shall hate to be defeated, but I will have 
a good deal of comfort in it. 

Pursuant tn tlie proclamation of President Garfield, the Senate con- 
vened on the 4th of March, 1881, for the usual executive session. 

The results of the elections of 1880 had materially altered the polit- 
ical complexion of Congress. The incoming House had been trans- 
ferred to the Republicans by a small majority. The terms of office of 
twenty-five Senators had expired with the Forty-sixth Congress, and 

*.\|i|icn(lix. No. li). 



ins LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 423 

the uew Senate was composed of thirty-seven Eepnblicans and thirty- 
seven Democrats; while Senator Maiione, of Virginia, and Senatoi- 
Davis, of Illinois, were classed as Independents. The latter had been 
elected by a majority of the Illinois Legislature, composed of Demo- 
crats and Independents, and was avowedly an Independent; while the 
former was elected by the Keadjuster wing of the Democratic party and 
p. few Ilex)ublicaiis, and si-enis to have left his future affiliations in the 
Senate in doubt. 

The position of Gen. Malioue was i^eculiar. 

The State of Virginia had incurred an indebtedness prior to the Civil 
War amounting to about §31,000,000. Various causes, among them the 
war, caused this debt to accumulate largely, by nonpayment of interest, 
until in 1671 it aggregated about $45,000,000. 

It was one of the consequences of the war that the State of West Vir- 
ginia was carved out of Virginia by the action of the Federal Govern- 
ment, thus reducing her territory by one-third, her population by one- 
fifth, and consequently her debt paying power — to say nothing of the 
general shrinkage of values. 

After the war various unsuccessful efforts were made by several Leg- 
islatures to arrange for this debt. In 1871 an act was passed, called 
"the funding bill," by which the accumulated interest was capitalized, 
the total liability fixed at about $45,000,000, of which two-thirds, or 
about $30,000,000, was treated as that owing by "\'irginia, and made 
fundable; while the remainder was deferred and certified to as the debt 
of AVest Virginia. This apportionment of the debt between the two 
States, although unilateral, .seems to have been generally acquiesced in 
by the people of Virginia. 

A large part of the people of the State, however, were dissatisfied 
about the debt, even so reduced, and claimed that it should be further 
scaled or "readjusted" by "eliminating," as they phrased it, or by "re- 
pudiating"— as their opponents, the "funders," called it— all of the in- 
terest which accumulated during the war and the period of reconstruc- 
tion, by which readjustment the principal of the debt would have been 
cut down to about S20,000,000. This difl'ereuce gave rise to the Fimder 
and the Eeadjiisfer factious, a division within the Democratic party. 

Prior to the State elections of 1879 the two factions held sejiarate 
conventions. The Readjusters bid for tlie colored vote. They adopted 
a platform advocating the readjustment of the pulilic debt on the stated 
basis of about two-thirds, with interest at three per cent per annum, 
and denouncing tlie capitation tax of the State as a restriction upon 
free suffrage. They put out a fusion ticket, with a Republican and a 
Greenbacker upon it. The Funders met in convention aLso, and de- 
clared for the maintenance of the pul)lic credit of the State, denounced 
"repudiation" in every form, and pledged every effort to secure a set- 



424 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

tlement of the debt "with the consent of her creditors," and resolved 
that "any intimation, coming from any quarter, that the Conservative- 
Democratic party of Virginia has been, is now, or proposes to be op- 
posed to an IioHcst haJlot and a fair count, is a calumny upon the State of 
Virginia, as unfounded in fact as it is dishonorable to its authors." 

The Keadjusters won the election. They organized the Legislature 
with a majority of seven, even excludiug Republicans and Greenbackers; 
and that majority elected Gen. Mahoue to the United States Senate. 

So soon as it became apparent that the Senate would be closely di- 
vided politically ( if not before ), public curiosity became much excited as 
to Senator Mahoue's position. The newspapers discussed much the 
question whether he would cooperate with the Republicans or the Dem- 
ocrats. As it turned out, he had the balance of power. If he and Sen- 
ator Davis should vote with either jjarty, it would give that party a 
majority of two; if they should divide, it would make a tie, and the Re- 
publican Vice President held the casting vote. When that body met, 
therefore, a struggle for its control began immediately, and all eyes 
were centered upon Senators Davis and Mahone. 

Each party held a caiicus, but neither Judge Davis nor Gen. Mahone 
attended. On the 10th of March Senator Pendleton submitted the 
Democratic list of standing committees, and moved their appointment. 
The Republicans had declined to fill in the places on those committees 
reserved for their party according to custom, and the Democrats had 
arranged the entire membership, giving to their opponents the custom- 
ary minority representations. The Republicans resisted the adoption 
of Mr. Pendleton's resolution. 

Then began one of the most heated debates ever held in the Senate. 
Mahone's party attitude was made the subject of severe criticism by 
Senators Hill of Georgia, Voorhees of Indiana, and others. The meth- 
od of conducting political canvasses and elections in the South was 
brought under discussion, and the suffrage laws of some of the North- 
ern States were denounced. There was scarcely a question of recent or 
current politics which was not made a subject of discussion. Crim- 
ination and recrimination, angry passion, ruled the Senate; and one can 
hardly read the L'rconl without a mixture of wonder and mortification 
that the truly noble and patriotic men who constituted that august body 
could be so far overcome, even by the frenzy of j)olitical bias. 

It was early developed that more was conceived to be at stake than 
the organization of the Senate committees and the selection of the Sen- 
ate officers. The Republicans entertained the hope of breaking up the 
solid South through the State of Virginia and her Readjusters. 

It was on the 10th that Senator Pendleton introduced his resolution 
on committees. The Republicans determined at once to fight it, and 
their opposition proceeded upon the idea that four of their number had 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 425 

not yet arrived, wlio had beeu newly elected to till vacancies caused by 
death and the transfer of three Senators to the Cabinet. 

On the. 11th Senator Davis had made the first speech, declaring that 
he should, on that question, act with the Democrats. Then followed a 
discussion over an objection from Senator Conkling, that immediate 
action on the Pendleton resolution was not in order. In the course of 
that discussion Mr. Conkling taunted the Democrats with attempting 
to do on Friday what they would not be able to do on the following 
Tuesday, and said that when the vacant chairs on the Eepublicau side 
should be filled that party would be in the majority. To this Senator 
Pendleton replied on the 14th, among other things, as follows: 

I do not know whether or not an effective working majority under the constitution 
and laws will be given to that side of the Chamber when the vacancies are filled; I 
have no means of knowing. I do not know what arrangements or prSflfers or sugges- 
tions have been made or accepted; but those omnipresent and omniscient gentlemen 
of the press have whispered about the Capitol, and have put in their newspapers, that 
there have been unusual and extraordinary visits to the other end of the avenue; and 
they have connected oddly the name of a distinguished Senator, who sits near me 
(certainly it was out of the exuberance of tlieir imagination, for there could be no 
foundation in fact for it), with the dispensation of Fe<leral i)atronage and the oi'gani- 
zation of the Senate. It has been whispered by them in and out of their papers that 
there have been conferences in the Capitol in which champagne and satisfaction were 
equally enjoyed ; and that, too, has been connected with the statement as to the or- 
ganization of the Senate. As I said, I do not know what truth there can be in these 
suggestions, but they have filled the air for the last few days. 

Senator Pendleton said further that it was the obvious duty of the 
majority of the Senate, even if it were only a temporary majority, to 
put that body in a condition to attend to the public business with which 
it was charged. 

Senator Conkling made another speech as before, and then Hill, of 
Georgia, proceeded to call out Senator Mahoue. Among other things. 
he said: 

The Senator from New York has repeated over and over again, in language too 
plain to be misunderstood, that within a few days the Republicans will control a ma- 
jority of the Senate, and that that constitutional majority will have it in its power to 
select the committees. ... I liave believed that when every seat shall be filled 
the Senate will be Democratic, iirecisely as it is now. 

I have the list before me. I state what every man knows: that the Senate, when 
full, consists of seventy-six members. Thirty-eight members of the body now sitting 
here were elected to the body as Democrats. 

Sir, who is it that has changed? Whom of these thirty-eight does the Senator rely 
upon to vote with the Republicans? That one has not notified us ; he has not notified 
his constituency. Therefore I say it is not true, and I cannot sit here quietly and al- 
low a gentleman on the other side of the Chamber, however distinguished, to get up 
here and assume and asseverate over and over that someV)ody elected as a Democrat is 
faithless to bis trust, and not repel it. 

If you have got one, the vote will be thirty-eight to thirty-eight. Who is the one? 
Who is ambitious to do what no man in the history of this country has ever done: to 



426 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

be the flrst man to stand up in this high presence, after this country has reached fifty 
million people, and proclaim from this proud eminence that he disgraces the commis- 
sion he holds? 

Senator Malioue then arose aud made a short speech iu his own de- 
fense, concluding- thns: 

Now, sir, I serve notice on you that I intend to be here the custodian of my own 
Democracy. I do not intend to be run by your caucus. I am in every sense a free 
man here. I trust that I am able to protect my own rights and to defend those of the 
people whom I represent, and certainly to take care of my own. I do not intend that 
any Senator on this floor shall undertake to criticise my conduct by innuendoes, a 
method not becoming this body or a straightforward legitimate line of pursuit in ar- 
gument. 

I wish the Senator from Georgia to understand just here, that we may get idong in 
the future harmoniously, that the way to deal with me is to deal directly. We want 
no bills of discovery. Now, sir, you will tind out how I am going to vote in a little 
while. 

Then followed more acrimonious debate over Mahone's Democracy, 
between Senators Mahone, Logan, Hill, and Hoar, in the course of which 
the last used again the old cloud-compelling remark about slave mas- 
ters. Said he: 

It is none of the business of the Senator from Georgia how any other Senator in 
this body shall cast his vote. Each of us is responsible to his country, to his State, to 
his conscience, to his God ; and in whatever part of this Republic we may dwell, no 
slave master or plantation overseer is to wave his whip over the heads of American 
Senators. 

On the 18th, the new Republican Senators having arrived, the reso- 
lution of Senator Pendleton was indefinitely postponed. Senator An- 
thony, of Rhode Island, then introduced a similar resolution for the 
Republicans, with the list of the committees as proposed by that party; 
and the same was adopted without delay, Senator Saulsbury (Demo- 
crat), of Delaware, saying: 

I call the attention of the Senate and of the country to the proud position which 
the Democratic party occupies in this regard before the whole country, in striking con- 
trast with the action of the other side, which for nearly one-half of a month has ob- 
structed the public Ijusiness in order that they might put themselves in a position to 
seize upon the organization of the Senate. 

The Democrats then determined to make a stand for the organization 
of the Senate itself as it then stood, with the retention of the existing 
Secretary, Sergcant-at-arms, and Clerks. Mr. Lamar and Senator George 
opposed in the caucus the adoption of this policy, but they stood almo.st 
alone. 

The Republicans, on the other hand, determined in caucus to displace 
those officers, and nominated George C. Gorham for Secretary, and 
Harrison H. Riddleberger, a prominent Virginia Readjuster and a lead- 
ing supporter of Senator IMahone, for St-rgeant-at-arms. The Demo- 
crats, in opposing the resolution to proceed to the election of officers, 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 427 

contended that the Senate was already fully provided and in working 
order, and adopted the same dilatory methods which the Republicans 
had used to prevent the organization of the committees. 

Senator Beck, of Kentucky, ojjened another hot debate, which was, in 
eflfect, only a continuance of the other, by saying: 

Mr. President : Xotwithstanding the great number of very important nominations 
that tlie President of the United States lias sent to us, and in tlie face of anotiier com- 
munication just leceived, it is evident that the majority of this Chamber do not pro- 
pose to go on with the business for whicli we were called together. I find on the ta- 
ble among the caucus nominees the following resolution: 

Resohed, That Harrison H. Riddleberger, of Viiginia, be, and hereby is, elected 
Sergeant-at-arms ani.1 Doorkeeper of the Senate. 

As I have heard it whispered that some man of that name (I assume that it cannot 
be this man, but the similarity of names is striking) was the person who introduced 
what was generally known as tlie Repudiation Bill that passed through the Legisla- 
tare of Virginia, I should like to inquire into that matter, and I move that the Sen- 
ate adjourn in order to give us time for the inijuiry. 

The debate was taken up by Senators Brown, of Georgia, and Logan, 
of Illinois. In the course of Senator Brown's remarks, he said: 

We, as Democrats in this hall, were ready every moment to go forward and do the 
business tlie Republit'an President had called us here to do. You declined until you 
could fill your vacancies, and with the aid of the Senator from Mrginia could get mat- 
ters in shape to control the committees. Now you have the committees. The reor- 
ganization of the offices of the Senate is in no way necessary to the business of the 
Senate or the session, and you propose now tliat it shall be a question of endurance 
whether you reorganize them. Well, we say we will endure with you. We are leady 
at every moment to go into executive session and do the proper business of the ses- 
sion, the business which you said on that side ypsterday was the only proper busi- 
ness to be done. If you are not ready to do that, then we will invite you to adjourn ; 
and if you will not adjourn, we will invite you to go back to the business for which 
you were called together by your President; and we will continue that operation until 
we see justice done to the few remaining Democrats. We may be here till June; we 
have till December. 

To this Senator Hoar replied, saying, among other things: 

Mr. President: I wish before the vote is taken to say one word, which I feel con- 
strained to do by what has fallen from the lips of the honorable Senator from Geor- 
gia [Mr. Brown], whom I do not now see in his seat. If I understood him, he gave 
notice that it was his purpose, and the purpose of tliose who agree witli him, to occu- 
py the time of this body from now until the 1st of December in alternating two mo- 
tions: one to adjourn, and one to go into executive session to prevent the expression 
of the will of the constitutional majority of this liody in regard to the selection of it: 
executive officers. I regard that declaration as containing the very essence of revo- 
lution and treason to the institutions of this country. 

Southern " bulldozing " of negroes into casting Democratic votes was 
reopened; secession was overhauled, and Senator Brown's record as a 
secessionist or a Union man. Senator Kellogg ( Republican ), of Louis- 
iana, declaimed against the Democrats of Louisiana as repudiators of 
the worst, by way of vindicating Riddleberger. 



428 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

The debate aud the tilibusteriug dragged aloug. Ou the 31st of 
March Senator Camerou, of Penusylvania, said: 

The contest, however, in which we are engaged is not simply to secure the officers 
and employees to party friends, as the Senators on the other side pretend ; nor is it sole- 
ly a'struggle of the majority to maintain its right to control the organization of the 
body. There is sometliing higher than and above all this, something the great im- 
portance of which ha^^ not escajied the attention of our opponents here. It is the com- 
ing political contest in Virginja. 

In the coming State election the struggle will be a bitter one. I believe the right 
is going to prevail, for the law-abiding citizens of Virginia who were Confederates will 
go into that great contest with the knowledge that oui- hearts are with them. . . . 

The election of Col. Riddleberger to a responsible office in this body will Tie the liest 
proof that could be given that for all true men who uphold the laws the Republican 
party has confidence, respect, and cooperation. We give our votes to that gentleman 
as an earnest that we are not sectional, and that we have no prejudices on account of 
old conflicts. Whoever is riglit at the present time is our friend, and we are his. This, 
and this only, is the "bargain" we have to oH'er to all our Southern friends who will 
come out from that party of reaction and grow with the nation's growth. All that we 
ask is that they shall stand with us in favor of securing to each lawful voter the right 
to cast one fi-ee and unintimidated ballot, and to have it honestly counted. We know, 
and our opponents know, that if Virginia takes her stand upon that platform the solid 
South is a thing of the past; and this is the true meaning of the present struggle. 

Such was the condition of affairs when Mr. Lamar made his speech 
of April 1 on the course of the Eepublican Senators aud ou the solid 
South.* 

He began with an elaborate examination of the coarse adopted by the 
Republican Senators in the matter at issue aud of the motives which 
impelled them to that course, aud showed that, in spite of its repudiation 
platform — a platform repuguant to the interests, feelings, and policy of 
the Northern people — the Eepublican members were holding the Sen- 
ate inactive, and were preventing the discharge of the public business, in 
order to subserve the interests of the Eeadjuster campaign in the State of 
Virginia. He pointed then to the avowal of Senator Cameron as confii-- 
mation of that view. He warned the opposition that the Northern jaeo- 
ple would not tolerate any such alliance with i-epudiating movements in 
the South; that, besides, any such movement would fail in the South 
itself; and he declared that no party could be fabricated in the South by 
the mei'e agencies of Federal power and patronage; tliat, to succeed, its 
foundations must be laid on broad sympathies and deej) in the social, 
political, and business life of the people. 

Mr. Lamar then passed to the direct question of the solid South. 
Why, argued he, should the solid South be broken'? What harm has 
it done to the prosperity and glory of this country? It was but a short 
time since that it became "solid" by the cessation of the reign of force 
and bayonets; and during -that time, while her Eepresentatives sat in 

'■■' .Appendix, No. 20. 



HJS LIFE, TIMES, AND SI'KFX'IIES. 429 

the halls of Congress, the world had held its breath iu astoiiishiueiit at 
the progress the country as a whole had made in all that adorns, fortifies, 
and ennobles a nation. In the existence of the solid South, and its 
presence iu Congress, there was no such menace to any interest of the 
country as would justify such a coalition. Since that period no such 
corruption had revelled in the high places of the government as had 
existed before. The South, even solid, could never, under any combi- 
nation of parties, again obtain control of the government and direct 
its powers independently of the will of the North. The latter was the 
majority and the dominant section of the country. 

He denied that there was, as a distinct organization with a distinctive 
policy, any solid South in either House of Congress; there was greater 
diversity of sentiment among the Southern members upon every sub- 
ject of national interest than there was iu the representation of any 
other section of the country. Said he: 

There is one point, and one only, upon which tliey are solid, on which they will 
remain solid; and neither Federal bayonets nor Federal honors will dissolve that 
solidity. They are solid in defense of and for the protection of their own civilization, 
their own society, their own religion, against the rule of the incompetent, the servile, 
the ignorant, and the vicious. ... I here challenge any Senator upon that side, 
with two exceptions that I will not name, to write feirly in his own language the 
condition of the Southern people in any State while under carpetbag government. I 
will consent that he shall write the history of that government, the character of its 
officials, the nature of its administration, and the ojieration of its laws. I say that I 
will consent for any Senator upon that side of the House, with b\it two exceptions 
(whom, out of respect to them, I will not name), to write the history of the Republican 
government in the South— its nature, its character, its influence upon the happiness 
and prosperity of that people. I will agree to accept his description of it in his own 
language, and then I will submit the question to any tribunal in the world, to any 
community in the world, as to whether there is anywhere on eartli a people who ought 
not to summon every energy, every man, every woman, every child, interested in the 
priceless and precious heritage of humanity, to throw ott' that government, and to 
keep united and solid to prevent its reestablishment. 

Mr. Lamar then fortified this point by quotations descriptive of the 
corruption of Southern administrations under Republican rule, from 
Senator Hale, of Maine; Hon. Charles Foster, Governor of Ohio; Geu. 
Grant; Bishop Simpson, of the Methodist Church; and others. He 
then concluded: 

Mr. President, I am too much exhausted to detain the Senate longer. I have said 
nothing to-day that was intended to stir up any feeling of animosity between individ- 
uals or sections. I belong to that class of public men who were secessionists. Every 
throb of my Iieart was for the disunion of these States. If that deducts from the force 
of the statements that I have made to-day, it is due to candor and to you to admit it. 
I confess that I believed in the right of secession, and that I believed in the propri- 
ety of its exercise. I will say. furtlier, that it w.as a cherished conception of my mind 
—that of two great, free Reinililics on this continent, each pursuing its own destiny 
and the destiny of its people and their happiness according to its own will. 

But, sir, that conception is gone; it is sunk forever out of sight. Another one has 



430 LUCIU.s Q. r. LAMAR. 

come in its place ; and, by tlie way, it is my first love. The elements of it were planted 
in my heart by my father; they were taught by my mother, and they were nourished 
and developed by my own suljsequent reflection. May I tell you what it is, sir? It 
stands before me now, simple in its majesty and sublime in its beauty. It is that of 
one srrand, niighty, indivisilile Repulilic upon this continent, throwing its loving 
arms around all sections; omnipotent for protection, powerless for oppression, cursing 
none, blessing all. [Applause in the galleries.] 

The dignity and courtesy which Mr. Lamar always preserved in his 
speeches were in none more noticeable than in this, strongly contrasted 
as it was by many of the others. The Republicans especially were 
extremely violent and aggressive. But Mr. Lamar's speech was none 
the less keen, incisive, and damaging to his adversaries. It seems to 
have had the general range of the newspaper press, and to have been 
published, in whole or in part, by papers in all the States, accompanied 
by a running tire of comment from friends and foes. 

The Democrats won the contest finally, the Republicans consenting, 
on the 4th of May, to go into executive session without changing the 
officers. 



GHAPTEK XXVI. 

Candidate for Reelection — Opposition and ComplieationB— Cross Currents— Voice of 
the Press— Address at the A. and M. College — Progress of the Senatorial Question 
—The State Convention— A Setback or No?— Mr. Lamar's Great Canvass of 1S81 
— The DeKiilb Speech — The Canton Speech — The Yazoo City Speech — Letter to 
McIntosh~The Forest Speech — The Hazlehuret Speech — Interest Outside the State 
— Reelection and Vindication. 

THE year 1881 was a trying and eventful one for j\Ir. Lamar. A 
general 8tate election was to be held, at whicJi was to be chosen 
the Legislature which was to select his successor. The question of his 
indorsement or his condemnation, and the more important question of 
the State's position on national politics, as declared by its action on his 
succession, were up for decision in effect, although not so directly. For 
the second time he was before the people on his political record. 

His enemies, avowed and secret, and those who coveted his position, 
with their friends, aided by a coterie of selfish or shortsighted newsjoa- 
pers, were quite busy in the effort to defeat him. The old charges 
.anent the Electoral Commission, the Silver Bill, and the legislative in- 
structions were brought to the front again, with additional criticisms, 
based on his later votes: that on the qttestion of unseating Senator 
Kellogg of Louisiana, his support of the motion about Gen. Grant, 
and his vote for the confirmation of Hon. Stanley Matthews as a Jus- 
tice of the Supreme Court. A feature of special discomfort was the fact 
that the fight against him was not generally an open one, but was large- 
ly disguised by a veil of personal respect, and by unremitting, hostile 
discussion of measures associated with his career without naming him 
frankly. A prominent exception was the Vickshurf/ CowiiierciaJ, under 
the editorship of Hon. -James E. Chalmers, member of Congress; another 
was the Brandon Repuhlican. Those papers and a few others made a 
hard and bitter fight from start to finish. 

A troublesome comijlication was the gubernatorial succession. Several 
gentlemen of prominence and influence were understood to be aspirants 
for the office of Governor, and there was danger that in the intricacies 
and resentments of that complex rivalry the case of Mr. Lamar shottld 
become involved and prejudiced without reference to its own merits; 
while, on the other hand, there was i-eason to fear that the contest over 
the Governorship might even be manipulated with a view to the iilti- 
mate defeat of Mr. Lamar as Senator. 

The following editorial from the Natchez Democrat and Courier, of 
April 7, illustrates this comiJication: 

Although there are as yet no avowed candidates for Governor of Mississippi, there 

(431) 



432 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

is, for what reason we cannot e-\actly pei'ceive, a dispos-ition to general contrariness 
among the Democratic newspapers of the State as to who shall be nominateil. There 
is a consfcint cross fire kept up, which to us, while it talks Governor, seems to mean 
Senator. There is evidently more than one man in the State who would be willing 
for the Senatorial toga to fall upon his shouMers, and we-are inclined to think that if 
a successor to Mr. Lamar were settled upon there would be but little difficulty in re- 
gard to the guliei'uatorial nomination. That the distinguished gentleman who towers 
head and shoulders above nine-tenths of the members of the United States Senate, 
who is certainly the peer (\i not the superior) of any of tiiem in intellect, in elo- 
quence, and in the calm, clear inspirations of real statesmanship, will be chosen again 
to serve Mississippi in the Senate, we can scarcely believe to be a doubtful matter. 

By the mouth of June the Senatorial question had been made a 
prominent issite. Many papers hoisted the name of Mr. Lamar, and 
declared that they would support none but a Lamar man for Governor. 
The papers themselves were spoken of as "Lamar" and "anti-Lamar" 
papers, and ajjplied those terms to each other. 

Another point of difficulty was in the fact that some of the papers 
of the State, and numbers of the people, friendly to Mr. Lamar, failed 
to comprehend tlie true significance of his candidacy. Tliey did not 
understand, apparently, the far-reaching results of the defeat of a Sen- 
ator of unquestioned ability and integrity because of his conservative 
and conciliatory record. Seeing a division threatened in the party 
within the State; seeing that division about to crystallize around two 
men of strong character and wide personal popularity, each with great 
claims on party support, as such claims are understood ordinarily; con- 
founding Mr. Lamar's labors with the lower struggle for personal su- 
premacy, they thought to avoid a rupture, and to hold the scales of i^at- 
ronage fairly, by declaring that the honors must be divided. The 
Grenada Scnfiticl, in June, put the point thus: 

The way that a portion of the State press now figure up the slate is: Lamar for 
Senator, Barksdale for Governor. At least some few of our exchanges are generous 
enough so to figure. But they say that in the event that Stone shall be Governor, 
Barksdale will go to the Senate, etc. ; or, in other words, if Lamar is to be elected to 
the Senate, he needn't expect to see one of his friends head the State ticket. 

Over such and so numerous cross currents had Mr. Lamar to steer 
his bark; but he was not without his legions of friends, leal and 
stanch, who were for him and what he stood for, " first, last, and all the 
time." Pages might easily be filled with enthusiastic editorials from 
papers, at home and abroad, urging his reelection as a political neces- 
sity. Only a few shall be given here, as examples of the general tone: 

The Vickshtm/ Herald, May 0, 1881: "Tlie Motireg.— The informed, thoughtful people 
of Mississippi are aware of disciplined, persistent efforts to defeat the reelection of 
Senator Lamar. Although many of these efforts have not been directh/ made, they 
are none the less the work of shrewd politicians. There is method in them also. The 
feelings of the prejudiced liave been skillfully wrought upon, and plausible assertions 
have been made to catch the better informed. The value of iteration is fully under- 
stood by those politicians, and they have rung the changes on everything done by 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 433 

the great Senator which they think may possibly injure him among the masses. No 
matter how perfect and valuable his record as a whole may he. to his State and to the 
South, these men persist in making ' trifles light as air strong as proofs of holy writ.' 

. . It is as plain as plain can be that no danger would threaten the better ele- 
ments of the party, which are a guarantee of good, conservative local rule, if this fac- 
tion would cease its iri'itating, causeless, but hurtful, attacks on our senior Senator. 
Their motive is to put in another leader who will change methods and men to suit 
the views of extreme men. It is a selfish motive, and it is dangerous, extremely dan- 
gerous, to attempt it. Lamar is a safe, wise man, and the people should sustain him 
with greater confidence than ever before." 

The Memphis Avalanche: "A concentration of the Jlississipiji Democratic mind on 
Lamar may save the party, and it can safely be said that nothing else will save it." 

From the Memphis Appeal: " The Mobile Seyister regrets to note that an effort is be- 
ing made in Mississippi to oppose the reelection of Senator Lamar, and hopes that it 
will fail ' in view of the fact that Senator Lamar's reputation is national, and that he 
has not only done good service for the State of Mississipin, but also for the whole 
South. His retirement from the Senate of the United States would be a loss to the 
whole of this section and to the country at large.' In this view all the leading jour- 
nals of the South heartily concur." 

From the Augusta (Ga.) Constitutional: " L. Q. C. Lamar has been one of the most 
prominent of American statesmen, and one of the strongest individually. . . . On 
all issues he assumes an independence honorable to himself and his constituency. 
He is tlie master of his own soul, and sad indeed will it be for the State of Missis- 
sippi when his voice is no longer heard in her councils and his seat is vacant in the 
Senate." 

Ou the 6th of July Mr. Lamar delivered a literary address at the 
State Agricultural and Mechanical College, at Starkville, from an ac- 
count of which, as given by a Columbus ( Miss. ) paper, these extracts 
are taken: 

Col. Lamar very soon elevated his audience into the lofty, pure atmosphere where 
his great mind soars, and that, too, on commonplace subjects. He aimed principally 
at the mind of the student body. If there was a student present faltering in his pur- 
pose to overcome all olistacles in achieving nolde aims, the Senator's eloquent words, 
urging patient toil and continuous labor, were suflicient to reassure him and lead him 
to final triumph. . . . 

His words to the poor boy struggling against poverty, and to the boy beset with an 
appetite for strong drink, were wonls of comfort, of encouragement, of assurance. 

Eloquence reached its climax when he came to discuss patriotism, duty to one's 
country. It is commonly said that there has been no such grand speech delivered in 
this State for years. He made it very ))lain to appear how it vas noble, honorable, 
patriotic, to be true to the cause of the Confederacy, and how it is now equally noble 
to be true to the Government of the United States. 

He paid a worthy tribute to the character of President Garfield, and deprecated in 
burning, blistering words his attempted assassination. He alluded to the fact that 
millions of hearts in the South and in the North were praying earnestly for the re- 
covery of the suffering President. 

In July the people began to be heard from in respect to the Senato- 
rial question through their county nominating conventions. By the 
end of the month nearly every county in the State had indorsed Mr. 

28 



4oi LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

Lamar. In most, particularly in those regarded as political centers, the 
indorsemeut was most enthusiastic, and frequently without an opposing 
voice. In Monroe, for instance, when the resolution of approval was 
read, a dozen voices throughout the audience shouted, "Standing vote! 
standing vote! " and delegates and spectators alike sprang to their feet 
and upon the tables and benches, passing the resolution with prolonged 
cheers and tossing of hats in the most ardent manner. 

A letter of this month, from Col. J. F. H. Claiborne, a lifeloog editor 
and politician and the historian of Mississippi, contains this passage: 

I am delighted to find from my letters and the joapers that your reception in 
Adams County was all that I wrote you it would be ; and I believe that, in spite of 
narrow, partisan etforts in some quarters, the same feeling pervades the State. Your 
wise, just, and liberal course on all questions and your conservative views and the 
support you liave given the Executive to enable him to carry on the government 
command, in my opinion, the approbation of two-thirds of our people. We are tired 
of perpetual party warfare and an indiscriminate opposition to the government. . . . 

It is unnecessary to follow the intricacies of the gubernatorial con- 
test. Although many of the newspapers tried most assiduously to 
ring Mr. Lamar into it, although especially many leading friends of 
Mr. Barksdale insisted that he should give active support to that gen- 
tleman as the price of his own return to the Senate, he held himself en- 
tirely aloof from that struggle, and trusted his case to its own merits, 
without bargaining or combinations. Of course he had his personal 
preference as between the rival candidates, and did not disguise it; but 
no man felt the weight of his hand during the campaign preliminary to 
the nominating convention. 

The State convention met on the 3d of August. The result of its de- 
liberations was the defeat of all candidates, as the result of a deadlock, 
and the nomination of a "dark horse," Gen. Robert Lowry, of Kankin 
County. The contest in the convention had not been made on the Sen- 
atorial issite, and many of Mr. Lamar's friends supported Mr. Barks- 
dale; but still Gen. Lowry was brought forward l)y an anti-Stone cau- 
cus to defeat Gov. Stone ( who was handicapped by a " third term " 
candidacy), the favorite candidate of that element of the party which 
sympathized with Mr. Lamar's views. His nomination, under the cir- 
cumstances, was, for that reason, looked iipon as a setback for Mr. La- 
mar. The situation was curiously involved. Mr. Barksdale's defeat 
further embittered many of his friends, who immediately set in motion 
a movement to elect him as Mr. Lamar's successor; while Gov. Stone's 
defeat greatly discouraged and demoralized many of Mr. Lamar's 
friends, and caused them to speak of "our crowd" as "all broke up." 

"My opinion is," wTote Mr. Lamar to his friend, Mr. Clarke, "that the result of the 
action at Jackson is not a favoralile one for me; but it is less unfavorable than the 
prec'xisting conditions were capable of working out. ... I must begin to work, 
but I am greatly at a loss what to speak about. There is a lull in national politics. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 435 

and it is not easy to attack a party whose chieftain lies flying, amid the sympathiee 
of the whole people. 

The canvass made by Mr. Lamar in the autumn of this year is spoken 
of as his great cauvass of 1881; but, in fact, it was no abler or more en- 
ergetic tiian some others made by liim. Tlie exciting and somewhat 
sensational circumstances of its making drew rather more attention to 
it; that was all. 

In previous years his labors had been devoted almost exclusively to 
the northern and middle parts of the State. The people of the south- 
ern third, speaking roughly, had seen little or nothing of him. It was 
there that the principal opposition to him existed, and there he planned 
to do the greater part of his speaking for this season. 

The course of local politics soon furnished the Senator a topic for 
discussion, one fraught with great interest to the State, and about 
which the Democrats of the period felt no little concern. The Green- 
backers and a large part of tlie Eepiablicans combined and put out a 
fusion ticket, led by Benjamin King, of CoiMah, an ex-Democrat, as 
candidate for Governor. This established a most threatening situation. 
How Mr. Lamar regarded it is thus set forth in a letter written to Mr. 
R. H. Henry, editor of the Brookhucen Led<j<'r: 

I am afraid that we are going to have a hard contest with the selfish and unscru- 
pulous men who have publicly made a shameless partnership with the negroes of 
Mississippi to capture the government of the State, and to run it in the interest of 
their own ambitious schemes and selfish designs. It is simply negro government, to be 
reestablished by carpetbaggers and a few ambitious natives, taking the role of the 
scalawags under the names of Greenbackers and Independents. It will lie the domi- 
nation of the negro vote, just as it was before 1S75, with not one feature of mitiga- 
tion, and with many other elements of aggravation and degradation. 

I believe that life will be unbearable in Mississippi if it succeeds. The government 
thus established will be identical in spirit and purpose with the constituency which 
places it in power and is to hold it there; and it will revel in its high places of 
power, utterly irresponsible to that class which has the intellect, the morality, and 
the true knowledge of the real aims and functions of government — not merely irre- 
sponsible to any virtuous public sentiment, liut defiant of it and vejnicing in outrages 
upon it; for such outrages upon it will be the tenure liy which they will hold their 
ill-gotten power. 

The negroes are far different now from what they were. They have become more 
estranged from, and more antagonistic to, and less assimilated with, our political hab- 
itudes and aims than they were when under the lingering influence of old relations 
of dependence and protection. Never was there a time when Mississippi's safety so 
depended upon the perfect union, harmonious cooperation, of all her best social and 
political forces and the utmost development of their resources. I can't express to you 
my anxiety about this crisis. It has put my own Senatorial aspirations almost out 
of sight. I am surprised that our people don't see the <langer. 

The political pon-er of a body politic is as absolutely in the hands of that part 
which elects the oflicers and the agents to whom it is delegated as if that part exer- 
cised such power directly. If Ben King and Yellowly and their associates were black 
negroes, they would not give us a more unmitigated negro rule than tliey will as white 



436 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

men seeking the overtlirow of the present government through the organized negro 
vote. Buckle on your armor, and tight this hlack confederation. 

Entertaining tliese views of tlie special emergencies of the times in 
the State, Mr. Lamar began liis fall work. His first speech, made on 
September 5, was at DeKalb, the county seat of Kemper County. The 
Kemper Herald gave this account of the occasion and of the speech: 

Last Monday will long be rememljered by the people of Kemper and surrounding 
counties. The occasion was the presence in DeKalb of our gifted and beloved Sena- 
tor, L. Q. C. Lamar. 

Col. Lamar's appearance was greeted with rounds of ajiplause, which only ceased 
when he ascended the stand. He then proceeded with his speech, which was logical 
and eloquent, and a most searching analysis of the aims and principles involved in 
the recent coalition of the Greenback and Radical parties of this State. He thor- 
oughly satisfied every one within the sound of his voice that, if this State was cap- 
tured by such a combination, it would be run in the interest of the Radical party. 
His exposure of thc:^ pretensions made by the leaders of that movement — that they 
were organized to make the tight in the interest of a free election and a fair count — was 
convincing and overpowering. 

He presented in a forcible and a most interesting and striking manner the constitu- 
tional duty enjoined upon voters of going to the polls and selecting comj^etent men to 
represent them in the Legislature, in the gubernatorial chair, and indirectly on the 
bench; and that a voter had no more right to disregard this duty than did either of 
the above named agencies of the government to almegate the duties enjoined upon 
them. He contrasted the condition of the black man under Republican and Demo- 
cratic administrations in this State, and quoted from the testimony cjf English travel- 
ers and Northern visitors to show the falsity of the charges of violence and intimida- 
tion at elections. His contrast between the government that existed before 187.5 and 
the present government in Mississippi was generally conceded to exceed in power and 
impressiveness any of his previous speeches in this State. 

Col. Lamar had but little to say in regard to the criticisms upon his course as a 
Senator, what little he did say on this subject being responded to by the audience in 
such a manner as to show that he needed no defense. The Colonel certainly must 
feel that in Kemper County his course in tlie Senate was not condemned b\- the peo- 
ple, but was cordially approveii and indorsed. Every reference to his votes was re- 
ceived with demonstrations of enthusiastic a]>plause; and we can safely say that there 
are not ten men in this county who do not feel that Col. Lamar's course was dictated 
by broad, liberal, and conservative views, which, in our opinion, are fully in line with 
those of the people of his State. 

The distinguished gentleman said "tliat he desired and had almost hoped that 
there would be a unanimous election of Gen. Lowry, whose broad and progressive 
spirit appealed to the hearts of all patriots ; whose spotless honor and high principles 
as a gentleman, added to distinguished abilities and services, should command the 
confidence of all parties." At this point he was asked by some one in the audience if, 
in his opinion, Gen. Lowry was a party to any combination which had for its object 
opposition to his return to the Senate. To this the distinguished gentleman replied: 
" I have not the slightest idea that Gen. I^owry is a party to any combination of the 
kind, assuming that such a combination exists. [Applause.] I have no intimation, 
either directly or indirectly, from that gentleman on this matter; nor have I any 
sources of information in relation to it not ojien to the public. But from my knowl- 
edge of (len. Dowry's character, from what I believe to be his jiersonal feelings to me, 
and from the fact that he took the earliest occasion to disconnect himself from the at- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 437 

tacks that had been made upon me, I am quite sure that he has to me no antagonism 
of the kind to which Capt. Brame refers. He may liave his prefei-enccs, a^ all others 
have, and as it is unquestionably right to have. If in the exercise of his right of pri- 
vate judgment lie sliould think that another worthier than myself should represent 
Mississippi in the Senate, I shall have no right to complain. 1 do not know whether 
Lowry is for Lamar for the Senate or not, but this I do know, and wish it understood 
once for all, that Lamar is for Lowry for governor. [Applause.] 

" The truth is, Gen. Lowry cannot in his present position of trust and responsi- 
bility wish to antagonize anybody. He is like the Indian chief who was captured by 
a company of white men, and, compelled to carry the cooking utensils of his captors, 
soon tired of his burden, and flung it down, saying: ' White man, look here; let every 
fellow tote his own skillet.' " Amid the uproarious laughter the Colonel added: " Gen. 
Lowry has got his own skillet to tote just now, and I have no wish to burden him with 
mine. [Applause.] For the present the question of paramount moment is whether 
the election of the able and honorable getitlemen named by the Democratic Conven- 
tion sliall continue to us unbrokenly the blessings of good government here at home." 
[Applause.] 

His speech was almost exclusively directed to the discussion of the vital issues in- 
volved in the State election, and touched scarcely at all on national politics. 

His main point, the one which he pressed with earnestness and eloquence, was that 
the union of the intelligence and virtue and public spirit of the South in the coming 
election was demanded, not as a party policy, but as a principle of self-preservation. 
He discountenanced all resort to violence, to frauds, or unfairness in the election, and 
said that the union and active couppration of the conservative and orderly elements 
of the State would be sufficient to secure the Democracy of Mississip])i a grand and 
lasting triumph over the forces of ignorance, incompetence, and social disorder. 

Amid the wildest applause he closed one of the grandest speeches we ever listened 
to in our lives, one which instructed and at the same time aroused the people, and 
convinced them that the duty enjoined upon them of maintaining good government 
was imperative. 

Mr. Lamar's uext speech was at Cautou. The New Orleans Times 
gave this account of it: 

He seems to have lost sight of himself and his own aspirations for reelection to 
the United States Senate, and to be devoting all of his powers to the defense of the 
Democratic-Conservative ticket and to the defeat of the Fusion ticket. At a recent 
meeting at Canton, which was largely attended, a correspondent writes, he spoke 
for more than three hours, the effect of his speech being the reconversion to the 
Democratic-Conservative standard of very many good men who had manifested a dis- 
position to depart fiom its fold and to align themselves with the opposition party. 
His wise words of counsel harmonized, to a great extent, the iliscordant elements in 
the party in that county, and strengthened the hearts and hands of the jieople who 
favor a continuance of the wi?e and healthful civil administration that has obtained 
in that State ever since the Democratic-Conservative party came into power. Col. 
Lamar discountenanced all plans of influencing the election through any iiTegular 
methods; either violence, intimidation, direct or indirect, or any unfairness; saying 
that these means would defeat themselves in the end and be an element of disinte- 
gration in the party. He insisted upon it that the union and active and energetic 
cooperation of the best classes of society, with the use of those methods which are 
employed by the intelligent and responsible classes in all free governments to guide 
and control the incompetent and ignorant, will prove adequate to the preservation of 
the present healthy civil administration in Mississippi. He insisted on this union, 



438 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

not as a party policy, not as a scheme of ascendency to any set of men for ambitious 
purposes, but as a matter of principle, and that principle s^elf-preservation. 

It must not be imagined from the foregoing extracts and reports that 
Mr. Lamar had descended from his former patriotic and jnst stand, and 
taken to making White Line speeches, as a few jjartisan pajjers charged 
against him. In none of his sj)eeches did he fail to invite warmly the 
cooperation of the colored people for good government. So far from 
desiring the whites as whites to organize against the blacks as blacks 
and exclude them from their political rights, he urged the other course. 
His idea was to keep the Democratic party solid against disorganization, 
in order to prevent unscrupulous office seekers from ruining the State 
by the aid of ignorant and prejudiced votes, mainly colored. His cen- 
tral notion is expressed in a private letter to a friend at this date: 

The object is with me to arouse the white people and to impress them with the ne- 
cessity of union against negro government. I argue at some length to show tkat an 
election carried by a negro vote will be a negro government, irrespective of the char- 
acter and purposes of the men whom they elect. And in this respect I have to dem- 
onstrate the insulation of the negro as a political element in our system, his refusal to 
assimilate with our political habitude and methods, and our failure hitherto to get 
him to unite with us in reaching any equilibrium of power between the two races. 

I undertake to show that this refusal is not the result of any attachment to the Re- 
publican party ; that they refused to vote for Dent, a Republican, and sujiported Alcorn 
because they saw the white race supporting the former; an<l that when we supported 
Alcorn they in a body foi-sook him and elected Ames. I attribute this to an instinc- 
tive race oppugnation that dominates an ignorant Ijody which acts from instinct antl 
not i-eflection. 

I make no attack upon the negro race. I insist upon the ol>servance of all his 
rights, even that of participating in government; but I jiress the point with great 
earnestness and with all the power I command that the white race should use all the 
methods which tlie intelligent classes in every free society employ to control the ig- 
norant and the incompetent. I say that they should combine and unite to prevent, 
by such means, the negro from grasping the power of the State as his own exclusive 
jiossession. If, in the accomplishment of this purpose, the government necessarily 
f;ills into the control of the white race, it is a less evil than the one which we ai-e 
seeking to prevent, especially if we so carry on the government as to make its action 
fair and just and protective to both races. 

The l^e.ntinel, of Yazoo, City, thus reports his next sijeech, made in 
that city on Monday, the 12th of September: 

Long before the hour appointed, 7 : 30 o'clock p.m., the hall was filled with the elite of 
the town and surrouniling ( ounty, to hear the address delivered by Col. Lamar last 
Monday night. . . . He delivered, in substance, the following speech: My fellow- 
countrymen, I thank you fir this most grateful reception. It touches my heart and 
inspires my tongue. A political canvass is now upon us grave in its character, and 
critical as regards the future welfare of our State. At no time since the war has there 
been greater necessity for consultation between Representatives and their constitu- 
ency. Centuries ago tlip oracle at Delphi liad said: " Know thyself" What was true 
of individuals was equally applicable to nations composed of individuals. They must 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 439 

know themselves, their own character, political history, government, the principles 
ui)on which it is based, an<l their own weakness. Two great principles of govern- 
ment divide mankind, with which the minds of the world are on fire: the one, des- 
potism, based upon monarchy; the other, organized liberty, upon which is based the 
government of these United States, wherein the sovereignty resides in the people. 
That there were four essential elements in our government: the legislative, judicial, 
executive, and electoral; that these were independent of each other, and each had 
its duties imposed by the constitution. He defined the functions of legislative, judicial, 
and executive, and said that the electoral department — the people — were great bodies 
of functionaries, whose duty it was to vote, and not to do so was a violation of the 
constitution, and that by not voting they assist and give their sanction to the passage 
of injurious legislation. There was too great a lethargy of late in view of the impor- 
tance of this subject. Intelligence, conscientiousness, bravery, and truth — these are 
the qualities that should be stamped upon a government; and it will take its hue and 
character from those who cast their sutfrage at the ballot l.iox. On November next 
the entire circle of civil administration in this State will be put in motion. The im- 
portance and character of the contest will call into play the excitement and ambition 
of political parties. Elections indicate something more than a mere class of officers: 
they say not only what men shall rule, but also what ideas shall govern. A man of 
broad, progressive principles, brave in war, true and honorable in peace — such was the 
character of Gen. Lowry, and such that of the honorable gentlemen associated with 
him on the Democratic ticket, soliciting the suflVages of the people of Mississippi. 

My object this evening is to show you that union, harmony, and cooperation of 
sentiment among the people, not for the purposes of ambition, but for self-protection, 
are necessary. I admit that political parties are a necessity, yet state that in the his- 
tory of every nation which has risen to any prominence great epochs have existed 
which thrilled a community into concert of action, and caused them to combine 
against some impending danger. Such is the crisis that has been, and is now, upon 
the people of this State. Need I tell you the peril which threatens our civilization, 
order, and prosperity? Does it not press upon each aching head and throbbing heart? 
If I must tell you, I will. It is that mass of incompetence, of ignorance, which has 
been incorporated in our system, and sullenly refuses to assimilate with our political 
habitudes, and which created a pandemonium, over whose political marl our women 
and children had to walk with unsandaled feet, whose pent-ui> vengeance has been 
awaiting leaders reckless enough to undertake to guide it— waiting (as was suggested 
by one of the audience) for Ben King. This new combination was essentially the 
same as carpetbagism. Its objects are the same, its purposes tlie same; and I see no 
element of mitigation, but much of aggravation. 

In a speech made in the Senate I said that the South on one point was solid, and 
will remain solid, which solidity neither Federal bayonets nor honors nor emoluments 
can dissolve ; that point was opposition to a government controlled by this mass of 
black ignorance. I made an offer to Northern Senators that they should describe the 
carpetbag governments of the Southern States, in the most favorable terras possible, and 
I would appeal to the civilized world that my people were justified in summoning all 
their energies and using all means in their power in kicking off such govermnents. 

The speaker then read several extracts from reports of Northern men as to the 
character of those governments. One especially we will notice— the report of Senator 
Hoar, of Massachusetts.in which he, speaking nf these governments, characterized them 
as governments of peculation, fi-aud, and corruption. In that political caldron there was 
none to dare to strike a Ijlow for the right stronger and harder than one for the wrong. 
The contest was one in which banded might was opposed to eternal right; and when 
the struggle was at an end, and the dust and smoke of battle cleared away, there stood 
Mississippi triumphant. Contrast the government of these States under Democratic 



440 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAJi: 

rule with those under the former rigimr ; and as great, if not greater, diflference would 
be observed than that between the most civilized and barbaric governments. 

The ])eople of Mississippi were a noble people, enlightened and Christianized. 
They deserve not this curse. Why was it imposed upon them? What explanation 
can be given for the character of those governments? The answer can be found in the 
ftict that it was nonelective, not responsiljle to any moral constituency. 

What do these gentlemen propose who recently met at Jackson? Who are they? 
They claim to be part of the National Greenback party, whose object is to relieve the 
laboring men from a false financial system and from monopolies ; yet they ally them- 
selves with a party which is the very author and creator of that system and of n>o- 
nopolies. By what suffrage do they expect to go into power? Is it by the enlightened 
white vote? No. They raise the cry of a free ballot and fair count. Be not deceived 
by it. It is a feigned and false issue. Their leader says that, though he was nine years in 
the Democratic party, he never was a Democrat. When I read that, I was struck with 
amazement. Old Ben King, a wheel horse of Democracy, not a Democrat! Why, I 
was always too liberal for him. He would not have mucli to do with me. " Old La- 
mar " was too conservative. This conversion of old Ben reminds me of the little boy 
and his grandmother. When asked how his father was, he replied: " Well for him." 
" How is your mother? " " Well for her." " How is your grandmother? " " She's 
dead." "Dead?" "Yes." " She died rather suddenly? " " Yes ; sudden for her." 
This conversion seems to me rather sudden for old Ben. 

The fundamental issue in the contest is the restoration of Republicanism. They 
propose, not so much to change the character of the elected, as to change the charac- 
ter of the people who elect. The result would not be a government based upon the 
intelligence, civilization, and wealth of the State. However pure the men may be, 
they will derive their hue from the constituency that elects them. Just as the con- 
stituency is, so will be the government. 

He was not hostile to the Ijlack constituency, but was their friend, and would al- 
low them every right guaranteed by the constitution and amendments. They might 
not believe him, but if this coalition was successful, he saw in store for them a dire 
future. Suffrage was secure to them. Every page of our statute books bears evidence 
of this, and each Legislator felt the potency of this vote. There was no limitation of 
this suffrage to protect their freedom and rights, but there was one limitation; they 
could not use it to force negro government upon us. 

The speaker here said that he had received communications from certain gentle- 
men asking him to explain his position on certain questions. We regret that we are 
unable to give his defense in full. It was al>k- and exhaustive, and left untouched no 
charge against liim. 

He remarked that in the few speeches he had made he took some credit to him- 
self that he was instrumental in changing animosities into feelings of kindness and 
sympathy to his people. He wanted no better epitaph on his political tomb than that 
he was able to overcome the estrangement of a nation to his people. 

As to the Electoral Conmiission, he said that nearly all the Democratic Senators 
were with him, and, with one exception, the Representatives of :Mississippi ; yet he 
hail been singled out solely for the object of animadversion. As to the merits of the 
question, the Electoral Commission was the only peaceable solution of the question. 
Tilden could not have been seated without force, and the opposition had the Ex- 
ecutive, Army, Treasury, and Supreme Court on their side; and if it came to war, 
it would have been between the North and South, for the Northern Democrats 
assured the Southern Rejiresentatives that they could not give them a corporal's 
guard. 

On the Stanley Matthews case, he said how he voted was a matter of secrecy; but 
upon the same testimony that charged him with voting in favor of Stanley Matthews 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 441 

(and he reckoned it was true), the men who are now censuring liim for that vote, if 
they had been in the Senate, would have been found voting with the most venomous 
of Radicals against the cream of the Democracy, such as Hill, Voorhees, Pendleton, 
and other prominent Democrats. 

With regard to the Hamburg matter, he said that President Garfield (then a member 
of the House), in the main a good man, turned and said: " What has the gentleman 
from Mississippi to say with regard to this outrage? Was it sporadic? Could he ex- 
plain or palliate it?" That in obedience to this challenge' he made his speech; and 
though both parties were probably to blame, yet he distinctly said that the lilood of 
that massacre would rest upon the head of South Carolina's carpetbag Governor, Cham- 
berlain ; that he alone was responsible fcr it ; that the press of South Carolina sus- 
tained and thanked him for that speech; that Senator Butler, a perfect specimen of 
manly beauty, chivalry, and honor, was at Hamburg, and when he was elected to the 
Senate and his seat contested, he came to " old L'amar " to defend his cause ; and " old 
Lamar " defended it, speaking against the most prominent men on the other side, at 
the hour of midnight, until he fell prostrate on the floor ; but he pulled Butler through. 
Do you suppose th.at Butler would crawl like a despicable worm up to the man who 
had cast aspersion upon his noble State, to ask him to defend liim? 

With regard to his vote on the Grant Bill, he said that his object was to write emer- 
ilm opposite Grant's name, and that the Democrats, in the cases of Gen. Shields and Gen. 
Porter, had sanctioned the principle of voting to retire generals. To the inquiry how 
the other Democratic Senators stood, he replied that they stood all around him ; then 
went on to explain that, though he was alone in voting to call up the bill, it was de- 
cided that the Democratic side of the Senate should vote for the measure on its final i 
passage, with the third clause stricken out, which clause he had opposed. 

He voted as he did on the Kellogg case, because it was res ailjudicata. It had been 
unfairly settled, but could not be opened. 

On the Silver Bill, he said that the expectations of those who difler with him had 
not been realized; that he, too, favored remonetizing silver, but he wished to make 
the silver dollar equal to the gold dollar, and upon the same basis that the Latin Un- 
ion have proposed and which will be advocated l>y the United States Commissioners, 
Thurman and Howe; that as it is now you could stand on the New York side and flip 
a silver dolUir over into Canada, and it would be worth only eighty-four cents. 

With regard to instructions, he said that lie admitted the right of the Legislature 
to instruct— that is, to teach; but there was no constitutional obligation, either Fed- 
eral or State, to obey. This doctrine was directly opposed to the Constitution of the 
United States, especially that clause of the constitution which vested the legislative 
power in a House of Representatives and a Senate; and if the State had a right to 
instruct their Senators, it would invest the legislative power in the respective States; 
that he did not arrogate to himself any sujierior intelligence or virtue over the people ; 
that he might strain his intelligence to the highest point, that he might strain his 
virtue to the highest point, yet it would never e(iual the aggregate intelligence and 
virtue of the people ; that during the war he was coming over from Europe, and when 
near Charleston the captain sent a lad (whose name he never shall forget, Willie Sum- 
mers) to climb the mast for the purpose of seeing if the port was blockaded ; that 
AVillie, after reaching the top, replied that he saw twelve ships on the north side of 
the harbor. The captain said : '' Willie, that can't be so ; they must be on the south 
side, for on the north side there is a sandbar upon which they will be stranded." 
Willie replied that they are on the north side, and that he saw thirteen now. The 
captain was a smarter man than Willie. He had as good eyes, but he had sent 

AVillie up there to see, where he would have opportunity to observe; and he was will- .^ 

ing to abide by his decision. Thus it is, ray countrymen, you have sent me to the > 
topmost mast, and I tell you what I see. If you say I must come down, I will obey 



442 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR. 

without a murmur; but you cairt make me lie to you; but if you return me, I will be 
true to love of country, truth, and God. 

Col. Lamar spoke for three hours and thirty-five minutes, and during the whole 
time the large audience appeared not in the least fatigued, and be was frequently and 
lieartily applauded. 

During the delivery of this masterpiece of eloquence, wisdom, and logic, the Colonel 
wa.s so much fatigued by his eflort that a greater portion of the time he spoke while 
sitting. 

Yazoo County, through cousideratious of former residence, family in- 
fluence, and other matters, was regarded as a specially strong county 
for Mr. Barksdale; and there Mr. Lamar was bearding Douglass iu his 
hall. A partisan of Mr. Barksdale was selected, whose business it was 
to propound to Mr. Lamar questions " on his record," with a view to 
In-eaking the force of his speech. Something of this will be seen in the 
report of the occasion given by the Yazoo Cittj Herald, this extract being 
from a long. synopsis: 

It was one of tlie best speeches he ever made before a pojjular audience. It made 
l>im friends on every side; it conquered the prejudices of hundreds who had been led 
to believe that his views on certain points were better adapted to the latitude of New 
England than to that of Mississippi. They were honest in their opinion, and they are 
equally honest now in believing that he has been more sinned against than sinning. 

The speech he set out to make was only in part delivered, as his time was consumed 
in answering the written questions put to him by a number of gentlemen who want- 
ed light upon certain matters with which he was prominently connected as a public 
man, and whose votes thereupon they desired to liave explained. This took him off 
the main line of his argument— tending to show the nature of our government and 
the principles upon which it is based; Ijut he was equal to the occasion. He rose to 
the "height of great argument" in explanation of his course as one of the Senators 
fi'om Mississippi. 

He defended himself in grand style; he was as the lion at bay. 

He was sjiving his views ujwn the issues involved in the present campaign, when 
his attenti(3n was called to the interrogatories above referre<l to, and which he took the 
pains to answer so satisfactorily to the audience. 

His peroration was a splen.lid piece of eloquence, and was received with every 
demonstration of delitrht by one of the most appreciative audiences thatej-es ever lie- 
held. Tlie liberality of his sentiments, the largeness of his views, and the earnest in- 
terest he seemed to take in everything that concerned IMississippi, won the hearts of 
all. The colored people, many of whom were present, coukl not but feel that in Sen- 
ator Lamar they had a friend who would gladly see them enjoy for long days to come, 
even as they are now doing, the rights guaranteed them by the constitution, which it 
is every man's duty to respect. 

The Vick^hiirii Herald said of the same speech: 

Mr. Lamar strikes a note in our State camijaign whicli will ring beyond our own 
Ijorders. It is that the fight that the Democratic-Conservative party of Mississippi is 
making is not for party, but for the pi-eservation of all tlie essential interests of society 
and government from the rule of ignorance, incompetence, and moral irresponsibdity. 
The keynote is that no party can be trusted to govern which, morally and pi-actically 
speaking, has no constituency to which it is responsible. 

After Yazoo City Mr. Lamar spoke at Kosciusko, Brandon, Quitman, 



HJS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 443 

Waynesboro, Scranfou, Handsboro, Pascagonla, and Raymond, rcacliiug 
the last place on the oOtli. 

From Quitman, on the '21st, he wrote to Hon. J. R. Mcintosh, of 
Chickasaw County, as follows: 

I do not hesitate to say that I neither indorse, nor acquiesce in, tlie purpose wliich 
)'ou tell me has Ijeen puljlicly announced in your county, to subordinate the election 
of tlie members of the Legislature and county othcers to the return of myself to the 
Senate. I do not for an instant toleiate the thought that the election of Ben King 
and others is to be looked to as any possible result of my Senatorial aspirations. If I 
lived in Chickasaw County, and knew that Messrs. Wilson, Crawford, and Buchanan 
favored some other aspirant to the Senate in preference to myself, I would not only 
support them myself, but would urge my friends to do so, with a zeal and energy un- 
diminished by any such preference: First, for the rea-son that they are the chosen 
nominees of the party for their respective offices, and I am not (as yet at least) their 
chosen nominee for United States Senator; second, I deem the choice of a United 
States Senator, between Democrats, as of less importance than the defeat of this new 
attempt to band the negroes of this State together for the juirpose of restoring Repub- 
lican misrule. 

On the 30th of September, after the Raymond speech, Mr. Lamar was 

forced to suspend his appointments in Mississijjpi, in order to attend a 
called session of Congress. That session adjourned on the 29th of Oc- 
tober, however; and, leaving a few days earlier, Mr. Lamar was back in 
the State on that day, prosecuting bis canvass further. He spoke both 
at Hillsboro and Forest on the 29th, and by the 7th of November (the 
day before the election) he had addressed the people at Brookhaven, 
Hazlehurst, Natchez, Fayette, Port Gibson, and Holly Springs. 

Of the Hazlehurst speech a special correspondent of the Ncir Orleans 
Democrat said, among other things : 

His eloquent and ma-^terly array of indisputable facts, in argument on both State 
and national questions, and his strong, emphatic jioints in support of the Lowry tick- 
et, were received with the most enthusiastic applause. 

He denounced Kukluxism and ballot box frauds, and was opposed to bulldozing 
and violence of every character, and believed that there was a peaceable way to adjust 
all grievances without resorting to unlawful expedients. 

It was not in Mississippi alone that the pending campaign and the 
canvass of Mr. Lamar attracted close attention and excited a profound 
interest. The press from end to end of the Union spoke of it contin- 
ually. Two or three extracts from representative papers must suffice 
for examples: 

Illinois Stale Joiinnl (Republican), of September — : "Senator Lamar is makintr a 
hard fight down in his State (Mississipjii) for reelection. He supports the i-egnlar 
Democratic ticket, but is, on the contrary, opposed by many regular Democrats. The 
rivalry between him ami his competitors is severe, and tlie prominent question with 
all candidates for the Legislature is: Are they Lamar or anti-Laniar men? It would 
be a great misfortune to Mississippi and the whole South if some Bourbon of medi- 
ocre abilities should be elected to succeed Mr. Lamar. He is a partisan, it is true; but 
he is at times something more. There are events when he rises above partisanism 
and becomes the patriot. . . . He is a man of talent, of pure life, of tried states- 



444 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAE: 

mansbip, and of coiuuiaiidiiig inflaence in the nation. The South has few men of 
real ahility. in Congress, and it cannot, for the honor of its section, aftord to retire its 
ablest and best. Still, Lamar is able to give the Republicans some hard blows, and 
were we to speak simply from a partisan standpoint, and not from a desire to see the 
Senate composed of strong and honorable men, we too should desire to see Mr. Lamar 
relegated to private life." 

The LoimnUe Courkr-Juumul (Democratic), of October 3: "Senator Lamar is mak- 
ing an active and thorough canvass of Mississippi, and is meeting an enthusiastic re- 
ception from the people wherever he apjiears. There is gooil reason to hope that the 
Democrats will carry the State ; and if they do, Mr. Lamar will be returned to the Sen- 
ate. Nothing more hurtful to Democratic interests at large could happen in the South 
than the defeat of this eminent person by his own party. Mr. Lamar stands as the 
foremost representative of all that is liberal, progressive, and genial in the South. In 
type essentially Southern, he is known to the country not merely as an eloquent 
pleader and brilliant politician, but by its best intelligence he is recognized as a 
thoughtful and enlightened statesman, capable of assimilating ideas and events and of 
deducing out of the chaos of things current the philosoidiy of political action and the 
exigencies and ethics of party jiolicy. A refusal on the part of the Mississippi Demo- 
crats to return him would be a declaration of war upon the principles of the new era- 
It would announce a reaction in the South, and be hailed as a godsend by the stal- 
warts. . . . Those who snarl and carp at the record made liy Mr. Lamar the last 
ten or a dozen years are composed of two classes: they who are honestly perverse, 
and perverse because they are benighted; and they who seek to bring the bigotry of 
these to the uses of a petty system of local cross-road politics, in whose extravagancies 
and follies only the malignant and the mediocre can shine. The former of these 
classes we sincerely pity. Ignoiance is a disease, and needs to Ije treated by the slow, 
painstaking process of conciliation and instruction. . . . From among the masses 
it is rajiidly disappearing. The people are fast coming to see through the chimera of 
the demagogue, and to realize the need of a system of nationality reaching out the 
hand of fellowship and reform into every nnok ami corner of the Republic. They are 
heartily with such men as Lamar. It is the canting and cheating mountebank, who, 
to get a little notoriety and oiHce, tears his passion to tatters and swears great oaths, 
and is wiser and truer, braver and purer in the assertion of " principles " than all oth- 
ers. In the North this person is a stalwart, who worships Roscoe Conklingand waves 
a " bloody shirt; " in the South he is a Buurbon, whose stock in trade consists for t\\a 
most part in a bundle of obsolete documentj; relating to the rights of property in the 
Territories, and the Confederate record, which, on investigation, usually turns out to 
be worthless. . . . Mr. Lamar has stood resolutely against this class. He has sought 
to serve the people by timely and truthful instruction, setting the while an examjile 
of wholesome good sense manifested in tlie wisd<im of forbearance. Doing all that 
becomes a man to do on occasions where Statehood or manhood required, he has not 
thought it his duty to fill in the long, dull intervals of work by warlike posing and 
noisy declamation ; but, instead, he has devoted his leisure to studies in the art of gov- 
ernment as it affects the business of our daily lives, to the development of ideas relat- 
ing to the material resources and industries of the country, and to the propagation of 
a spirit of good will among the politicians and the people. Such a man, though pos- 
sessed of sincerity alone, would have been invaluable to the South during her period of 
travail. ButinMr. Lamar, to character has been joined intellect: and as a result we have 
a statesman who honors us as a people more than we can honor him as a man; for if 
we should retire him from office to-morrow, we could not obscure either his iiersonal- 
ity or his influence, while we should surely bring both loss and discredit upon our- 
selves. Sixteen years aaro the South, weak and wretclied, shivered in rasjs outside the 
doors of the constitution and the LTnion. Blood-stained from head to foot, heartsick 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 445 

and desolate, without a frieml in tliis world having powrr to help, with none to do 
her reverence, and very lew to cheer, she faced a sea of angry passions thai Ik'iU upon 
the rock to which she clung. All had been lost save honor. She had In-ought from 
oflf the wreck a spirit, not defiant, but undefiled; and, trustmg to this, wrapping it 
about her nude and shrunk figure as a garment, she waited for the executioners of 
her destiny to do their worst. How fares the South to-day? Like the enchanted 
princess of the Arabian tale, the touch of a magic hand has restored her to herself. 
The skies have cleared, the waves are stilled; she stands in her majestic lieauty with- 
in the portals, clad in the habiliments of rank and power, the strong hieastplate of 
her ancient nationality blazini; upon her l)osom, nor obscured by the draperies with 
which her own rich products^ and liaudicraft decorate her jierson. What has wrought 
the miracle? Not surely the finger of hate and scorn, pointing morals only in lost 
traditions, and i)Utting practical benefits away. No, truly ; but the hand of work and 
peace and love, receiving thankfully what came to it, and disposing each good gift 
with a thrift at once sagacious and methodical. Thus the South, luined by its dema- 
gogues, was saved by its statesmen. Among these Mr. Lamar is of the foremost; and 
the South, no less than Mississippi, owes him a debt of gratitude. 

The Memjihis Appeal (Democratic), November 15: "The elections in ]\Iississippi 
have attracted the attention of the whole country. Thither the eyes of the nation 
have been turneci with eager anxiety since the opening of tiie canvass three months 
ago. This solicitude was inspired by two causes. The first was a desire for the tri- 
umph of the party which had brought order out of chaos, reduced taxes, increased 
educational facilities, and given peac'e and prosperity to the State. The other cause 
was prompted by a deep and all-pervading desire to see a Legislature elected which 
will return Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar to the Senate of the United States. The Democracy 
of Mississippi, the party subjected to many wrongs and tried by many great calami- 
ties, and which endured and triumphed over all of them, is again triumphant. . . . 
But this great victory would be int'omplete without the i-ei'lection of Senator Lamar 
to the place he has adorned by his genius, his patriotism, and his statesmanship. 
The people of Mississippi are capable of managing their own affairs in their own 
way; but in other days, when the names of such men as Clay and Webster and Cal- 
houn and Do\iglas and Andy Johnson were before their respective Legislatures as 
candidates for the United States Senate, the contest became one of national concern. 
. . . It is therefore in no spirit of dictation that the Democratic party, E;ist, West, 
North, and South, outside of Mississippi, cordially unite in expressing the ardent and 
sincere hope that Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar will be returned to the Senate, where he has 
already towered among the proudest of his comjieers, reflecting honor upon himself 
and the State he represents. Senator Lamar has been foitunate enough to achieve a 
position of eminence and influence among the leading public- men of the country, of 
wliich the people of his State are proud, and which— whether due to his merits, as his 
friends iusist, or his lucky star, as his enemies claim— is an equally established fact, 
recognized Ijy the wliole country and throughout the world. A career so brilliant 
and uniformly successful can be ascribed to nothing but transcendent talent and 
statesmanship. His capabilities have stood every test by which they have been tried, 
and he has risen to the full measure of his opportunities. Indeed, he has come out 
brightest in the severest or.leals, and has developed as rich a promise of realization 
as any other man in America. But for the ostracism of the South, on account of the 
war and sectional hatreds. Senator Lamar would now be as formidable a candidate for 
the Presidency as he is for United States Senator. ... In the struggle between 
purity and corruption he has been found invariably battling on the side of honesty. 
His whole record has been distinguished for its elevated tone and its moral grandeur; 
and after a long and illustrious service, before and since the war, he still remains 
comparatively a poor man. ... He does not covet leadership in the Senate, but 



446 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAE: 

when fiii't'ed to grapple with great questions in a general debate with such men as 
Blaine and Conkling, he has shown that lie is not only a political critic, with a mind 
gifted with rare insight and power of analysis, but tliat he has all the tact and ag- 
gressiveness of a successful leader. Senator Lamar has that native fondness for read- 
ing which one who does not care for it is apt to regard with contempt. AVith, per- 
haps, the exception of John Q. Adams and James A. Gartield, no man in Congress 
was ever such a lover of books as L. Q. C. Lamar. Amid all the bustle of public life, 
and in spite of the demands upon his time and attention, he has always retained a 
classical taste. This enables the Mississippi Senator to surpass all others in thought- 
ful and instructive elotjuence. . . . The whole country points to him with pride, 
and, if i-eelected, the State that has honored him will Ije made still more illustrious 
by his commanding eloquence and solid statesmanship. No man in the Vnion has 
contributed so much to the oVjliteration of sectional hatreds as L. Q. C. Lamar. As a 
member both of the Senate and House of Representatives, he has, in glowing and per- 
suasive eloquence, reminded the children of a common heritage of their ancestral 
glory and their future greatness, and has let no occasion pass without lifting his voice 
to strengthen the bonds of fraternal union and to counteract those estranging and 
alienating influences which the seltish ambitions of designing men have been so fruit- 
ful in jiroducing. Blessed is the peacemaker; and doubly blessed is the man, like 
Lamar, who has given his influence to the reconciliation of States. His eloquent 
words have not passed away with the vibrations of the air that made them audible; 
they have sunk deep into the hearts of the people." 

Before this powerful and brilliant canvass what opposition to Mr. 
Lamar's reelection existed in the State melted away like November 
frost before the rising sun. His positions were so high, so unselfish, 
and so patriotic ; his arguments were so clear and strong; his illustra- 
tions and anecdotes so graphic and scintillating; his personality so 
magnetic, and the sweep of his jjassion so dynamic, that none could 
stand before him. It was literally true that, as to most of those who 
came to criticize and impede, they remained to enjoy and applaud; 
many of his most inveterate and caustic opponents leading in the cheer- 
ing and the resolutions of indorsement. In the county of Yazoo, for 
instance, where the stronghold of the opposition was, when the county 
convention was held, on the 22d of October, the following resolution 
was "adopted by the assemblage by a rising vote:" 

Resoh'i'd, That we view with pleasure and approbation the course, opinions, charac- 
ter, and statesmanlike intellect of L. Q. C. Lamar, our present distinguished Repre- 
sentative in the Senate of the United States, and hereby instruct our Ke|iresentatives 
in the House and Senate of the next Legislature to vote for him and work for liim, 
first, last, and all the time, as the choice of this people for Tnited States Senator. 

Years later, in speeches about him, Congressmen Catchings and 
Hooker said this of his canvass and of his wonderful oratory: 

Mr. Catchings: "Upon his return to Mississippi he sought to vindicate his course, 
and delivered a series of the most eloquent, impassioned, and dramatic orations that 
ever fell from the lips of any man. His exposition of the relations existing between 
a United States Senator and the Legislature of his State could not have been excelled 
in i>ower and logic liy John Marshall himself, that greatest of all expounders of th- 
constitution. TTpon.this point his victory was a!)Solute. When he had thus made it 



BJii LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 4J7 

clear that h.e had violated no obligation of his office, opposition ceased. With one 
acclaim the people said that, whether right or wrong in his views upon the silver 
question, he had discharged his highest duty to them by voting as he saw and be- 
lieved tlie truth to be. No triumph of the Ciesars was more complete, more spectac- 
ular, more imposing, than tliat so decreed to this great and courageous statesman by 
the people whom he so loved and honored and who so loved and honored him." _ 

Mr. Hooker: "\\'hen he returned to ^Mississippi and entered into that memorable 
contest I had the pleasure to be with him on more than one occasion. . . . He 
spoke like the mountain torrent, sweeping away the bowlders in the stream that at- 
tempted to oppose his course, and anon he was like that mountain torrent when it 
has reached tlie foot of the mountain, and in its pilgrimage to the sea winds through 
many winding nooks to the wild ocean. His power of argument was manifested in 
the influence he liad over popular audiences. When he closed that canvass he closed 
it with the State of Jlississippi behind him, though the men to whom he spoke, 
many of them, had diverse views, and hold them still to-day. . . . It was by the 
wonderful power by which he drew his audience to him, looking them in the eye 
and they looking in his, and all the muscles of his body and face seemed to be palpi- 
tating with excitement while he was speaking. The very platform seemed to be 
surging with emotion as he rose with his periods. No more powerful orator has ever 
lived than Lamar. He was as brave and savage as the lion when disturbed in his 
lair ; he could be as gentle as a woman." 



When the Legislature met in January, 1882, it was resolved that 
there should be no caucus of the Democrats on the subject of Mr. La- 
mar's succession. There was no opponent in the field about whose 
pretensions a caucus was needed. The matter was broached for the 
first time in the legislative halls, and in each House he received on the 
first ballot the unanimous vote of the party, the small number of Re- 
publicans casting a complimentary vote for one of their own jDolitical 
faith. To this complimentary vote, however, there was one exception. 
Mr. J. A. Shorter, a colored Republican Representative from Hinds 
County, arose, and in a short speech stated that, without wronging his 
party, he had an ojjportuuity to cast his vote for Mr. Lamar, "the emi- 
nent statesman," who was "the choice of a very large majority of the 
intelligent and substantial citizens of my county and of the State." 

Thus was Mr. Lamar returned as his own successor in the face of a 
most aggressive and bitter opposition, with a calcium light turned on 
his whole record, so that every incident of it was illuminated; and re- 
turned in such fashion that no vindication could have been more tri- 
umphant and conclusive. 

The most striking and valuable feature about his victory, and that 
which all the papers in their current discussions emphasized, was wdiat 
ex-Senator Eustis, of Louisiana, in a congratulatory letter to him, ex- 
pressed thus: 

To have secured such a triumph by bravely following your own convictions in the 
most trying moments, relying upon the soljer judgment of your constituents for vindi- 
cation, must fill the measure of your ambition. 



448 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

To which observation let this be added: that oulj' thus could such a 
triumph be secured; or, indeed, any triumph really worth securing. 

How convincing and final Mr. Lamar's vindication was may be judged 
from the following editorial item in the Clarion, of December 24, 1884: 

Brother Frantz, of the Brandon Republican, pointf* a moral by saying that several 
years ago he disapproved the course of the Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar ; but when he found 
that he was almost alone in his opinion, he came to the conclusion that it was possi- 
ble he might be mistaken, and he ceased his war on the Senator. This sliows that, 
among his otlier virtues, Brotlier Frantz is impressionable. To our brethren of the 
press we commend the habit of taliing an occasional view of tlie surroundings. 



CHAPTER XXYII. 

Mrs. Lamar's Failing Health— The Tariti' Speech of 1883 — Press Comments— Speech 
on National Aid to Eiliicution — Presidential Campaign of 1884 — The H<jlly Springs 
Speech — The Aberdeen Speech — The News of Cleveland's Election — Death of Mrs. 
Lamar— Senator Edmnnds' Condolences — Letter to a Friend — The Sherman-Davis 
Imbroglio— Senator Hawley's Resolution — The Debate — Mr. Lamar's Speech, and 
His Last — -Letter to West on Davis and Secession. 

NOTWITHSTANDING his great political triumph, the year 1882 
was perhaps the saddest and most trying of Mr. Lamar's life. 
The health of his wife had been failing for two years. In April she 
became suddenly much worse, her illness developing some very dis- 
tressing complications. For several months Mr. Lamar devoted him- 
self wholly to lier, with infinite patience and tenderness. 
In September he wrote to his sister, Mrs. Ross: 

Dear Sister: You have shared with me so much of the burden of my affliction that 
I shall not cast upon your spirit the shadow which now darkens my life. But I must 
tell you that, in all this desolation, you have filled to ovei'Howing the measure of a 
true sister's devotion and tenderness. In my blackest moments of gloom the recollec- 
tion of your kindness and sympathy and love sheds a sweet and steady light upon my 
soul. Please believe this: and if I have ever seemed impatient or moody or abrupt, 
ascribe it to anything except a want of grateful appreciation of all that I have received 
at your hands. 

I have not yet gathered myself up, and am still without any delinite plan for the 
future. But I shall not remain in this state long. A death of hope and happiness has 
fallen upon me. But, though it has crushed all ambition and desire for the ]ileasures of 
life out of me, it has left in me an unabated sense of the duties of life: and I think 
that I shall arouse to full activity in the discharge of them. 

In December Mrs. Lamar's health had somewhat improved, and Mr. 
Lamar was present at the opening of Congress. On the 1st of Decem- 
ber lie wrote to a friend: 

A very sad domestic affliction has for many months withdrawn my attention from 
my public duties, and I resume them under many disadvantages. I fear that I shall 
need indulgent consideration in order to escape unfavorable criticism, but shall not 
murmur if it comes. 

Under such unpropitious conditions was it that he prepared and de- 
livered his speech of February 7, 1883, ou the tariff.* 

That important subject, which has since played so leading a part in 
national politics, making and casting out parties, was then coming into 
a new prominence. Mr. Lamar's speech will be found to be a most ex- 
cellent presentation of the condition of the question and of the debate; 

♦Appendix, No. 21. 

29 (449) 



450 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

and it embraces a remarkably clear aud instructive analysis of all the 
previous tariif legislation, iu its practical relations to, and results uijou, 
the industries of the United States. 

Of this speech the Ereniiu/ Star (Washington) said: 
The feature of the Senate proceedings to-day was the speech of Mr. Lamar on tlie 
Tarifl" Bill. He was listened to with marked attention by the Senators of both sides 
of the Chamber, and, though apparently suffering somewhat from hoareeness, he made 
a strong and able speech. He reviewed the history of manufactories in this country, 
from the colonial period down, and w-ent into the history of tariff legislation. ^lany 
members of the House occupied seats on the floor. 

The Xcir York Tr/binie commented thus: 

It is a misfortune for "Sir. Lamar, ami not for Mr. Lamar only, that his brilliant 
rhetoric and impressive oratory have not always been employed for the public wel- 
fiire. When a man of such gifts makes a mistake, and gives his aid to the wrong 
side, the fact is sure to be lemembered. Thereafter men may admire the orator, but 
they distrust his reasoning, and do not dare to follow his leadership. There are men 
living in poverty who lost everything they had in the world because they followed 
the brilliant Lamar in defense of slavery and in secession for the sake of slavery. 
There are men living who know now that the white people of the South never made 
a more costly mistake than when they pushed the former slaves into an attitude of 
permanent political hostilit}- by resisting reconstruction and by the modes of that re- 
sistance. The colored jieople were thus thrown into a solid and compact body, utteidy 
without confidence in the good faith or good will of the property-owning whites, and 
liable to be misletl by demagogues and knaves. Yet no one was moi-e earnest or elo- 
quent in resisting reconstruction than Mr. Lamar, and in no other State have extreme 
means been more systematically employed to put the majority of the people at the 
mercy of a minority than in Mississippi, where his intiuence is so great. In short, 
for more than a quarter of a century Mr. Lamar's eloquence has been employed to 
lead his people into disastrous errors; and some of them have been the most fatal 
mistakes ever made by a civilized community. If the South has fallen into deep 
ditches, it has been not so much because the people were l.)lind as because they per- 
sisted in following blind leaders. 

Now Mr. Lamar employs his eloquence to defeat reasonable modifications of the 
tariff. . . . As usual, Mr. Lamar is strong in rhetoric and weak in reasoning. His 
premises, if grantecl, would not support his conclusion. We do not propose to follow 
him this time into a debate about the theory of protection. The people have decided 
that question, and Sir. Lamar is shrewd enough to know that his party would have not 
the slightest chance of success if it did not retain some means of cheating a part of the 
voters with the idea that it was really in favor of protection of their industries. But 
if it were true that the country ought to move as fast as it safely can toward a tariff 
for revenue only, as Mr. Lamar urges, still it would not lie the part of good sense to 
reject at this session the moderate reductions which protectionists have proposed. 
Mr. Lamar is trying to lead his people into anotlier disastrous blunder, even from his 
own point of view. He thinks that they ought to get down from the top story to the 
ground, liut insists tluit they must not use the stairs, but must jump out of the eighth- 
story window. 

In a peroration more impassioned than accurate, Mr. Lamar advises the manufac- 
turers of this country to take the lead themselves in reducing the taritt', lest worse be- 
fall them. He does not seem to know that this is exactly what they are trying to do, 
and exactly what lie is resisting. . . . Had Mr. Lamar been as careful about facts 
as he is about metaphors and polished (ihra^es, he would have realized that such a 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 451 

peroration, reeommending the precise course wliich he was opposing, was not calcu- 
lated to give his speech great weight with reasonable men. Apparently his judgment 
was drowned in the flood of his own eloquence. Once more he is a blind leader of 
the blind. 

The Neiv York Evening Po!<f said: 

There is an effort made by the advocates of protection to cry down Mr. Lamar's 
speech in the Senate against the protective system as the utterance of a man who was 
always given to wild fancies, and who had many times in the past misled the peojjle 
of the South, greatly to their own detriment. This will not do. There is no public man 
of prominence in the South to whom such a description would be more unjust tlinn 
to ]\[r. Lamar. . . . With such a record of patriotic and statei-manlike endeavors 
and of self-sacrificing fidelity to his convictions behind him, Jlr. Lamar may claim 
that respect for his utterances which established character and ability command; 
and no doubt he will have that respect from all fair-minded men among his fellow- 
citizens. 

While a great part of his argument against protection as a system is not novel in 
character, and in the nature of the case cannot be — for it is a well-worn subject — he 
sets forth two ideas with peculiar force, which deserve the most earnest reflection on 
the part of the American people. One is that this is probably the only country in the 
world whose iieople were severely and superfluously taxed for a series of years only 
liecause their rulers were unable to devise a mode of i-educing that taxation, and this 
only because taxes were not imposed for the only legitimate jiurpose of raising reve- 
nue, but for the purpose of paying liouuties to certain business interests. We present, 
therefore, the curious spectacle of a people complaining of excessive taxation, pos- 
sessing also the supreme power, through our Representatives, to do with that taxation 
what we please, but vainly struggling to get rid of the burden because it conceals and 
disguises itself in a variety of specious pretences. How true this is, and how pitiable 
is the exhibition, the debates in Congress demonstrate every day. 

The other leading thought in Mr. Lamar's speech is that the protective system has 
brought forth a vast organization of capital and labor which professes itself to be de- 
pendent for existence, not upon the natural development of resources and tlie natural 
growth of industries, but upon taxation by the government; "two thousand millions 
of capital and millions of people — the one for profit, the other for bread and butter- 
depend upon an aye and no vote of the government." And after a high tarifl' of 
twenty years' duration the industries so propped up profess to be in a state of embar- 
rassment, tottering on the verge of disaster, their respective representatives declaiing 
on oath that if the duty affecting them l:)e reduced their business will be destroyed. 
It needs no further argument to show that such a condition of things is, in the long 
run, intoleral)le and untenable, especially in a country with free institutions. 

It is of especial importance that this lesson is so clearly understood and so philosoph- 
ically and impressively taught Ijy a Southern statesman. The Southern people, after the 
enormous waste and losses of tlie war, are naturally anxious to repair tljeir fortunes; 
and to this end they are inclined to grasp at any device that bids fair to heli) them on. 
The building up of manufacturing industries in the Southern States strikes their minds 
as eminently desirable, and justly so. As a protective tariff is by many said to be the 
most efficient means to start up manufacturing enterprises over night, a multitude of 
Southern men, whatever their political creeds may have been in the past, suddenly con- 
ceive the idea that a protective tariff is just the thing that they need, as some years ago 
they thought tliat tlie inflation of irredeemable paper notes was justthe thing to make 
money in the South cheap and plenty. And the belief in these things is to-day thought 
by many in that region to be evidence of a progressive spirit. It is to. such seductive 
fancies that Senator Lamar's argument and appeal addresses itself with peculiar perti- 



452 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

nency, and we hope with effect. They have to learn that solid prosperity must l)e 
based upon a safer foundation tlian a deceptive system of taxes; that industries will 
grow really strong only upon a kind of food very ditferent from artidcial stimulants, 
and that business will never be safe as long as its success or failure depends upon an 
aye or no vote of Congress. Senator Lamar rendered a great service to the South 
when he took so Ijold a stand upon the financial question against the disturbed fancies 
of his own people. He does the same thing now when combating the false notions 
of progress entertained by many of them. 

All of the Kepublican papers did not treat Mr. Lamar's speech as did 
the Tribune. Many of them complimented it in the highest terms, and 
the Democratic papers generally pronounced it a grand contribution to 
Democratic literature from one thoroughly a Democrat in every fiber. 
The New York Free Trade Clnb passed a formal resolution of thanks, 
and ordered five thousand copies for general distribution. The Herald 
characterized it as "the most masterly speech yet made in Congress on 
the tariff question." 

During this session of Congress Mr. Lamar prepared another elabo- 
rate speech on the Southern question, apropos of an investigation into 
alleged election outrages in MississipiDi, especially in Copiah County; 
but the speech was never delivered. 

His next speech, and the last of any considerable length which he 
made in the Senate, was that of March 28, 1884, on the Senate Bill No. 
B9S, to aid in the establishment and temporary sitpport of common 
schools.* As he himself said, he had "watched the progress of this 
scheme with deep interest and intense solicitude, from the time it was 
first introduced into the other House, many years ago, down to the 
present time; " and in his opinion it was " the first step and the most 
important step that the government has ever taken in the direction of 
the solution of what is called the race problem." 

It will be remembered that in the debate with Mr. Blaine, in Decem- 
ber, 1878, one of the points which he made against that distinguished 
statesman was that he was bringing forward a partisan election outrage 
resolution, instead of " some well-devised scheme of public education 
by which this newly enfranchised race may be fitted to exercise their 
great duties as freemen and citizens and as the participants in the sov- 
ereignty of Commonwealths." 

The great events of the year 1884 were of course the nominations of 
the Presidential candidates and the elections in the fall. Mr. Lamar's 
choice for the Democratic nomination was Mr. Bayard, and he support- 
ed that gentleman with great zeal; but. acquiescing of course in the 
nomination made by the convejition, he took active jiart in the fall cam- 
paign, and made a number of speeches in tlie canvass. Of these the 
most notable were delivered at Holly Springs and Aberdeen. In re- 

*Api)entlix, No. 'l-l. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. i'>'6 

spect to the Holly Springs speech, before making it he wrote to Geu. 
"Walthall as follows: 

My idea of the speech is this: 

I shall say tliat since 1857 I have made more speeclies to the people of Marsliall 
than to those of any otlier county in the State, and am unable to say anything new 
to them. The subjects of interest are very niucli tiie same as those whicli we have 
been discussint; ever since 1875-76. Tlie topic is unchanged; my opinions on it are 
unclianged. Tliose opinions are well known to yon; and I am here in response to 
your invitation, not to announce new doctrines or to advance new arguments, but to 
reiterate convictions deeply fixed and often expressed. 

All can be expressed in one sentence : We xuhilc people oitght lo keep united. So much 
of our highest interest, of our truest prosperity, and of our best hope depends upon 
this union, that brethren of the same blood must not allow themselves to divide be- 
tween contending parties or over the claims of party candidates; for here in Missis- 
sippi unity of purpose and concert of action (and very vigorous action at that) are not 
a policy, not a sentiment, not a principle, but a supreme necessity of self-preservation, 
an only refuge from ruin and woe. 

Let me read you some words from the liorders of eternity. A short time before 
the death of Senator Ben Hill (a few descriptive remarks about liim) I received this 
letter from a friend in Georgia: 

" My Dear Cotisin Lucius : A few days since, in company with a friend, I called upon 
Senator Hill. I had not seen him sini:e the early days of the Hancock camiiaign, at 
a time when his grievous affliction had just begun to excite apprehension. IMet at the 
door by the faithful son wlio bears his name, we were warned that we could but pass 
into his room and shake his hand, as his strength was fast going with the deepening 
shadow of the close of the summer day. In a comfortable sitting room, near a win- 
dow, sat the great Georgian in an invalid's chair, while the tender hands of a 
daugliter fanned his fevered brow. There was nothing left of Ben Hill Imt the gi-eat 
gaunt form, and those luminous eyes which, made larger by suffering, seemed to be 
surcharged with soul and almost capable of speech. AVith his collar thrown open at 
the neck, his liands lying listlessly upon the arms of the chair, and his head slightly 
inclined downward and forward, he reminded me of the dying Napoleon as illustrated 
in the celebrated statue in the Corcoran Art Gallery; while his eyes followed one with 
a sad and questioning power, like those of Charlotte Corday peering through the bars 
of her prison window. Motioning us to chairs near his own, he grasped our hands and 
sat for many moments in silence, gazing fixedly into my face as if to read my thoughts. 
Alas! he read but too plainly that thouirht, which was: 'The hand of death is upon 
him.' He suddenly raised himself and, fronting us fully, with a mighty efibrt, as if 
in direct response to my unuttered thought, he said: 'I had desired to live for two 
reasons. The chief one was that I might make one more speech to the people of the 
whole country, which I have partly prepared, upon the relations between the white 
man and the black man. I am in favor of giving the negro equal and exact justice; 
nothing less and nothing more. My friend, we cannot have good government or sta- 
ble society when one party seeks to dominate the other by the use of the negro vote.' 
His voice had grown stronger and more distinct as he spoke ; and then came the old 
Hash to his eye, the familiar poise of his head, and his remarkable gesticulation. His 
attendants gave evident signs of alarm at this unusual effort, and in obedience to their 
suggestions we arose to go, telling him that we could not permit him to injure himself 
by an attempt to talk." 

Though there is much else in this letter descriptive of this sad and pathetic scene, 
I shall not read further. 

Fellow-citizens, if I felt free tr, follow my own wish, this is all the speech I should 



454 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR.- 

iiiake to you to-day. When I think of the miraculous deliverance Missisissippi had 
in 1876, 1 am breathless with wonder and filled with unspeakable gratitude ; but if we 
undo now the results of that work, we shall undo it and undo ourselves for a whole gen- 
eration, if not forever. There may be many questions on which there have been wrong 
decisions. Those wrongs are not irretrievable. AVe can correct them, and must do 
so. Evils may have crept in — evils of legislation, evils of administration. They, too, 
can be repaired. They are not so vital and ])ermanent as shoulil tempt you (and I 
say this with deep conviction of its imjiortance) to allow them to divide you. You 
must keep united if you would preserve whatever is dear to you in government, pre- 
cious to you in society, and priceless in humanity. 

I then go into the Presidential election. Mississippi is' part of the nation. Her 
people cannot abnegate the rights or decline the duties of American citizens. They 
must take jiart. 

The letter then goes on to sketch the body of the speech, dealing with 
(1) the universal and deep disapproval of the then existing administra- 
tion of Federal affairs manifested all over the country, and the causes 
of that disapproval; (2) the extravagance of the public expenditures 
and the burdensome taxation, including the viciousuess of the tariff — 
all as more fully shown in other connections in this chapter — and then 
proceeds : 

AVinding up witli the proofs of the friendship and regard of the Democratic party 
to the ])eople as contrasted by the subservience of the Republican party to the privi- 
leged classes of capital. One striking illustration is this: 

The Democratic party gave to the agricultural interests of the country territory and 
land exceeding in area the limits of the original thirteen States: Louisiana, Texas, Is ew 
Mexico, California, Florida, Ar-izona, etc. The Republicans, on the other liand, took 
from the people and donated to railroad corporations two hundred and seventy- 
eight thousand seven hundred and fifty-eight square miles. Sam Cox says this was 
more than the area of the original thirteen States by seventy-five million acres. 
Blaine, in his recent work, states that the ac(juisition of Louisiana added to our empire 
more territory than was wrested by the Revolution from England. 

On reducing the l>urdens of taxation, I think that the interests of the South are 
with the country at large in voting for Cleveland and Hendricks. 

Now suppose that these reforms could be effected in some way before this election 
takes place. If the one hundred thousand officeholders were forbidden to contribute, 
or could not be assessed any money for the elections; if marshals and revenue col- 
lectors were made to stand aloof from interference, and district attorneys forbidden to 
intinudate judges of election ; if corporations had no longer any motive to pay their 
hundred thousand dollars to buy a State; if the tariff monopolist had no longer any 
hope of perpetuating his organization for plunder ; would then:' be any doubt of Blaine's 
defeat? AVould not Cleveland be elected by an almost two-thirds majority? 

I shall try to condense all the foregoing as much as possible in order to give my full 
time to the importance of maintaining our control of our own affairs, the interest 
which the Republican party has in putting us under negro rule, etc. I have not even 
begun to elaborate my thoughts on that part of it as yet. 

The speech, delivered on the 6th of October, was thus reported liythe 
Mviiiphls Appeal : 

Holly Springs, October 6. 
One (if the greatest gatherings ever witnessed in Marshall Countv assembled here 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES 455 

to-day, tlie occasion being the raising of a mammoth Clevelaml ami Hendricks and 
Morgan pole. Tiie speakers were Gov. Lowry and Senator Lamar. Gov. Lowry first 
addressed the crowd from a platform which had been erected in front of the court- 
house. At the conclusion of his speech the audience repaired to the courthouse, which 
was filled to overflowing, where Senator Lamar took the .stand and delivered one of 
the ablest speeches of the canvass. 

After some introductory remarks, the leading feature of which was an allusion to a 
scene around the deathbeil of Senator Ben Hill and the dying utterances of ( ieorgia's 
great statesman as to what should be the policy of the South, Senator Lamar said that, 
while he thanked the people for the cordial reception given him, he must not forget 
that he had been invited to Holh' Springs, not for the exchange of compliments, but to 
give to the people of Mississippi his views as to the part they sh(juld take in the pend- 
ing election ; that he should enter upon that duty with a purpose to avoid as far as 
possible all reflections upon men and all unjust imputations upon parties. He believed 
that among the vast majority of the jieople of this country there exists a profound 
sentiment of discontent and dissatisfaction with the manner in which the government 
of the country has been for years administered. This disapproval and condemnation 
is not characteristic of any one or more sections of the country, but is general 
throughout the whole country. It is not manifested in excited or noisy demonstra- 
tions gotten up to influence voters and arouse enthusiasm (there never had beenacan- 
v.ass so calm and unimpassioned), but in the convictions which sensible and solid men 
express as to their duty in this crisis. Many thousands of Republicans who have 
heretofore supported that party, and who are still devoted to its principles and deter- 
mined to make no sacrifice of them, are foremost in this protest against the vices of 
national administratio ., its lawless usurpations, the corruption which revels in high 
places, the prostitution of public offices to private gain, the depression which presses 
upon the material interests of the country; and that with this protest was a feeling 
that some change, some relief, some new departure is essential. Hitherto this senti- 
ment, though strongly manifested in Congressional and State elections, has failed to 
change the methods of the national administration, or expel from power the party 
which directs and controls it. Mr. Lamar then spoke of the influences which up 
to this time had enabled the Republican party to maintain its power and continue its 
policy in spite of the opjjosition of a majority of the people, and said those influences 
lost much of their force in this canvass. One cause which has heretofore restrained 
thousands of honest Repuljlicans is tlie sentiment of allegiance to party, attachment 
to the name of the " grand old party," pride in its past acliievemeuts, faith in its creed, 
reverence for its leaders, and a hope that it would slough off" its corrupt elements, 
bring to the front its best and purest leaders, and itself effect the reforms demanded 
by the people. These expectations have been frustrated. The history of each suc- 
cessive administration is a history of disappointed hopes and violated pledges. The 
Credit Jlobiller in one administration, embezzling Cabinet officers under another, gi- 
gantic SUr Route frauds under a third, a President shot down, the shameless purchase 
of a State publicly boasted of, open interference in popular elections by Federal officers, 
systematic assessments upon salaries drawn from the public treasury to influence and 
control elections, have convinced them that only by ejecting the Republican party from 
power can the people realize a pure, economical administration of the government. 
They feel that they cannot longer supi^ort such a party, and have declared their pur- 
pose" to vote for Cleveland and Hendricks. [Applause.] This determination seems 
strengthened by the actions of the respective conventions of the two parties. That 
section of the Republican party which, in the Chicago convention, represented the 
demand for reform was a powerful one in numbers and character and influence. It 
included some of the purest ami ablest and most eloquent leaders of the party. The 



456 LUCIUS Q. C. LAiVAIl: 

nomination made by the convention was regarded as an overwlielnung defeat of that 
wing of the party, an ignoring of its demands, and an offensive deiiaiice of its opposi- 
tion. The nomination of Gov. Cleveland was forced on the Democratic convention 
over the heads of leaders beloved and honored in the party, simply because his name 
was associated with reform. He had fought with intrepidity and success against cor- 
ruption and official abuse in every station to which he had been called. His nomi- 
nation, if ratified by election, will inspire every young man of ambition with confi- 
dence in the efficiency of virtue and ability to secure their appropriate rewards in the 
honors and offices of the Republic. His defeat will teach the opposite— namely, that 
the record of fidelity to public trust and of a reformer of public abuses is no element 
of strength in a candidate for the sutfrages and confidence of the American people. 
Another cause which has operated in previous elections against the cooperation of all 
friends of administrative reform, was the prejudice against the Democratic party, an 
unwillingness to restore it to power, and a distrust of its ability to efl'ect the needed 
reforms. This prejudice is fast wearing ofi". The Independent Republicans now feel 
that the work of reform cannot be accomplished as long as the Rejiublican party is in 
power. To admit that it cannot be done through the Democratic party is to give up 
the cause of refoi-m. To allow their dislike of the Democratic party to make them 
continue the Republican party in jiower is to ratify the existing system and to sur- 
render ah hope of good . government. Independent Republicans realize this: and 
when warned that by defeating the Republican party they endanger important inter- 
ests, they reply that the influences and tendencies now debasing the character and 
tone of the public service, the corrupt use of public patronage to perpetuate its power, 
the narrow and violent partisanship which has usurped the place of a broad statesman- 
ship, the methods which liave lowered the standard of official honesty, inevitably lead 
to greater dangere than any now in sight. The defeat of the party responsible for these 
evils, and under which they have grown up, they believe, will give a deathblow to the 
system ; and if the result is the ascendency of the Democratic party, it will come into 
power with a warning of like fate should it imrsue like methods. But the distrust of the 
Democratic p;u-ty is rapidly wearing off with liberal and patriotic Republicans. The 
country is now accustomed to seeing Democratic majorities in Congress without appre- 
hension of unwise or hurtful legislation. It now sees, and expects to see, the legislation 
of those Democratic majorities free from venality and corruption. Powerful corpora- 
tions and the agents of plundering capitalists exert no influence upon the action of a 
Democratic Congress. DeGolyer contracts are not made with the chairman of its Com- 
mittee on Appropriations. Credit :\Iobilier frauds are not placed in the hands of the 
chairman of its Committee on "Ways ami IMeans, or of any other important commit- 
tees, or any of its Speakers. No scandal or charge of corruption or official indeco- 
rum' is made against Mr. Carlisle, Mr. Randall, or Mr. Kerr. True, a characterless ad- 
venturer attempted to smirch the fair name of >Ir. Kerr; but tlie House, by a unani- 
mous vote of both sides, put its brand upon the calumny and its author. 

The system of retrenchment in expenditures and reduction of taxation, to which 
the Democratic party is pledged, and which it has sought to carry out, assumes an 
avoidable means of cutting off one of the greatest sources of Federal patronage and 
administrative coriuption. The eftbvt to raise tlie cry of a solid South is again made, 
but this cry has lost much of its efficacy in checking the aspirations of the people 
North for progress and reform in the government. They know the unreality of any 
danger from that cause; they know that the North is the dominant section of this 
country, and will continue to control the national policy, whatever party be in power. 
AVhenever a majority of the thoughtful people deem a change in the national admin- 
istration necessary, they can make it without any relative change in Southern senti- 
ment or influence. Six Northern States alone have a larger electoral vote than all 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 451 

the South coinl)int'd. Each of those States, save one, has given Democratic majori- 
ties at different times within the last few years. Should these States for the time be- 
ing choos^e to wield this government through the instrumentality of the Democratic 
party, they can do so, and hold the solid South as a minority, as impotent in a Demo- 
cratic caucus as it is now in the government. The just and intelligent people of the 
North have no apprehension that the South, either solid or divided, can control the 
action of the government against the interests of the North. They have seen the 
South, through lier Representatives and Senators, present in Congress, sometimes as 
part of the minority, and then as part of the majority, in both Houses, without de- 
ducting anything from the national honor or doing any harm to national prosperity. 
There is no such thing as a solid South as a factor in legislation. Upon every ques- 
tion of national policy affecting either our foreign or our internal interests the South- 
ern members show as great diversity of sentiment and independence of action as any 
other section, and ]ierhaps more. Senator Lamar said that he could instance measure 
after measure of currency, of taxation, of appropriations, on which the athnities of 
political affiliation and legislative coiiperation are in no sense of the term sectional. 
The effort to maintain their power by kindling anew passions which ought to subside, 
and destroying peace and reconciliation liy lighting up the camptires of conflicts that 
are ended, he has strong grounds for believing will not meet with success. Senator 
Lamar said that the South has as great stake in this election as any other section. 
The grounds upon which the Independent Republicans have bolted their party under 
its present organization, though taken with no reference to the South, are as vital to 
her interests as they are important to the interests of the whole Union. No portion 
of the Union has experienced so sorely the corrupt and oppressive uses of Federal 
patronage. We are having them now in this very election in full operation. Senator 
Lamar then spoke at some length of the present system of excessive taxation now 
maintained Ijy the Republican party, which annually accumulates in the national 
treasury a large amount of surplus over and above the most extravagant expenditures 
of the government. He exposed with great power the different pretexts upon 
which the Republican party had refused the universal demand for the reduction of 
these burdens of taxation. He showed that the maintenance of manufactures did not 
require these large surpluses of revenue and the excessive and needless taxation 
which creates them. He refuted the pretense that the object of the Republican party, 
in keeping up this burdensome war tax, was to increase or sustain the wages of Amer- 
can labor. He spoke of its lilighting effects upon the interests of agriculture. This 
part of his speech was very elaborate, and the audience listened to it with great inter- 
est and frequent marks of approval. Mr. Lamar here referred to the effort, evidently 
made at the North, to divert attention from the issue of reform in the government by 
appealing to sectional prejudices, and read from a book recently put out by Raum, in- 
dorsed by Republican Senators. He also read extracts from a speech purporting to 
be delivered by Senator Hoar, at Tremont Temple, in which he was reported to have 
said: "There are three States, :Mississippi, Louisiana, and South Carolina, to say noth- 
ing of others, in which, beyond all question, the electoral vote recorded at the coming 
election will have no relation whatever to the will of their people. Unless the brave 
and gallant men who are acting with Malione can win justice from the fears of the 
Democrats, we must add to these States Virginia. These three States cast twenty-six 
electoral votes; with Virginia, they cast forty. Now, giving Gov. Cleveland all the 
States that his most enthusiastic supporters can hope for, he will fall far short of an 
election unless the votes of these States, wrested from their Republican majorities by 
crime and fraud, be counted in his favor. The young reformer who votes for Gov. 
Cleveland cannot help to el'ct him. He can only help to make possible the success- 
ful accomiilishnient of the crime by which a minority shall usurp the government of 



458 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

the country. The process is very simple and familiar; it is known as the Mississippi 
plan. . . . My friends, I know whereof I speak. I was charged a few months 
ago with the duty of investigating the election methods in the State of jMississijipi." 
Had he said that he helieved whereof he spake, he would have spoken more accurate- 
ly — for Mr. Hoar's belief. It is true, Mi-. Hoar was chairman of the committee to in- 
vestigate certain occurrences in this State. As to his method of investigating. I will 
speak directly. He made to the Senate a report of whiclj I believe he is admitted to 
be the author. I wish to read you one extract from that report: "A company, con- 
sisting of about one hundi-ed and fifty persons, was organized, under the command of 
Erasmus Wheeler, who had the title of major. These men were mounted, nhiety of 
them armed with guns; the remainder, w-ith jiistols buckled around them, army style, 
or hanging on the horns of their saddles. Aljout two weeks befoie the election the 
ai'med company above named began riding about the country, taking with them a 
cannon. They began operations at the lower end of Beat X6. .", but for twelve days 
ranged over the county. Their operations were very largely conducted at night. 
Tliey kept up a constant tiring with their guns and cannon. The cannon was l)urst. 
but was replaced by another. These disturlxinces, which are compared by several 
witnesses who had been soldiers, to the tiring in a hotly contested l)attle, were com- 
mitted in the dead of night in the localities where the colored people dwelt in larse 
numbers. They killed, wounded, whipped, and otherwise outraged, a large number 
of persons." Now, fellow-citizens, I ask you to note this statement: ''They killed, 
wounded, whipped, and otherwise outraged, a large number of persons." You will 
observe how explicit and unqualified that statement is. How many persons would 
you suppose from reading that sentence were killed? How many are meant by the 
phrase, "a large number of persons?" AVhen it was ascertained that seventy-five 
persons were slain in the Cincinnati riot the telegraph announced that " the number 
of persons killed was not so large as supposed.'.' But what does a "large number" 
mean when applied to Copiah? Would not half of seventy-five be implied in such a 
phrase? Would not at least twenty? Fellow-citizens, the fact is that the testimony 
taken by that committee proves that but one person was killed, and he by unknown 
jiersons. That statement has been read by every Senator and member of Congress. 
The reijort has been circulated all over the North. Republican speakers are to-day 
reverberating the statement tliat a large number of persons were killed in the county 
of f bpiah during the two weeks before the election. And the good jjeople of the 
North who lielieve it regard Mississijipi as a State filled with a population of blood- 
stained desperadoes. Tlie investigation of that committee was confined to the alleged 
disturbances in one county, Copiah ; but the committee did not go to Copiah at all. 
Not a member of the committee set his foot witliin the boundary of the State, unless 
he did so when they were in transit along the gulf coast on their way to New Or- 
leans. Had he done so, he would have seen the just and equitable operation of 
equal laws (witliout a trace of privilege) upon both races. He would have seen the 
blacks sitting on juries, often in equal numbers witli the whites, and sharing in the 
administration of penal and civil law; lie would have seen colleges, academies, 
and scliools for both races, supported by the self-imposed taxes of the whites, to an 
extent that has won the admiration of that noble and able educator, Dr. Mayo, of 
Massachusetts; he would liave seen Christian churches all over tlie land, but he 
would have heard no lectures ujion the "mistakes of Moses;" he would have seen 
in Jackson a Legislature in session, and white and black Legislators harmoniouslj' co- 
operating in the enactment of laws looking to the interests and jn'osperity of botli 
races. And these colored Legislators would have informed Mr. Hoar that, with the 
exception of the disturbances in Copiah and one or two other points, the election 
he had come to look into was as fair, free, and peaceable an election as ever was 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 459 

held in any State of the Union; tliat no violence, eitlier in tlie canvass or at the polls, 
occurred to deter voters ; notliing, indeed, to hinder a full vote, and not even a com- 
plaint that the votes as cast were not counted ; and that it was also conducted with a 
good temper on both sides, such as liad never been seen in the State before. They 
would have found a white population Ijusy in energetic work upon their own busi- 
ness, with scarcely a man among them who was not earning a support fur himself or 
providing for liis household by the toil of hand or brain; they would have found 
the blacks a contented and cheerful population, secure in the wages that reward lal)or, 
and happy in their homes — in a word, they would have seen and heard in the fields 
and on the streets, in the factories and in the shops, the unsummoned and unsuborned 
testimony of the daily life of the State, and would have been furnished with the 
measure ami balance by which to appreciate the exaggeration of partisans and to dis- 
criminate between the accidental outbursts of local passions and the deliberate action 
of an entire community. And perhaps tliey would have been struck with the fact 
that all this was the work of their fellow-citizens of their own blood, wrought upon a 
commonwealth which eight years ago was the seat of a political ami social pandemo- 
nium, a pandemonium createil by a liideous rule that some men, under false cry of 
outrage on the ballot box, are seeking to revive and fasten again upon the State. But 
none of these things did Mr. Hoar and his committee see, and hence they do not ap- 
pear in the report nor in his late sjieech. Mr. Lamar tlien discussed the measure re- 
ported by the Republican Judiciary Committee to the last Senate. He cited some of 
its provisions, to show that it was designed to practically divest the State courts of 
every vestige of jurisdiction over cases arising under the laws of the State in which 
a negro is involved, either as a party or a witness or a juror. Another bill was intro- 
duced, to make the elections in the States still more subject to the supervision and in- 
fluence and persecution of Federal officers ; and he declared it to be more violative of t lie 
constitution than the bill already declared by the Supreme Court to be unconstitu- 
tional. He also referred to the recommendations of the Committee on Elections, to 
disfranchise the State of Mississippi in certain contingencies. This part of his speech, 
his denunciation of these measures, was in a strain of invective and reasoning. 

The Appeal devoted three editorials to this speech, of which the prin- 
cipal was this: 

Senator L. Q. C. Lamar's great speech delivered at Holly Springs, Miss., yesterday is 
more likely to make a deep impression than anything which was ever before pre- 
sented from this great statesman. Senator Lamar never appeals to the public judg- 
ment except on questions of political conscience and duty as a citizen and patriot ; and 
his acumen, force, and moral intrepidity, lay strong grasp on all minds intelligent 
enough to follow his train of argument, to comprehend his lofty patriotism and 
matchless statesmanship. The speech is broad, able, and conservative, and yet aldaze 
with enthusiasm and ringing in every sentence with the earnestness and honesty 
which cliaracterize all of Lamar's utterances. We are told by private dispatches 
from Holly Springs last night that the speech was regarded as one of the noVilest 
efforts of patriotism ami eloquence ever delivered in that place. Tbe immense assem- 
bly listened to it with the most profound attention, and never was attention more 
munificently rewarded. It is reported that from the first sentence to the close the 
Senator held sway over the minds and hearts of those present, w^eaving one of the 
most beautiful, solid, logical, and resplendent chains of reason and truth that ever 
bound a crowd to the spell of miglitv and resistless eloquence. Lamar's tribute to the 
Independent Republicans will electrify the whole country. The speech will be gen- 
erally read and attract the attention of the nation, for no public speaker now in polit- 
ical iite in the United States so closely rivets the attention of the put)lic as the bril- 



460 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAH: 

liant Senator from ^Mississippi. In tlie Senate of the United States he has repeated 
again and again tlie triumphs of parliamentary eloquence wliicli used to illustrate the 
era of Clay and AVebster and Callioun, and this last great speech will attract as mucli 
attention as the utterances of this triumvirate upon the hustings. . . . 

These brilliant and thrilling speeches were Mr. Lamar's last cam- 
paign efforts. It was his great good fortune that the last echoes of his 
voice from the hustings should be lost in the psean of victory for his 
people. 

The November elections came. Oxford was but a small railroad town 
in Mississippi, and did not receive telegraphic news so quickly as the 
great commercial or political centers; but, for some unexplained reason, 
on this occasion the great tidings that there was in fact a possiblity of 
the final success of the Democracy was unusually slow in reaching that 
community. The election was over by two days, and all of the excite- 
ment about it had died away in the belief that the usual defeat had 
been sustained and the Republicans were again triumphant. Mr. La- 
mar was staying with his son-iu-law, Mr. Mayes, in the outskirts of the 
town. He was in bed, half sick, worn out with his canvass, ajid dis- 
heartened by another defeat. A young man from the village came hal- 
looing and leaping, waving a telegram for "the Colonel." It was from 
Gen. Gordon: "Thank God! Cleveland is elected. Turn the rascals 
out!" He glanced at it, and said: "I don't believe it. Gordon is too 
impulsive; he is deceiving himself." However, in a very few moments 
confirmation came from other and various quarters. He then sat up in 
bed, and, without the least sign of exultation, but looking very serious, 
exclaimed, "It is a terrible responsibility!" and fell into a long and 
deep reverie, one of those phases in which those who knew him rightly 
knew that he was engaged in earnest thought. The overwhelming flood 
of twenty-eight years' duration had rolled away; the Democratic party, 
, which had ruled the xHestinies of the country for sixty years of its exist- 
ence and then had been overturned in a ruin apparently hopeless and 
irremediable, had been restored to power. The labors of his later life 
were about to be crowned in the success of his party, and the dead past 
had buried its dead; but the current of his feelings was too deep and 
strong to break out into the sparkle aiid Imbljle of jubilation in the 
sunshine. He took no part in the meriymaking, for the spell of the 
future was tijion him. 

On the night of December 30 Mrs. Lamar died. The Senator was in 
Washington. Her health had not further failed visilily. She had re- 
gained something of her old-time vivacity, but it seems that her vital 
powers were ebbing. On the 28th she became feverish, and the .mem- 
bers of the family grew somewhat uneasy. Mr. Lamar was telgraphed 
for without her knowledge. During the entire day of her death she was 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 461 

moving about the room, even after her pulse had become imperceptible. 
She retired at her usual hour; and, apparently under the impression 
that it was the last day of the mouth and year, said to Mrs. Eoss: " Sis- 
ter Mollie, wouldu't it be a curious coincidence if I should wake up in 
heaven?" Those were her last words. She passed away in her sleep 
as a babe sinks into slumber upou its mother's bosom. 

Mr. Lamar arrived iu time to take a last look at the sweet face of her 
-who had blessed his life for thirty-seven years. He was a strong man. 
The frozen stillness of his sorrow might by a stranger to him have been 
mistaken for insensibility; but the writer saw in his eyes that which he 
wants never to see in a human face again. 

Among the numerous letters of condolence which Mr. Lamar received 
upon this sad occasion, the following from Senator Edmunds are of in- 
terest as showing the kind relations between the two gentlemen, not- 
withstanding their strong political differences: 

Washington, D. C, December 31, 188-1. 
Dear Mr. Lamar: I have learned from the morning papers of your affliction, and I 
feel that I must intrude on your sadness to tell you of my deep sympathy. I know— 
alas! too well— how little friends and friendly feeling can do ibr the hearts that ache 
and souls that taste the bitterness of such occasions; but still every true heart feels 
that it must express itself to those who suffer, in words of consolation and encourage- 
ment. May the Good Father of us all give you and yours in this hour of trial every 
blessing! Sincerely yours, George F. Edmunds. 

Washington. D. C, January 1-5, 18S5. 
Dear Mr. Lamar: Your kind and sad note of the 4th came duly. Do not grope. 
There is a hereafter ; there must be. Every rule of logic even leads to this result. Do 
not give yourself up to sorrow and seclusion. Strive— I know you do already— to help 
your fellow-men, high and low; and in so doing I feel sure you will find peace and rest 
for your soul. Then 

We front tlie sun, and on the purple ridges 

The virgin future lifts her veil of snow; 
Look backward, "and an arch of splfendor bridges 

The gulf of long ago. ' ^ 

Such men as you have great duties, for they are given great powers which tliey 
have no right to leave unused. I know too how hard it is— ali n\e!— for one situated 
as you are, and as I have been and am, to go on with work and duty as if the voyage 
of life had always been with favoring gales. But work for good brings resignation 
and rest; and so working we see more and more clearly 

Those shining stairways of the brain 

That rise from onr diminished days 
To spacious sunshines free from pain. 

Up those shining stairways some that you love and some that I love have gore to 
rest and happiness. Let us work bravely on till we join them. Come on, then, my ' 
dear sir, and put your strong shoulder to the wheel of government and to all the irood 
things to be done, and all will be well. 



i62 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

The foregoing was written, save tlie date, immediately ou receiving yours ; and I 
now send it to you with my sincere sympathy and esteem. George F. Edmunds. 

A week after his wife's death Mr. Lamar wrote this letter to a friend 

in Macon, Ga. : 

Oxford, Miss., January 4, 1885. 

Mjl Dear Friend: Jennie Longstreet's pure and gentle soul has left nie and gone to 
heaven. There are now not many pefijile living that you and I knew before we knew 
her. Ever since she liecame my betrothed wife she first liked and then loved you. 
Our memories were all the same, and our married life was full of happiness even in 
the midst of some sorrow. I can't tell you why I think of you in the midst of this 
black darkness. But I do ; and if I were able to accept relief from any source, I feel 
that it would give me some to know that you realize the awful thing that has fallen 
upon me, and that you are sorry for it. Doc. Flewellen's fate also comes up before 
me. My wife was very fond of him, and so was I. Do you know where he is? 
If you do, send him this note; or, if you prefer, keep it and send him a copy, and tell 
him I cherish for him a warm atiection. 

Your old friend, Lushe Lamae. 

Mr. Lamar returned to Washington about the 10th of January. He 
had hardly arrived before another exciting debate aro.se about Mr. 
Davis; and his few remarks upon tliis occasion were the last of his- po- 
litical life. 

It seems that in the previous October Gen. Sherman, then a citizen of 
St. Louis, had attended a meeting of the Frank P. Blair Post, No. 1, of 
the Grand Army of the Republic, held in that city; and in a sf)eech 
made to that body he had made certain statements in respect to Mr. 
Davis, which that gentleman afterwards noticed as follows: 

Beau VOIR, Miss., November ti, 1884. 
Editor St. Lol'is Republican. 

Dear Sir: I have to-night received the inclosed published account of remarks made 
by Gen. W. T. Sherman, and ask the use of your columns to notice only so much as 
particularly refers to myself and which is to be found in the following extracts: 

Tlie following is taken from the St. Louis Republican : 

" Frank P. Blair Post, G. A. R., o])ened their new hall, corner of Seventeenth and 
Olive Streets, last night. Gen. Sherman addressed the assemblage. He had read let- 
ters which he believed had never been published, and which very few people had seen. 
These letters showed the rebellion to be more than a mere secession: it was a con- 
spiracy most dire. Letters which had passed between Jeff. Davis and a man whose 
name it would not do to mention, as he is now a member of the United States Senate, 
had been seen by the speaker, and showed Davis' position. He was not a secessionist. 
His object in starting the rebellion was not merely for the secession of tlie South, but 
to liave this section of tlie country so that he could use it as a fulcrum from which to 
iire out Ills shot at the other sections of tlie country and compel the people to do as 
he would have them. .Teff. Davis would have turned his hand against any State that 
would secede from the Soutii after the South had seceded from the North. Had the 
rebellion succeeded. Gen. Sherman said the jieople of the North would have all been 
slaves." 

The following is from the Globe-Democrat's account: 

" Referring to the late war, he said it was not, as was generally understood, a war 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 463 

of secession from the United States, but a conspiracy. ' I have been behind tlie cur- 
tain,' said lie, 'and I have seen letters that few others have seen, and have heard con- 
versations that cannot be repeated, and I tell you that Jeff. Davis never was a seces- 
sionist. He was a conspirator. He did not care for divisions from the United States. 
His object was to get a fulcrum from which to operate against the Northern States ; 
and if he had succeeded, he would to-day be the master spirit of the continent, and 
you would be slaves. I have seen a letter from Jefferson Davis to a man whose name 
I cannot mention, because he is a Uuited States Senator. I know Davis' writing, 
and saw his signature; and in that letter he said he would turn Lee's army against 
any State that might attempt to secede from the Southern Confederacy.' " 

This pul.ilic assault, under the covert plea that it is based upon information which 
regard for a United States Senator does not permit him to present, will, to honorable 
minds, suggest the idea of irresponsible slander. 

It is thus devolved upon me to say that the allegation of my ever having written 
such a letter as is described is unqualifiedly false, and the assertion that 1 had any 
purpose or wish to destroy the liberty and equal rights of any State, either North or 
South, is a reckless, shameless falsehood, especially because it was generally known 
that for many years before, as well as during the war between the States, I was an 
earnest advocate of the strict construction of the State rights theory of Mr. Jeticrson. 
What motive other than personal malignity can be conceived for so gross a libel? 

If Gen. Sherman has access to any letters purporting to have been written by me 
which will sustain his accusation, let him produce them, or wear the brand of a base 
slanderer. 

Yours respectfully, Jefferson Davis. 

Gen. Sherman announced that he would reply to Mr. Davis' letter 
through the files of the War Department. Afterwards Senator Vance, 
of North Carolina, who was Governor of that State during the war, and 
who was understood to be the man indicated by Gen. Sherman's re- 
marks, published a statement exculpating Mr. Davis, and produced a 
letter from him which proved the reverse of Gen. Sherman's charge. 
Later Gen. Sherman sent to the War Department a communication, to 
be made a part of the Rebellion Eecord, into which he incorporated a 
letter from Mr. Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President of the Confed- 
eracy, written during the later days of the war to Herschel V. Johnson, 
in which Mr. Stephens expressed distrust and suspicion of Mr. Davis 
and of his ultimate designs in the war; also a message of Mr. Davis to 
the Confederate Congress, in which he recommended a suspension of the 
writ of habeas cnrjms; but the communication contained no letter from 
Mr. Davis. 

On the Sth of January Senator Hawdey, of Connecticut, in order, as 
was charged by Southern Democrats at the time, to " Vjolster up" Gen. 
Sherman by the countenance of the Senate, introduced a resolution 
calling upon the President to conmiuuicate to the Senate Gen. Sher- 
man's historical statement. This brought on an angry debate on the 
12th. Senators Harris of Tennessee, Vest of Missouri, George of Mis- 
sissippi, and Morgan of Alabama, resisted the resolution, mainly upon 
the grounds that the matter was merely a personal issue between Mr. 



46-1 LUCIUS Q. a LA^fAIi.■ 

Davis and Gen. Sherman; that tlie step was unnecessary and improper, 
since no action of the Senate was to be based upon the document when 
it should come in, and tho Senate was not a historical bureau; that, so 
far as historic truth was concerned, the document would be just as well 
preserved and just as valuable as a file of the War UeiDartment, etc. 
The resolution was pressed by Senators Hawdej', Conger of Michigan, 
lugalls of Kansa.s, and Sherman of Ohio. The speeches of Senators 
lugalls and Sherman were especially bitter. They claimed that the 
question was not a personal issue between Mr. Davis and Gen. Sher- 
man, but a public matter. The latter concluded his speech by these 
remarks: 

Mr. Davis is an old man. I do not desire to saj' anyttiing personally unkind of 
liim; I do not desire to wound his feelings; but, great God! will it ever be disputed in 
this country of ours at any time, even a thousand years hence, tliat Jeiferson Davis 
in the war and Ijefore the war was a conspirator and a traitor to his country? Never, 
I trust. ... I cannot while I live at least see that great truth and fact in history 
challenged, and Jefferson Davis praised as a jjatriot any more than our Revolutionary 
fathers would have allowed in their time and their day the name of Benedict Arnold 
to be praised at least without entering their most solemn protest. . . . Whenever 
the motives and causes of the war, the beginning and the end of wliich I have seen, 
are brought in question, I nuist stand, as I have always stood, upon the firm convic- 
tion that it was a causeless rebellion, made with bait motives, and that all the men 
who led ill that movement were traitors to their country. 

Mr. Lamar then said: 

Mr. President, I have just stepped into the Senate, and have not yet heard the res- 
olution which is under discussion. I presume that it refers to a publication of some 
papers relating to the war of secession that are now on file in the AVar Department. 
Without knowing the position occupied by my friends on this side, or upon tlie part 
of the Senators on the other side, I desire here to say that I have no objection to any 
puljlication which will throw light upon the true character of that movement for the 
seiiaration of the States of the South from the States of the North; and I should not 
Iiave made any remarks exi-ept to have followed and to ha\'e given my vote silently 
upon this question, l)ut for tlie speech that I have listened to of the Senator from 
Ohio. Tliat speech, sir, is marked by flagrant inaccuracies in his statements of the 
issue between Gen. Slierman and INIr. Davis. The issue between those two distin- 
guished gentlemen is not the issue which the Senator from Ohio represents, and the 
issue which does exist between them he has not brought to the attention of the 
Senate. 

Now, sir, according to the publication in the press, and which went not only to the 
extremities of this nation, but to the extremities of civilization, it was not merely 
that the secession of the Southern States was the result of a conspiracy. That is a 
question, as the Senator properly remarked, of historical truth, and is to lie ascertained 
by the facts of liistory as read in future generations. Whether it was a conspiracy of 
a few ambitious individuals, or whether it was the uprising of a whole people, to pre- 
serve, as they thought, their autonomy and their institutions, is a question which I 
am willing shall be remitted to the verdict of posterity. 

But, sir, Gen. Slierman went further— and I wish here to say that there is no man 
on this floor who personally has kinder feelings for Gen. Shernian than myself; no 
Senator here entertains a higher admiration for his military sagacity and genius. But 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES 465 

Gen. Sherman was betrayed by his feelings and by misinformation into an allegation 
and charge against Jefferson Davis that he (annot sustain, and that no man can ever 
sustain, and which is not the truth; and that is that he saw a letter from Jellierson 
Davis asserting that if a Southern State should secede from the Confederacy be would 
put that down by military coercion of the Confederate Government. That is the 
statement which Gen. Sherman made. There is no question of historical fact in rela- 
tion to the character of that movement between Gen. Sherman and Jlr. Davis. It is 
outside of the record, and when he says that there is no personal controversy between 
these two distinguished gentlemen, his statement comes in direct conflict with the as- 
sertion of Gen. Sherman himself; for when he was interviewed by the press of St. 
Louis as to Mr. Davis' denial, he refused to make a statement, and said; "This is not 
for the press of the country; it is'a per-sonal matter betv/een me and Mr. Davis." The 
pei-sonality of it is made by Gen. Sherman himself 

And, sir, the discussion which is brought out here can throw no light whatever 
on that naked, bald issue of fact, whether or not Gen. Sherman saw a letter written 
by Jefferson Davis to a Senator now in the United States Senate, sayingthat lie would 
coerce a Southern State if it should secede from the Confederacy. I assert that no 
such letter is in existence; and, in my opinion, no such letter was ever written; and, 
in saying that, sir, I wish to disclaim here any reflection whatever upon the veracity 
of Gen. Sherman. That is not my jmrpose. What I do mean to say is that he has 
been misled and misinformed; and when the proof comes before him that he has 
made an assertion, even against a political enemy, which he cannot sustain, it would 
comport better with his high character and high position to acknowledge the inad- 
vei'tent and unintentional injustice than to change the issue before the Anierican peo- 
ple and raise a question as to the character of the secession of the Southern States. 

Now, sir, I liave a reason for saying this: Not more intimate than other gentle- 
men, but still a friend of Mr. Davis, and often in consultation with him, if he changed 
his opinion, if he varied one hair's-breadth from the beginning of that controversy to 
its close, as to the importance of maintaining that government upon the consent of the 
people engaged in it, and not upon any force to be brought upon them, his most intimate 
friends were ignorant of any such revolution of sentiment. No man stood more fii-m- 
ly by the doctrine that it should be a government based upon consent, and not upon 
force, through all the eventful scenes of the struggle, than Mr. Davis did; and Gen. 
Sherman was simply mistaken ; he was misinformed. No such letter was written by 
Mr. Davis, for no such letter could have been written, entertaining the views that he 
did. 

Sir, I have made these remarks very unexpectedly to myself; for I was not aware 
that the simple issue of fact, whether or not Gen. Sherman saw such a letter, was to 
be remitted to the arena of the United States Senate. 

One other thing. We of the South have surrendered upon all the questions which 
divided the two sides in that controversy. We have given up the right of the people 
to secede from this Union ; we have given up the right of each State to judge for itself 
of the infractions of the constitution and the mode of redress ; we have given up the 
right to control our own domestic institutions. We fought for all these, and we lost 
in that controversy ; but no man shall in my presence call Jefferson Davis a traitor 
without my responding with a stern and emphatic denial. 

The ideas of Mr. Lamar upon tlie subjects involved in this debate, 
and which he did not pretend to elaborate, are well set forth in a letter 
written by him in the year previous. Mr. William A. West, then of 
St. Louis, a connection by marriage, addressed to him, in 1883, a letter 
of inquiry about an interview of Judge Jere Black's, which had recent- 
30 



466 Ll'CIVS Q. C. LAMAR: 

ly appeared iu the Globe-Democnit. Judge Black, wlio was Mr. Buch- 
anan's Attorney-General, Lad, iu response to a published letter of Mr. 
Davis', undertaken to defend the course of Mr. Buchanan in respect 
to Southern matters at the period of secession, and had severely criti- 
cised the course of Mr. Davis. Apropos of this interview, Mr. Lamar 
wrote to Mr. West, under date of September 13, 1883, as follows: 

The first part of this article is a verj' fair representation of Judge Black's view of 
secession. He says, and he has before said, that " Mr. Davis was engaged in the 
worst conspiracy ever organized against any government." Now if you suppose that 
this denunciation springs from any deep, fervent patriotism and love of the Union, 
you will have a very mistaken idea of Judge Black's character. It was not the indig- 
nation of an outraged patriot, but the rage of a defeated and thwarted partisan, which 
filled his heart with bitterness toward the South. The very next sentence after this 
denunciation shows the secret of his animosity toward the Southern leaders. He 
says: "The Southern political leaders were untrue to their jxirly obUgalions and untrue 
to their political friends at the North." Again, he says : " Because they could not have 
everything their own way, they deserted the Northern Democracy, when the parly com- 
• ing inlox>oioer hated a Northern Democrat tcorse than a Scmtliern secessionist." And still, in 
this very connection, again he says: "They deserted us in a time of great peril." I 
have often conversed with Judge Black on this subject, and I never was much im- 
pressed with the ardor of his love for the Union, but have often been profoundly im- 
pressed with his furious hatred of the Kepublican party. But his charge against Mr. 
Davis is unjust and untrue. The latter, at the time that he speaks of, was not en- 
gaged in a conspiracy against the United States Government. He was anxious for a 
peacealde settlement within the Union. I know whereof I speak; and I know that 
all his efibrt? at that time were directed to the end, first, of securing from the North 
such guarantees as would make the South feel safe in the Union ; and, secondly, of in- 
ducing the South to accept those guarantees, and to remain in the Union. 

Judge Black, or his interviewer, is as unphilosophical and inaccurate as he is unjust 
when he attributes secession to a conspiracy of indimdjials — " Mr. Davis and those who 
acted with him." It was not brought about in that way at all. On the contrary, it was 
the culmination of a great dynastical struggle—" an irrepressible conflict " between two 
antagonistic societies— a culmination which had been foreseen and predicted by the wis- 
est statesmen of the nation. Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and even Jetlerson, had warned 
their countrymen that the designs of the antislavery party would lead to a dissolu- 
tion of the Union. This culmination was a result of the operation of political forces 
which it was not within the power of any individual man or set of men to prevent or 
postpone. Judge Black, in characterizing such an event as a conspiracy of Jefferson 
Davis and those who acted with him, illustrates the difierence between a passionate 
party man and a philosophic statesman. 

Mr. Davis and tlie Southern leaders had no personal motive to lireak uj^the Union. 
They were in the enjoyment of the highest honors of the Republic, and the ascenden- 
cy of the Republican party simply fastened the tenure by which they held them. 
But there was an uprising for secession at the South which, if they attempted to re- 
sist, would have swept them all from their positions of honor and trust. 

But Judge Black utters an extra\ agant heresy when he speaks of those events as 
the " iforst conspiracy ever organized for the destruction of a government." This sort 
of denunciation was once the fashion, before-the passions, fired in the flames of war, 
had cooled; but it is not the judgment of the world now, and it will not be the ver- 
dict of posterity. In this very paper Judce Black is made to vindicate the secession 
of the Southern States from hi-^ charge of lieing "the irorst conspiracy," etc. In the 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 467 

first part of liis letter he speaks of "tlie coming into power of a party that hated a North- 
ern Democrat worse than a Soutliern secessionist." In tlic latter part of this paper 
he thus describes that " party," which lie says was then coming into power. He says 
that it " had no respect for the constitution when it stood in the way of then- schemes." 
" They proclaimed it a league with death and a covenant with hell." Now what was 
the " scheme " which this party would not let the constitution stand in the way of? 
No one has denounced it more strongly than Judge Black. It was to destroy and 
overthrow the institutions of the South which that constitution sanctioneil and pro- 
tected. I am not going to argue tlie right of secession here, but simply call your at- 
tention to this important admission of Judge Black's: that the party which had coiue 
into power designed to disregard the obligations of the constitution and to subvert 
the constitutional and fundamental institutions of the South ! 

There is no better settled principle of international law tlian that when one people 
interfere with and make war upon the fundamental institutions of another people 
the latter have the right, if they can, to change their political relations to the former. 
Mr. Webster said: "A compact broken on one side cannot be of force on the other 
side." 

I repeat that I am not seeking here to ji'stify secession, but to show how extrava- 
gant and false the declaration and narrow the view that it was a conspiracy — " the 
worst conspiracy ever organized," etc. It was no conspiracy at all. It did not seek to 
overthrow any government. Suppose that it had succeeded. AVould not the Govern- 
ment of the United States have still existed? Would it not have retained all its de- 
partments and all its functions? Would it not have had its President, its Congress, 
its judiciary, and its constitution and laws, all supreme over a territory and popula- 
tion that would have still ranked it among tlie nations of the earth? Secession may 
not have been right, as a political right; but simply as a movement to change the 
boundaries of the country, by sovereign States in their capacity of States, it can never 
lie confounded with such conspiracies as that of Cataline and the cabals of ambitious 
traitors. 

I was once present at a dinner with Judge Black. He sat near the head and I near 
the foot of the table. Near the close of the dinner he said to me: "Mr. Lamar, you 
Southern Democrats treated us badly when you seceded and left us to the tender mer- 
cies of the Northern Republicans." I replied: "Judge Black, you Northern Demo- 
crats treated us badly when you abandoned State sovereignty and left us to the ten- 
der mercies of Federal arms and coercion." He rejoined : " We have never abandoned 
the doctrine of State sovereignty. We have always maintained it, but we deny the 
right of a State to secede." I rejoined : " Judge Black, how can you say that a State is 
sovereign and yet has not the right to secede from other States ? Sovereignty is the 
highest power in a State ; it is the supreme power, which no other civil power can con- 
trol or coerce. Now if a State has this sovereign power, how can you assert the power 
of any other civil authority to check or control that State's action?" He rose from 
the table and paced the floor, up and down, twirling his tobacco box as if in a brown- 
study. I repeated the question : " Judge, how can a State be sovereign if there be in 
the political organization an authority which can limit its action?" He made me no 
reply. I then repeated: "Judge, if there be any power in our political system higher 
than that of the State; if there be in this government an authority paramount, to 
which the State is amenable, such State cannot be sovereign, but must be a suliordinate 
and subject member." He answered : " Mr. Lamar, I admit that it is a very difticult 
matter to solve that problem." 

A day or two afterwards I asked Donn Piatt (who gave the dinner) if he observed 
that the .Judge waived the further discussion of the subject. He said that he did. I 
then asked if there was anything unpleasant in the temper of it. "O no," said 



468 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR. 

Bonn ; " you put a point to him that he could not answer, and it really put the old 
Judge into an agony. He had never, evidently, thought of the proposition before 
as you stated it." 

And here is the weak point which he is attempting to defend in Buchanan's policy. 
It is not capalile of defense, i/t' denied the right of a State to secede, but he also de- 
nied the right of the United States Government to coerce a State by armed force. 
The truth is, a State has the right to secede (or had before the war), in which case 
the United States Government had no right to coerce; or it has no such right, in 
which case it is the right and duty of the government to coerce the State into obedi- 
ence to Federal authority. 

Either the South was right in asserting the political authority to secede, or the Re- 
publican party was right in denying the right to secede and asserting the power to 
coerce. I tlierefore think that Black's attempt to vindicate Buchanan on this point 
will prove a failure. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Mr. Lanmr Discussed as a Possible Member of tlie Cabinet — Cleveland's Inauguration 
— The Cabinet Named and Coiitirmed — Comments and Congratulations — Calls for 
Resignations of Heads of Dei)artments — Mr. Lamar's Methods — Sale of the Gov- 
ernment Carriages— The Land Office — The " Backbone " Patents— The Death of Ja- 
cob Thompson — The Throng of Office Seekers — Views on Officeholding in Wash- 
ington — Limitations in the Bestowal of Offices — Civil Service Reform — Watchful- 
ness over Character of Subordinates — Freedom fi'om Nepotism— First Annual Re- 
port — Management of the Indian Bureau — The Report on the Indians — The Report 
on the Public Lands— The Report on the Railroads— The Re])ort on the Peupions 
— Minor Subjects — Education— The Second Annual Report — The Third Annual 
Report — Third Report on Puldic Lands — Adjustment of the Railroad Land Grants 
— Third Report on Indians — Minor Titles. 

NO sooner was the election of Mr. Cleveland definitely ascertained 
than a general discussion began as to the probable membership 
of his Cabinet. It seemed to be nuivei-sally conceded that at least two 
of that body would come from the South. So early as December the 
name of Mr. Lamar was widely and freely mentioned iu that connec- 
tion, and there w-as much discussion as to whether he would accept the 
position if it were offered him. He gave no encouragement to the sug- 
gestion; rather, on the contrary, discouraged it. He was exceedingly 
anxious to draw his friend, Gen. Walthall, from the comparative retire- 
ment of his law practice, and to secure his public services to the coun- 
try. To that end he was urging upon Mr. Cleveland the expediency of 
calling that gentleman into the Cabinet as one of the Southern mem- 
bers. 

Under date of February 3, 1885, he wrote to Gen. Walthall: 

Mij Dear Pi-iend : From some hints thrown out by two or three friends of Mr. 
Cleveland I am led to think it probable that he desires me to share in the manage- 
ment of his administration. It has given me a great surprise, for I have put my foot 
upon every movement to recommend me to him. If, therefore, he asks me to go into 
his Cabinet, it will be the result of his own felt need of my influence, etc., and not of 
any management; but rather, in spite of some considerable management, to compli- 
ment me out of the list of possible selections. It may not come at all, for everybody 
here seems to be flattering every other body ; but I am inclined to think that it is 
possible, as he has sent for me to come to see him, by Gorman, who gives me a pretty 
plain hint as to his purpose. 

I am by no means clear as to what I shall do in case Gorman's hints prove to be 
well-founded. While I think that 1 might serve him better in the Senate, I am ap- 
prehensive of inferior and obscure men being imposed upon the President. I have 
been astonished at the headway that commonplace men make in getting up combina- 
tions to support aspirations for positions for which they are not fitted, either by gen- 
ius or abilities or knowledge of afiairs or devotion to principle or any special char- 
acter for public virtue and honor. If they get in, the whole thing will lie a farce; and 

(469) 



470 ' LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

get in they will, unless some of us take hoW. Cleveland, I am told, realizes the im- 
portance of having the best men in the party in his C'aliinet. 

My present purpose is to talk freely with the President-elect on every subject that 
he sees fit to broach. I shall certainly tell him that he can get more good out of me 
in the Senate than in the Cabinet, and that I can give him a man my superior in 
every respect, and better fitted for a Cabinet office than any man in the Democratic 
party, North or South. If, however, he presses me to become a member of his Cabi- 
net, I shall not give him a definite answer at once, but will take time to consider 
it. . . . 

One otlier point: I know all /give up if I leave the Senate. I close my career in 
Congress, and will go into private life at the close of four years, perhaps sooner. If 
my present feelings are any test of what my feelings will lie foui- years hence, I shall 
be perfectly willing to quit. I have thought much about it. I really think tliat my 
public career has been one of honorable usefulness and great benefit to my people. I 
know that it has been honest and true, without one element of disi egard for the wel- 
fare of my people. I can see some mistakes in it. I am inclined to think that I 
ought to have retired when I saw the Soutli restored to her constitutional position in 
the Union. Now that she will have her just representation in the Executive Depart- 
ment as well as in the Legislature, with some prospect for the same in the Judiciary, 
I feel as if my time for making my liow had come. I have always thuuglit that it 
was a serious blemish, or, rather, defect, in our American statesmen, that they al- 
ways cling to ofiice too long, and beyond their period of usefulness and ])opularity. 
One chief ambition with me has been, after exercising tlie power intrusted to me to 
the best of my ability, voluntarily and with jierfect disinlereslediiess to lay it down. 

So I would contemplate going out of office and declining to become a candidate 
again with a serene and somewhat relieved feeling. 

A few clays later, on the l-±tli of February, Mr. Lauiar wrote to Mrs. 
Ross: 

My Dear Sister: A constant throng of importunate visitors, pressing engagements, 
and absence of all privacy, combine to deprive nie of all ojiportunity of writing to you 
as often and as fully as I would wish. The pi-esent is a dai-k period of my life. Tlie 
pale &ce of my wife is ever before me, and my grief seems to have fixed itself in my 
heart. 

The newspapers are fuller than usual of praises of me; virtues which I do not pos- 
sess, and talents which I know do not belong to me. I should feel humiliated did I 
not know that in a very short time they will teem with criticism and censures and 
jeers, with no more of justice in their dispraise than in their present lauilations. 

The President-elect has not ofl'ered me a place in his Cabinet. I shall be inexjiress- 
ibly relieved if he does not. It will be a painful alternative if he does. 

About the same time he wrote an uudateil letter to his daughter, 
Mrs. Heiskell: 

Yes, the praises of me are, jzist now, gorgeous ; but wait ; and if I should accept a 
Cabinet position (it has not yet been tendered to me), soon after I get in, the irate 
clamors of disappointed oliice seekers will be a storm compared to which the fuss on 
the Silver Bill was an April shower. 

The man at Albany is in a critical position, beset with difficulty; but that is no 
reason for my liacking out if he thinks he needs my help. I have many letters tell- 
ing me I have made a mistake in going into the Cal)inet (which I have not yet been 
invited to do), Ijecause a Cabinet position is mucli less distinguished, is uncertain, etc. 
No doubt al:)Out that. But just now we need to develo]i Democratic adminislralion 
more than Democratic speechmaking. It does not make much ditlerence what 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 471 

becomes of one man if, while he lives, he can advance the good work of establishing 
a government of justice and constitutional laws. 

The following letter is of interest in this connection : 

120 Broadway, New York, February 16, 1885. 

ily Dear Lamar: Since we talked together matters have so shaped themselves as 
to prevent me from talking to Cleveland in the direction of what you said to me. 
. . . It is evident that he specially desires you personally to be a member of the 
Cabinet, and that, though I have had his attention drawn again to our friend who is 
your own choice for the place, it was not wise for me in my own name to attempt at 
this juncture to <livert his desires. . . . Nobody has produced on Cleveland the 
impression you did, though he was also greatly impressed with Senator Pugh. 

Very truly. Burton N. Harrison. 

On February 28, Mr. Lamar wrote as follows to Jefferson Davis: 

I hope that the step I am about to take will meet your approval. It certainly 
proceeds from no motive of ambition; but when pressed by my friends in the Senate 
and in the House, and through the country, and by those nearest to the President- 
elect, to take a position in his Cabinet, I have hardly felt at liberty to decline. If, by 
conducting the affairs of an executive department prudently and honestly and fairly 
to all sections, I may impress the country with a desire of the South faithfully to 
serve the interests of a common country, I may do more good than I have ever yet 
been able to accomplish. Recent events have crushed out all ambition in my heart, 
and I now have no other desire connected with public affairs except to serve to the 
best the interests that our people have intrusted to me so often. 

President Cleveland was inaugurated, as usual, on the 4th of March. 
There was nothing of especial interest connected with the ceremonies 
except the crowd of spectators, which was said to be the largest ever 
collected in Washington upon a similar occasion. 

On the 5th the Senate was to meet in executive session. The follow- 
ing account of the proceedings is from the correspondent of the New 
York Times: 

Three hours before the time fixed for the opening of to-day's session of the Senate 
people began occupying the seats in the visitors' galleries. The first comers were 
rapidly joined by others ; and an hour before noon every seat was taken, and the out- 
side corridors were thronged with men and women who grumbled because they had 
come so late. The Senators began to gather on the floor soon after 11 o'clock. . . . 
Mr. Pruden, who has carried all the Presidential commimications to the Senate since 
Gen. Grant was President, appeared at the main entrance. He presented Mr. Cleve- 
land's first message to the Senate in a very large white envelope, and retired. Every- 
body knew that this message contained the nominations of the men selected by the 
President for his Cabinet, and the visitors leaned forward as if they expected to hear 
the names read. Instead of this, they heard Mr. Sherman move that the Senate pro- 
ceed to the consideration of executive business, and a moment later the Sergeant-at- 
arnis was instructed to clear the galleries. . . . After every outsi(ier had been 
driven out from the place, and all the doors carefully locked, the big envelope was 
torn open, and the Executive Clerk read the names of the gentlemen whom Presi- 
dent Cleveland had selected as his chief advisers, as follows: 

Secretary of State: Thomas F. Bayard, of Delaware. 

Secretary of the Treasury: Daniel Manning, of New York. 



472 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAM: 

Secretary of War: A\'illiam C. Endicott, of Massachusetts. 

Secretary of the Navy: William C. Whitney, of New York. 

Secretary of the Interior: L. Q. C. Lamar, of jNlississippi. 

Postmaster-General: William P. Vilas, of Wisconsin. 

Attorney-General : Augustus H. Garland, of Arkansas. 

Then began a very lively scene, wliich ended with an adjournment twenty-five 
minutes later without any of the seven nominations having Ijeen contirmed. It is 
the traditional custom of the Senate to confirm without delay any one of its members 
who has been chosen by the President for any other oftice. When, therefore, Mr. 
Cockrell moved that the nominations of Messrs. Bayard, Garland, and Lamar be 
conflnued, the Senator.^ were nettled at hearing Jlr. Riddleberger object to the pres- 
ent consideration of Mr. Bayard's name. Senators from both sides of the Chamber 
crowded around him and begged him to withdraw his objection. He refused, and 
listened with stolid indifference while sharp remarks about his conduct were made 
by Mr. Edmunds, Jlr. Ingalls, Mr. Harris, Mr. Ransom, and others. Mr. Riddleberger 
told tliem to go on and confirm Messrs. Lamar and Garland and all the rest if they 
wished, but he should continue to object to placing the foreign policy of the govern- 
ment in the hands of a man who had more sympathy with England than with the 
United States. The Senators had no intention of confirming two of their number 
and not the third, and they pointed out to the Virginian the awkward position in 
which they would be placed if they accepted his proposition. :Mr. Eiddleberger was 
obstinate, and as by the rules of the Senate a single objection throws a nomination 
over for a day, the Senators finally adjourned in disgust, leaving all the Cabinet nomina- 
tions to be taken up to-moiTow. . . . The impression prevails to-night that all 
the Cabinet nominees will be confirmed to-morrow, no matter how badly the sensi- 
tive feelings of Mr. Eiddleberger may be hurt by the presence of Mr. Bayard in the 
Department of State. 

On the next day, March 6, the Cabinet nominations were confirmed 
unanimously; and ou Saturday, the 7th, the new members entered on 
the discharge of their respective duties. Thus the new administration, 
with its new policy, was launched; and Mr. Lamar, as one of its most 
prominent members, entered upon a field entirely untried and novel. 

This new undertaking was not without serious misgivings. He 
writes to one friend: "I enter npou my new field of activity with great 
diftidence." To another: "My career as a Secretary will not be dis- 
tinguished. If I should safely make the landing, without any very great 
disasters ou the voyage, I shall deem myself fortunate." He had, how- 
ever, consciously, the equipment of a high resolve and an invincible will. 

The people of his own State gave him up with regret. Kor were 
they all free from apprehension in respect to his success as an adminis- 
trative officer. To a certain extent many of them shared the concep- 
tion of Mr. Lamar which prevailed in many quarters in the Isorth, that 
he was a scholastic dreamer and moody idler — one who was absent, 
abstracted, contemptuous of detail and drudgery, inert, except when at 
rare iutervals aroused to the tremendous energy of which he was 
capable. Others, however, knew him better, aud had unlimited confi- 
dence in his resei"ved capabilities and powers. General AA'althall, on 
the 5th of March, wrote to him: 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 473 

Everybody in Mississippi is proud that you were called to the Cabinet; and most 
of your friends, I believe, are willing to see you go in. Some, like myself, thought, 
until you decided to accept, that you ought not. Bob Allen puts it this way: "They 
say Lamar has made a mistake. They have said that before ; but it always turns out 
the other way, and it will do that way this time." I wish you could be in the Cabi- 
net and the Senate both, but I had rather see you in the Senate. 

The editorial iu the New York Tiine.-^, of ^Sfarch 6, will show \ery 
well the general drift of comment upon Mr. Lamar as a member of the 
new Cabinet: 

Mr. Lamar, of Mississippi, has lieen rightly judged by the Tresident from the first. 
His original and thoughtful mind, conservative habit, and sobriety of judgment, left 
upon Mr. Cleveland at their first meetings a marked and most favorable impression. 
In him the President secures a good adviser and an administrative officer whose 
deep-rooted aversion to such doubtful and devious ways as have of late caused the 
Interior Department to be made the subject of unfavorable comment cannot fail to 
have a wholesome effect upon the service of the department from the moment of his 
accession to oftice. It has been said that JNIr. Lamar has a distaste for confining 
routine work; and, so far as this is true, it would be a defect in his equipment for a 
place demanding so much steady, hard work as that to which he has been appointed. 
But it is known that he has a liking for doing well anything he undertakes, and 
he is not without that enthusiasm which lends interest to even the driest details of 
man's daily toil. We do not believe that Mr. Lamar will be inattentive to the needs 
of his department. The criticism which calls in question the propriety of appoint- 
ing an ex^officer of the Confederate Army to a post giving him charge of the bureau 
through which Union soldiers receive their pensions is one to which we attach no 
great weight. This objection would be waived, we imagine, if some brave veteran 
of the Union Army were appointed Pension Agent. 

Because of his assumption of administrative duties, it must not be 
supposed that Mr. Lamar abandoned his thought for the country's 
practical legislation, or lost his interest in it. " His influence upon 
Congressional legislation," said Mr. Catchiugs, member of Congress, 
" by no means ceased with his retiring from the Senate to accept his 
high executive ofiice. His advice and counsel were frequently solicited 
by his friends, and they never left him empty-handed."* 

On the same day in which Mr. Lamar entered vipon his official duties 
he requested the resignations of the heads of his various bureaus— this, 
of course, in order that officers of such prominence, responsibility, and 
power, should be in sympathy with the administration. Commenting 
on this step ( and the comment is illustrative of a very widespread feel- 
ing at the time), the special correspondent of the New Orleans Times- 
Democrat said: 

Secretary Lamar threw in his scythe among the heads of the Interior Department 
to-day, and cut a stalwart swath. There was nothing dreamy or absent-minded in the 

* Memorial Address at Bar Meeting of United States Supreme Court, March 18, 1893. 



474 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

manner of his doing it, either. What Secretary Lamar did was to asli the resignation 
of every chief of bureau in tlie department under his dispensation. Nine important 
and prominent otlices will be vacated. 

. . . The remainder are now in the market. The afl'air ha.s created something 
of a sensation, though chiefly on account of its sudden and sweeping character. 

Of course this will give a fresh impetus to ai:iplications for oflicc, though no impe- 
tus seems to be needed, since a trifle over one thousand telegrams were received 
to-day from jjatriots willing to sacrifice themselves for a salary. But the event has 
happened, and the result is sure to follow. Public opinion lias taken a reef in itself 
apropos of Mr. Lamar. It appears that he is not so slipshod and visionary as was sup- 
posed, but can exert a fine nervous energy on occasion. 

It will be seen later, however, that this " fine nervous energy " of Mr. 
Lamar's was not indicative, by any means, of a general turning out of all 
subordinate employees in his department. He was proceeding upon a 
sound and patriotic principle, and not on a political passion or a party 
slogan; and his principle included a faithful observance of the campaign 
pledges of civil service reform. Of that, hereafter. 



The following extract from the Kansas Citi/ Star, of January 24, 1893, 
bears internal evidence that it was from the pen of an observant and ac- 
curate writer. So far as it goes, and saving a little touch of lightness 
in one or two of the expressions employed, it is a fair description of 
Mr. Lamar and some of his ways: 

At the time of his appointment the air was full of rumors of apoplexy and absent- 
mindedness. Stories were told of how the noted Mississippian dreamed away his 
working hours, of how he paid double fare in the street cars, and of how he forgot his 
friemls when he most wished to remember them. It was said that he had no capac- 
ity for details, and that his training and nature were those of the scholar lather than 
of the practical man. The employees of the Interior Department hoped for an easy 
time when they found that he was to be their governoi-, and on the morning that he 
took charge of the department they read more leisurely their morning papers, and 
thought that a reign of millennial ]ieace had begun. They continued in this thought 
just about two days, and then awoke to the fact that the new man meant luisiness. 

Mr. Lamar reorganized the department. He formed a system t)y which he could 
see what each bureau and division was doing; and, what is more, he demanded an an- 
alytical report as to their deeds each week. He did not stop with the first week nor 
the first month; and, notwithstanding all jirophecies to tlie contrary, he kept up his 
work right along. When he left the Interior Department to become an Associate .lus- 
tice of the Supreme Court of the LTniteil States (this was January 16, 188S) its aflairs 
were in commendable condition. . . 

.lustiee Lamar from his youth was distinguished as a hard worker. He found his 
most trying times as a member of President Cleveland's Cabinet. Work i>iled up in 
sufficient I luantity to drive an ordinary man to distraction, but Lamar would simply 
gorge himself with the work as an anaconda gorges itself with a carcass; and when he 
was full, wlien he couldn't swallow another atom, he would go to bed, sleej) like a 
bal>y for ten or twelve hours, an<l awake as fi-esh as a daisy. He sometimes worked 
for twenty hours at a stretch. He was a very rapid woi-ker. and always became great- 
ly absorbed in his work. He thought much faster than he could write, and he could 
not do the manual work of writina to his satisfaction. It was hard for hini to wield 



UIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 475 

a pen. He piiK-lied the holder as though he would squeeze the ink out of,the han- 
dle, and his writing looked rheumatic. He was at home, however, with a stenogra- 
pher, and he kept from one to three stenographers busy all the time. He talked off 
his letters and his opinions in the choicest of Anglo-Sa.\on, and put as much empha- 
sis into his language as though he were speaking to the Senate. He became absorbed 
in every piece of dictation that he did; and, while he miglit be dictating the quieter 
passages upon a lounge, he would rise to his feet when he came to an important 
sentence and mouth his words like the players in the " Midsummer Night's Dream." 
Nothwithstanding the fact that Lamar imposed the strictest order and system upon 
his subordinates in the Interior Department, he himself was devoid of order in his 
work. His papers were kept in no order at all; but, nevertheless, he was so thor- 
oughly familiar with all the details of the woi-k of the department that he could lay 
his hand with little search upon any paper that might be desired. 

The last paragraph must be understood as apijlying only to the pa- 
pers kept under Mr. Lamar's personal key. Speaking generally, it is 
proijer to say that his ijapers, even the more j^rivate correspondence, 
were kept in excellent order by his experienced and diligent secretary, 
Mr. Hanna. 

Carrying out one of the most prominent princiijles on which the 
Democratic party had been placed in power— that of retrenchment and 
the economical administration of the government — and as an indica- 
tion of their intentions in that particular, one of the first official acts 
of Mr. Lamar and of Attorney-General Garland was to order that cer- 
tain horses and carriages which had theretofore been kejst in their re- 
spective departments at the public charge should be sold, and the pro- 
ceeds turned into the treasury. The newspajjers of the day state that 
seven clerks, so-called, of the Interior Department had been serving as 
drivers, and that the annual expenditure on account of this luxury had 
been about .*10,000. It is somewhat surprising and amusing to see what 
an amount of comment this little step excited. A few Republican pa- 
pers, apparently considering it a reflection upon the preceding ad- 
ministration, sneered at it; but the overwhelming verdict was, of course, 
favorable. 

Certainly Secretary Lamar coiild not be taxed with extravagance or 
ostentation, for his only turn-out was a small l)ut neat one-horse rock- 
away, purchased by his own money and maintained at his own expense. 

When the administration of Mr. Cleveland was installed, and for a 
long time before, there was much complaint throughout the country that 
illegal and fraudulent practices existed in the Land Offices of the United 
States, by which the public domain was being rapidly absorbed by 
speculators and by railroads which had not earned their grants. The 
PhUadelphia Prp.9.?, speaking of Commissioner Sparks (appointed under 
Mr. Lamar), and the reformatory policy adopted by him, put the situa- 
tion thus: 



476 LCCICS Q. a. LAMAR: 

The new Commissioner of tlie General Land Office, Mr. Sparks, has evidently en- 
tered upon his work with the intention of pi'Otecting tlie government from tlie rapac- 
ity of land grabbers, aliens, and speculative cattle dealers. He has suspended the is- 
sue of warrants in certain sections of Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas, and in the whole 
of Colorado, with the declared intention of investigating all the entries witli such care 
as shall protect the government from plunder. 

This action has not come any too early, if, indeed, the locking of the door has not 
been put oil' until the horse is gone and tlie thieves are out of harm's way. Not only 
have the cattle men fenced up the public lands in great tracts, thus keeping out ac- 
tual settlers, Imt large bodies of land have been taken on fraudulent entries in every 
State and Territory west of the Missouri Kiver. All this has been done without any 
action on the part of the government sufficient to punish offenders or to jirotect it 
from old or new incursions. 

The entire Land Office has, for some inexplicable reason, been either unable or 
unwilling to bring about a reform of these obvious aljuses, and has suffered mucli in 
reputation liecause of its failure to do its full duty. This prompt action on the part 
of the new Commissioner is to be welcomed as promising that strict watclifulness 
without which the public lands will soon be diverted from the purpose intended by 
the law. It will be encouraging if he shall succeed in bringing some of the trans- 
gressors to justice. 

Quoting that passage, and commenting ou it, the Jacksonville (Fla.) 
Jourmtl (Republican) said: 

As the Press suggests, this action comes too late to recover the interest which a long 
maladministration of the Land Department has betrayed and wasted. It is a well es- 
tablished fact that for years tliat department has been thronged with agents of States, 
corjjorations, and individual sjieculators, who, either through the Commissioner or his 
subordinates, have been able to consummate the most stupendous frauds in nearly 
every State in the Union where there was a large unoccupied domain. And so strong 
and well organized was this combination that any attempt on the part of any citizen, 
or even a memlier of Congress, to protect the public interest would only result in ac- 
cusation and crimination, until the party would be compelled either to join in the 
villainy or acquiesce and hold his peace tlirough fear of personal injury. 

One of Mr. Lamar's first official acts was in respect to a transaction 
cliarged to be of this nature, and the circumstances were such as to cause 
a great deal of comment and criticism of his predecessor. Congress 
bad made a large land grant, as it often did, in aid of the New Orleans, 
Baton Rouge and VicksVmrg Railroad Company. There was a limit of 
time within which the road was to be constructed. That limit passed, 
and the road was not constructed. Afterwards the grantee assigned its 
rights to the New Orleans Pacific Railroad Comjiany for a pecuniary 
consideration; and that company, prior to the 3d of March, 1S85, had 
made selections of lands along the line of its route between New Or- 
leans and Shreveport, La., under the grant as it claimed, to the amount 
of 1,015,993.70 acres. It had not, however, taken out patents for those 
lands. On the Friday before Cleveland's inauguration, on the request 
of the company, Secretary Teller ordered an additional force of clerks 
to be put to work to prepare the patents, notwithstanding the fact that 
protests had been filed against their issuance ou the ground of uoncom- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AXV SPEECHES. 477 

pliance with tlio terms of the grant. The clerks were kept at work on 
Sunday, and on the 3d of March patents were issued for 679,287.64 
acres. This sudden and unusual assiduity, manifested apparently for 
the purpose of patenting the whole grant before the Laud Department 
should pass under the control of the incoming administration, created 
no little discussion and excitement. On the 10th of March Mr. Lamar 
issued an order to the officers of the Land Oliice to suspend the further 
issuance of patents pending an investigation to be made by himself. 

The matter was discussed in the Senate. Senator VanWyck, of Ne- 
braska, a Eepublicau, moved an investigation, and made a severe speech 
against the ex-Secretary, who had just been seated as a Senator from 
Colorado. 

He detailed the " mysterious recoid " of tlie Backlione Road. He said that Gould 
and Huntington were at the bottom of a scheme to get possession of the land grant. 
It was claimed that there was a special meeting of the Cabinet to legalize the act, 
but the settlers did not have any advocate there. The Cabinet did not protect them; 
on the contrary, it turned them over to the tender mercies of the corporation. The 
whole history of the land bureau of the Interior Department was a record of demands 
by land-grant corporations and decrees of the department in obedience thereto. . . . 
Mr. ^'an^Vyck gave notice that the patents issued would be contested. Ex-Secretary 
Teller in his reply said that VanWyck was a professional antinionopolist, and that 
his object was to pose before tlie public and to gain notoriety. l\Ir. Teller's speech 
was an elaborate legal argument to show that the " Backbone " Company was entitled 
to the grant.* 

Mr. Lamar had been in office but a few days when he was caught in a 
storm of criticism and abuse from ultra-Republican sources, which 
equaled, if it did not exceed, anything he had encountered before. It 
came about in this wise: 

On the 24th of March the Hon. Jacob Thompson, who was Secretary 
of the Interior under President Buchanan, died. On the next day Mr. 
Lamar issued an order to the eff"ect that out of respect for his memory 
the department and its several bureaus should be closed on the 26th, 
the day of the funeral; and on that day the flag over the department 
building was placed at half-mast. If it were not that in politics almost 
anything is expectable, it would be amazing, the turmoil which was 
made over this incident. The Republican papers abounded in the most 
violent editorials about it, and in the most extraordinary vituperation 
of Mr. Thompson. Of those criticisms a correspondent of the New York 
Herald had this to say under date of the 27th: 

On the walls of the office of the Secretary of the Interior are displayed portraits in 
oil or crayon of every Secretary who has filled the office since its creation by Con- 
gress in 1837. ... No exception has ever been taken to the fact that the portrait 
of Secretary Zach. Chandler has been a companion piece with that of Secretary Thomp- 
son, whose funeral took place yesterday ; nor have any of the Republican Secretaries 



*Tlie Clarion, newspaper. 



478 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

of the Interior complained of tlie presence of Secretary Tlionipson's picture in the 
groupi adorning tlie otiice. Thej' represent a period of twenty-fonr years; and if the 
Repuljlican predecessors of Secretary Lamar, especially such intense partisans as the 
late Secretary Chandler and Mr. Kirkwood were known to be, could sit day after day 
with the portrait of Mr. Buchanan's Secretary of the Interior staring them in the face, 
it could hardly be exjjected that the present occupant of the office would attempt to 
cast reflections upon their political judgment by excepting ]Mr. Thompson's memory 
from tlie number entitled to the usual mark of respect when a former head of the de- 
partment dies. 

Therefore Mr. Lamar was very nuich surjirised when he was told to-day that some 
of the newspapers were criticising the order closing the Interior Department yesterday 
out of respect to the memory of ex-Secretary Jacol) Thompson, who was the head of this 
department from 1857 to 1S(')1. Mr. Lamar said to your correspondent: " I have no 
apology to make for my -action in tliis matter. The possible political criticisms re- 
ferred to could never have suggested themselves to my mind. Mr. Thompson was 
Secretary of the Interior four years. His successors and my predecessors thought his 
portrait worthy of a most conspicuous place in the office of the Secretary, among the 
many Republicans who have filled this office. If they regarded his memory worthy 
of such honor, I could not do otlierwise than further remember the office he had once 
filled, and clo honor to bis memory exactly as has been the custom of the depart- 
ment whenever an ex-Secretary of the Interior has died. I never heard of an excep- 
tion being made, and know of no reason why one should have been made by me. On 
the subject of honoring the memory of the dead I have very pronounced views, and I 
recall the adverse criticism which followed my eulogy on Senator Sumner. I have not 
changed my views. As I said in the beginning, if those who have preceded me 
found the jiortrait of the late Secretary worthy of their company, it was eminently 
proper that tlie usual respect for the memoiy of the deceased should be faithfully ob- 
served by this department. The duty of so ordering is not one requiring further ex- 
l^lanation." 

Whereupon the correspondent of the Neir York Tr/hnue said: 

It really begins to look as if the Confederates have captured the capital at last. 
The maimed veterans of the war must wait for their pensions while the officers and 
clerks of the Intei'ior Department take a holiday to honor the memory of a conspira- 
tor and iraitor, who gloried in breaking his oath of olfice and divulging Cabinet se- 
crets to the South Carolina rebels. Secretary Lamar declares that lie has " no apology 
to make," and expresses artless surprise because his order is criticised; but he remem- 
bers that his eulogy on Charles Sumner also provoked "adverse criticism," from 
which it is fair to infer that in iMr. Lamar's estimation Jacob Thompson was as pure 
a patriot and as honorable a man as Charles Sumner, and that his memory is equally 
deserving of honor. Mr. Lamar can see no difference between the hanging of Thomp- 
son's portrait as an historical memento on the walls of the Secretary's office and or- 
dering the department to be closed and the national flag to be lowered in honor of the 
traitor's memory. 

The Post to-day editorially asks if anybody doubts that Secretary Lamar "would 
have lowered his flag to half-mast just as promptly if it had been a Northern instead 
of a Southern ex-Secretary of the Interior," and observes that Thompson's administra- 
tion of the Interior Department was much more creditable than :Mr. Delano's. That 
is probably exactly what .Jefferson Davis thinks about Thompson's administration, 
under which more than SSOO,000 belonging to the Indians was stolen, and the credit 
of the government impaired at a time when, tlirough Democratic extravagance, its 
treasury was empty, its receipts were insuflicient to meet current expenses, and its 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 479 

open enemies and secret traitors were preparing their schemes to bring on a rebellion 
that was to tax to the utmost tlie energies and resources of the country. 

"The Tribune also said editorially: 

Perhaps it is hardl}- right to find fault with these Democrats because they select for 
honor the ugliest of the old-fasliioned Copperheads and the most conspicuous of the 
secessionists, and pay tributes of affection even to a notorious thief if he was a rebel. 
That sort of thing was to be expected. Nobody has ever supposed that the Democratic 
party was composed of loyal men in spirit and in sympathy. . . . Still there are 
some pei'sons who are disappointed. They are the creatures who professed to believe 
that the Demdcratic party had become transformed, that loyalty had become its rul- 
ing spirit, and that it would never be found honoring or rewarding past disloyalty. 
The people who believed that sort of thing have only themselves to thank if the eon- 
duct of affairs does not suit them. 

The New York Sim, on the other hand, said: 

"We read a good deal of excited language in some of the Republican journals about 
the act of Mr. Lamar, Secretary of the Interior, in ordering the offices of that depart- 
ment in Washington to be closed on Friday last out of respect to the memory of Jacob 
Thompson, who was Secretary during Mr. Buchanan's administration. 

The Republican journals criticise Mr. Lamar very sliarply, contending that no 
honoV should be paid by the Federal Government to a man so conspicuous and so un- 
sparing in liis efforts to destroy it. Thus they do their best to revive against Mr. 
Cleveland's administration the passions and animosities of tlie Civil "War. 

Among others, Donu Piatt took up the cudgels for Mr. Lamar, as ap- 
pears in the following communication to the Cincinnati Coiniiiercial Ga- 
zette, which had assailed him: 
To THE Editor op the Commercial G.\zette. 

I scarcely believe, Jlr. Editor, that if political prejudice were eliminated from your 
nature you wouU be so savage in your assaults on Lamar for putting the flag al)Ove 
his department at half-mast, in accordance with usage, when the death of a former 
Secretary was announced. 

Lamar was the first to rebel and the last to surrender, and in both he exhibited' 
the same manhood that has won for him the respect of his enemies and the love of 
friends. He is the last man on earth to sympathize with the horrible methods of war 
the late Jacob Thompson is charged with, and he is just the man to do his duty 
•when called on, let the consequences be what they may. It was his duty to lower that 
flag on the death of a predecessor, not in honor of the man, but the official. 

Secretary Lamar found the portrait of the former Secretary Tliompson on the walls 
of his department. This, 3'ou say, was merely a matter of record. So is the custom of 
putting tlie flag at half-mast. And if he failed to comply with the one record, it is his 
duty to obliterate the other. As all the secretaries are recorded in portrait, so all the 
secretaries go to record in their deaths through this official ceremony. 

You strain a point, however, when you say that the portrait is merely a, record. 
Let us see. Suppose a Democratic Congress were to vote a bust or a statue to Gen. Lee. 
AVould that be only a record, even were he cast or chiseled as a Colonel of the United 
States Army? Scarcely. 

Certainly Secretary Lamar did not lower that flag to emblem his personal grief or 
profound respect for the dead. It was an official ceremony, and no discretionary 
power is given the living official. He complies with the law and the custom. Let 
me illustrate: "When the former Secretary of War, Belknap, comes to depart this life, 
his successor in office will droop the flag and drape the doors with mourning. Can 



480 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

such successor say: "No, this can't be done; that man disgraced his office, and the 
building must not mourn?" 

To those knowing Secretary Lamar — and lie is getting rather well known — the charge 
of disloyalty, for this is what it amounts to, cannot be sustained. The man who stood 
up in his place to eulogize Charles Sumner — whose breadth of intellect marks the 
statesman, while his generous impulses make him lovable as a man — is not one whose 
otiicial acts are likely to hurt him or the cause he represents. Dokn Piatt. 

The key to the situation was probably expressed correctly in a letter 
from Mr. Eeemelin: 

The attack made on you especially is a part of the attack along the whole line. 
It is intended to involve the present administration in the expected defeat [of the 
Democracy in Ohio]. AVith tlie Republicans the coming election is a reconnoisance 
in force for the next fall's campaign and battle. 

When Mr. C'levelaud was iuaitgurated the Democratic party had been 
out of power for twenty-four years, and during the same period its 
members had been almost entirely excluded from all participation in the 
enjoyment of Federal patronage. The vast assemblage gathered at 
Washington to witness the inaugural ceremonies — an assemblage with- 
out equal, as reported, in any previous iiistauee — did not by any means 
owe its magnitude to a disinterested rejoicing over the institution of a 
new national policy and the natural desire to witness its inception. The 
great throng of Democrats who were anxious to grasp Mr. Cleveland's 
hand on that occasion were also anxious, in the vast majoritj' of instan- 
ces, to grasp also the spoils of victory. The degrading policy inaugu- 
rated by the administration of President Jackson in respect to the dis- 
tribution of Federal offices had acquired the prestige of a half century's 
observance. The Republicans, during their quarter-centttry of power, 
had followed it inflexibly. A civil service law had been passed, it was 
true; but its iield of operation was limited, and within that field it 
had been to a great extent avoided. When, therefore, the Democratic 
triumph of 1884 was assured, over the p;ean of victory was heard from 
all quarters the old, unpatriotic apothegm of Senator Marcy: " To the 
victors belong the spoils." Washington was overwhelmed by an army 
of office seekers — clamorous, persistent, exftcting, and in general resent- 
ful of denial or delay. The anterooms of the offices of the various mem- 
bers of the Cabinet were thronged for mouths. Especially was this 
true of the Interior Department, owing to its numerous and important 
bureaus with their extensive corps of employees. 

The following extracts from letters written by Mr. Lamar at this time 
to relatives and intimate friends will serve to give ait idea of the annoy- 
ances and burdens of the life of an important Secretary during a pe- 
riod of administrative change: 

"Tell Fan that I did not get her long letter, or, if I did, it has not yet fallen under my 
eye; at which I am not at all surprised, as there are hundreds of letters, private and per- 
sonal, that I have not yet been able to break the seals of. I eat my breakfast and din- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 481 

ner and supper always in the conipuny of i^onie two or three eager and hun^jry appli- 
cants for office ; go to bed with their importunities in my ears ; and, what is of greater 
inconvenience to me, and one that I feel more than any other, 1 have no time to say my 
prayers. You know that l)reaks up a cherished habit of mine. . . . Your friend, Mr. 

, was in the lists for an office over wliich ex-governors, ex-senator.s, and ex-judges 

were in fierce competition ; and I have no doubt he thinks that he was badly tieated be- 
cause I did not hand it down to him as if it had been a book in my library, to be simi)ly 
pulled out and turned over. I expect you think that I am in a bitter mood this 
morning, but I am not; only in a jocose one after an engagement with eight office 
seekers before breakfast." 

" I have to be in my olfice, generally, at nine o'clock ; and if not there, am kept by the 
visitors who call on me before 1 rise in the morning and stick to me until I start. It 
is rarely tlie case that I get to bed before twelve o'clock, so constant are the demands 
upon my time and attention." 

" The letter you wrote me some weeks ago did not fall under my eye, as it is impos- 
sible for my secretary to lay before me one-fifth of the letters addressed to me in my 
private capacity. No blame attaches to him or myself, for the reason that it is impos- 
sible for me to get thirty minutes out of the twenty-four houre for the purpose of read- 
ing my private correspondence. He lias constantly urged these letters upon me, but 
as soon as they are opened I am pressed with important dejiartmental business, orap- 
plications for office through Senators and Representatives whom I cannot put off with- 
out personal rudeness." 

" 1 am nearly drowned in an inundation of ink, made up of streams from all parts of ■ 
the country." ... i 

Special correspondence of the Cleveland (O.) Leader: 

. . . Senator Lamar has the big Interior Department under his control, includ- 
ing all the railroads of the country, the fifty million dollars and more which are paid 
out every year in pensions, the Bureau of Education, the great patent system of the 
United States (which pays for itself and gives thousands to the support of the govern- 
ment yearly), the millions of acres of public lands, the Indian Bureau, and the Geolog- 
ical Survey. The building is a big Greek structure of marble, with a portico at its 
front, copied after the Parthenon at Athens. Secretary Lamar's office is on the second 
floor at thesoutli eml of the east corridor. It is a big room, with many crayon i)or- 
traits on the walls, and an oil painting of Tom Ewing, of Ohio, the first Secretary of 
the Interior, looking down upon Lamar. . . . Senator Lamar is noted for his 
absent-mindedness. He lives in the ideal as much as a lotus eater. . . . But it is 
said that Senator Lamar never lets this absent-mindedness interfere with his other du- 
ties. As to this, time will soon tell. 

Special correspondence oi the Neir Orleans If em: 

Secretary Lamar has no cards brought in to hmi. He receives Senators, Represen- 
tatives, and delegations first. Immediately after these have passed out, those who are 
waiting are admitted. He gives audience first to the ladies in the crowd, and listens 
calmly and attentively to what the humblest has to say on business. He answers 
promptly and very kindly, and seems to give all the satisfaction in his jwwer. . . . 

On the 5th of February, 1887, Mr. Lamar wrote to a friend in New 
York: 

The pressure upon me for the lowest offices in the department is absolutely greater 
and more distressing than that for tlie higher positions. 

Refined and intelligent women from the South tell me that they do not know 
where they will get their next meal ; that they have children, a poor mother, or a 
consumptive sister; and that they are willing to go into the paste room, or to scour 
31 



482 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAH: 

tlie floor, or to take any position that will give them from twenty to twenty-five dol- 
lars per month; and all that I can give them is something that they do not want, and 
. that is my keenest sympathy. This, however, is not appreciated, and no cue believes 
bnt that 1 am able to find some position somewhere if I choose to do so. . . . The 
helplessness with which I contemplate all tliis suffering, and listen to these complain- 
ing importunities, is making existence wretched. 

After his death, the Xcic York Tiiiiei<, in a special from Washington 
dated January 25, 1893, said: 

As Secretary of the Interior, it is probable that Mr. Lamar was about as miserable 
as he had e\er conceived it possible for a human Ijeing to be in office. He hated the 
drudgery of the jilace less than he did the importunities of his party for office. It 
seemed to him that the principal part of his official duty was to listen to and refuse 
(because it was impossible to gi-ant them) the requests of the crowd that constantly 
filled his rooms. 

One day a gentleman who was not a caller for office was shown into Mr. Lamar's 
inner apartment. In the outer room were several prominent Democrats, including a 
high judicial officer, several Senators, and any number of members of the House. Mr. 
Lamar waved his visitor to a cliair without saying a word. He was evidently too 
much exhausted to speak. By and by his visitor said that he would go away and re- 
turn at some other time, as he feared that he was keeping the people outside. 

" Pray sit still," requested Mr. Lamar. " You rest me. I can look at you, and you 
do not ask me for anytliing; and you keep those people out as long as )'ou stay in. I 
can have them at any time I choose to send for them. I can't get you. Please do not 
go away." 

All of this chagrin and distress was further complicated, in the case 
of Mr. Lamar, by the fact that he did not approve of officeholding in 
M^ashingtou as a method of life. Writing to a lady in Georgia, he said: 

I douljt very much whether any of the clerkships in the city of Washington would 
subserve any good purpose to any real, genuine Southern lady. It is a jiosition of 
great drudgery, great dependence, and occasional trial in the authority to which clerks 
are subordinate. A lady filling such a position is of necessity regarded as a mere 
clerk, and no allowance will be made on account of her surroundings or her delicacy 
of feeling. She is just simply considered, and must necessarily be considered, as an 
agent or servant of the government ; held to the most rigid exactions of work, and not 
allowed to absent herself from duty except on account of illness shown by certificate 
of a phj'sician, or by permission of her superior. I have had some Southern women 

here with me. I had one very nice lady from , ami she refused the very first day 

to climb up a ladder and pull down some papers which my Democratic chief of divi- 
sion had ordered her to do; and there I was, bound to make that lady do that thing or 
overrule and break down the discipline of my office. I have come to the conclusion 
that it is no act of friendship, no act of real good service, but a veritable injury, to ap- 
point any lady from the South to office in any of the depai-tments of government. 

There are many other reasons why such positions are not desirable, such as the pre- 
carious tenure of office, which may be terminated, not only by a change of adminis- 
tration, bnt by many other things, such as tne incidental retirement of one of her su- 
perior officers, a misunderstanding with ber chief, or even a clause in an appro] iriation 
bill making some change in the force employed by the department or in the j^ay of 
the employees. The expenses of living in the capital are also to be considered, as well 
as the sacrifice of home pleasures and duties involved in an official life. 

The sentiments expressed in the foregoing letter Mr. Lamar really 



//7.S' LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 483 

entertaiued in respect to all holdings of office in Washington. He re- 
garded such a life not only as precarious and subordinate, but also as 
dwarfing and demoralizing in many respects, and frequently so ox- 
pressed himself. Not rarely he would say and write that the friendli- 
est office he could discharge for a young man or woman of respectable 
capacity would be to defeat his or her effort to obtain such a place. 

A few additional extracts from some of Mr. Lamar's letters will cast 
interesting light upon his powers, limitations, and motives in the bestow- 
al of offices: 

" It is very difficult to realize tliat tlio head of a department is frequently quite pow- 
erless, and has, as a matter of fact, very little control over appointments in his own 
department; but yet such is practically the case. It is true, the Secretary may have 
the power to select between two or three prominent apiilications. He may take a man 
from Maine or a man from Ohio, or he may decide between two men from the same 
State who are prominent applicants; but this is very far from giving him the abili- 
ty to bestow the office upon the man of his own choice. Even though he may liave 
an intimate acquaintance with a gentleman whose character and abilities fit him for a 
given position, the Secretary is often compelled by questions of comtesy, by consider- 
ations political or geographical, to bestow the place upon a man of whom he has no 
personal knowledge and in whom he has not the slightest personal interest." . 

" My respect for the recommendations of the ordinary character is decreasing every 
day, and I have no confidence in them at all." 

"Yon must permit me to say, in all good feeling, that the greatest obstruction in the 
way of appointing . . . Democrats to office, is that which Democrats from . . . 
themselves interpose. I hax'e been on the eve more than once of recommending an 
important appointment under the general administration from your State, and have 
been prevented from doing so by the protests of leading and distinguished Democrats 
against it, gentlemen whose words and wishes I could not well disregard. I have thus 
been actually driven out of your State into others whose Democracy was harmonious 
and unanimous. Icannotmoveastepin thedirectionof . . . either in local or general 
appointments, that I do not find my action checked by this discord in recommendations 
and the collisions of opposing forces. . . . It is the same with every office that I touch 
— on one side, eulogies of the applicant that would make George Washington blush if 
pronounced upon him to his face; and, on the other, den\mciations that would make 
even a felon tremble for his I'eputation. Tlius, in several instances, fd/iomsoei'cr I appoint, 
there will be on record in my office charges of his own party associates against him 
greater than those filed against the Bepublican incumbent whose removal is urged." 

The state of affairs which Mr. Lamar so forcibly presents here exist- 
ed in several States. 

" Sometimes I suspect of playing the part of Senator X. upon me. X. had a lot 

of fellows about that he was pledged to support, and yet he could not afl'ord to 

succeed in putting them into office; and, in order to avoid a quarrel with them, he 
made a quarrel with tlie President, and refused to make any fiirther recommendations. 

That's the way of it. I am perfectly willing that shall liave the benefit of that 

sort of a quarrel — interrupted again, and so I shall quit for the present." 

Mr. Lamar wrote shrewdly and truly when he wrote to his daughter 
that "soon after I get in, the irate clamors of disappointed office seekers 
will be a .storm compared to which the fuss on the Silver Bill was an 



484 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

April shower." Hie second month had not i)assed before the clamor 
and the abuse began. 

From Southern sources he was taxed, in communications puljlic and 
private, frequently coached in the most denunciatory and prejiosterous 
terms, witli proving false to the Southern people and bestowing the 
offices within his control ujwn Northern men by ijreference. From the 
North he was equally taxed, in similar terms, with filling his depart- 
ment with Southern Confederate soldiers, to the willful exclusion of 
those who fought for the Union. From both sections he was accused 
by Democi-ats of wrongfully retaining Eepublicans in office, while the 
stanch and true Democrats wlui had foiiglit and won the hard and long 
contest for a new iiolicy and a new distribution of patronage were delib- 
erately ignored and given the cold shoulder; and his department was 
invaded by newspaper correspondents, who published estimates of the 
Eepublicans retained. At the same time the Eepublican papers 
abounded in articles setting forth how " the South, in his opinion, de- 
served the cream, and he was the man to skim the i^an and distribute 
the cream to the followers of Jeff. Davis," and such like. The com- 
plaints were utterly absurd and contradictory; but these facts made 
them none the less loud, and proljablj' but little less trying. 

The applicants were many times more numerous than the offices. 
When a place was to be filled there were always numerous claimants for 
it; and, as he himself wrote, "applicants are pi-overbially sanguine." 
Of course the great majority were disappointed necessarily, and no rea- 
son could be assigned for their failure except that stronger infiuences 
had carried the appointment elsewhere, which often produced bitter- 
ness. In a letter to his son Mr. Lamar said: "The disappointments 
incident to the applications for office seem to be so desolating to the 
applicants." 

The troubles about offices were not peculiar to Mr. Lamar s depart- 
ment; they touciied the whole administration in one aspect, and 
centered in the President. For many years the patronage of the gov- 
ernment had been increasing until at last it had attained enormous pro- 
portions. A great evil had grown out of that fact. Multitudes of men 
seemed to have no other plan of life than the pursuit of public office 
and to look to the government alone for the means of support. The 
quadrennial elections of Presidents seemed about to degenerate, if, in- 
deed, they had not already degenerated, from contests over policies and 
principles into scrambles for offices and spoils. The public service was 
becoming corrupted, and the government was assuming the form of a 
self-perpetuating dynasty. The movement in favor of civil service re- 
form sought to correct this evil (1) by making a great proportion of the 
offices appointive by examinations held in conformity with law, and un- 
der the supervision of a commission ; and (2 ) by developing a public 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 485 

opinion demanding that officers once^ppointed sliould be retained until 
the expiration of their terms, except for incompetency, immorality, or 
offensive partisanship. 

Those principles had been approved, and the following of them prom- 
ised, by the Democratic party, and especially by Mr. Cleveland. 

For these reasons Mr. Lamar (who thoroughly sympathized with their 
motive, and, moreover, was thoroughly loyal to the President, and anx- 
ious to help on his administration to a full and complete trial as he had 
conceived it), as well as the other members of the Cabinet, were moving 
more slowly in the matter of displacements than was acceptable, to many 
of the politicians; and nearly all over the country there arose a smol- 
dering opposition to the administration, which threatened to break out 
into a flame. Mi-. Lamar's jjapers of this period abound in letters, 
mainly of 1887, from prominent men of all quarters containing protests, 
denunciations, prophecies of futiire evil and reverses to the party, the 
keynote of all of which was a demand for a swifter and more indiscrim- 
inate use of the political ax and an assertion of the folly of civil service 
reform. It was of this feeling that Mr. Lamar wrote in the following 

letter: 

July 11, 1885. 
Brevet Ma.i. Gen. G. Pennypacker, Pliiladelphia, Pa. 

My Dear General: . . . My purpose has been to aid one of the most single-mind- 
ed and truest public men I have ever met with in an honest and brave eflbrt to put 
this government upon sound principles. Every day that I meet the President I am 
more deeply impressed with his patriotism, his self-oblivious devotion to duty, and 
his determination to carry out the principles of reform to which he has pledged liis 
administration. 

It may be that the Democracy of this country will not sustain him. That, howev- 
er, will not cause him to falter one moment in his steady, unfearful, and undoubting 
march to the object before him. The tliirst for a general "turnout" all overthecoun- 
try is almost fearful. The proscription and intolerance of the Repuljlican party in 
every State in which it lias the ascendency, in every department of the government 
where it has a hold, are constant provocations to a departure from the principles laid 
down by the President; and I cannot blame the feverishness of our people for a 
change under such circumstances. If, however, it is yielded to; if the opportunity is 
lost under this administration of establishing the great princi])le that tlie offices and 
honors of this government are not the mere rewards and spoils of party victories, but 
great public trusts to he administered for the benefit and the liighest and best inter- 
ests of the country, I believe American liberty will be lost with it. ... 

Fifteen months later, on the 13th of October, 1886, Mr. Lamar wrote 
to a cousin in respect to a recommendation for office which had been 
sent to him by a lady prominent in official circles under Mr. Buchan- 
an's administration: 

During the whole time that I was in Congress before the war, I, as a Representa- 
tive from my district, did not ask the administration for three offices. Now it would 
lie incredible if I were to state to you the number of applications from that district 
alone. The change is not only in the wholesale methods established by the Republi- 
can jiarty since the war, but by the demand that is made of the Democrats to retali- 



486 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: ' 

ate in kind, until now, in a Presidential election, I believe that there are not less than 
three luillions of voters who vote with reference entirely to the distribution of Fed- 
eral patronage, and who hope to be benefited, either directly or through friends, by 
appointments to otfice. The lact is an appalling one, and unless some great moral rev- 
olution takes place it will lead to a political revolution of the most fearful nature. 

The policy o£ the President aud his sentiments on the subject of civil 
service reform are fully and clearly set forth in the following letter ad- 
dressed to a prominent politician in the Northwest, but never forwarded 
to its destination, and found among Mr. Lamar's papers: 

Sabanac Lake, August 25, 1885. 

Hon. 

My Dear Sir: I have lately received a letter signed by you and ^Ir. , setting 

forth the importance of a change in the incumbents of Federal offices in the State of 
, and suggesting the political propriety of making such changes promptly. 

I have much faith in your judgment and political sagacity, and am fully convinced 
of the pati-iotic motives which have instigated your recommendations to office in your 
locality; and because I entertain these sentiments, with a firm conviction of your 
friendliness and kind wishes toward me, I am constrained to remind you of the con- 
ditions which suiTound the subject referred to in your letter. 

Nothing, it seems to me, could be more distinct than the promise I made to the 
people (hiring the campaign, and since its close, that officers whose duties are purely 
executive should not be displaced during the continuance of their terms merely and 
solely to make way for those who are hi affiliation with the party to which I belong. 

This promise was not made with any lack of appreciation on my part of the impor- 
tance of party organization, nor with any disregaid and failure to recognize the value 
of the services of party associates in the struggle for the ascendency of Democratic 
principle. But it seemed to me at the time that there was no sentiment so nearly up- 
permost in the minds of the people as the belief that a wholesale and indiscriminate 
change in the public officers should not unnecessarily and inevitably follow a change 
of administration. 

This sentiment was based, I suppose, upon a natural regard on the part of the peo- 
ple for their interests as distinguished from the benefit which would accrue from such 
changes to those who make a profession of politics, and who are not always in full 
sympathy with the things that pertain solely to the [lublic good. 

I undei-stand that the party which succeeded to the administratioh in the last elec- 
tion is a progressive Democracy ; and it shonld be really and truly in full accord with 
the wishes of the people, and willing to biise its hopes of a continuance in power upon 
popular approbation. During the campaign we certainly claimed to stand in that po- 
sition, and it was only because the people trusted in our professions that they gave 
into our liands the administration of their government. 

I would not have you understand that the i>ledgesto the people whii'h I thus per- 
sonally acknowledge were given on my part merely to achieve success, and that I feel 
bound to redeem them because they were made. On the contrary, I fully share in the 
sentiments to which I have referred, and sincerely believe that a change of adminis- 
tration sliould not be the signal for an entire change in the servants who are employed 
to do the people's work. 

It follows that honor, good faith, and my conviction of what is right and just, all 
combine to cause me to remain tirm and steadfast in the line of conduct which has 
been marked out for the guidance of the present administration. All officers connect- 
ed with the furtherance of the political policy of (he government should be of the same 
liolitical creed and party as the adiuinivtration ; but failhful an<l honest officers not thus 




PRESIDENT CLEVELAND AND HIS CABINET. 



av PER. C. M, BELL, WASHINGTON, 0. C. PRES. CLEVELAND COPVRIQHTEO 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 487 

related, and whose removal is not deemed necessary to the proper consummation of 
needed reforms, and liaving lixed terms, will not be removed merely upon the allega- 
tion that such otHcers belong to the party lately defeated at the polls. 

Of course there should be no i)rotection for officeholders who have used, and 
are now using, whatever of influence and power their otflces atford, to carry out parti- 
san designs, and who sacrifice tlie interests of the peoi)le to partisan zeal ; nor to them 
who, in their discharge of otiicial duty, willfully olfend their fellow-citizens of anoth- 
er political faith. 

These unworthy officials and offensive partisans should be promptly removed; but 
the enjoyment, in a decent manner, of their political privileges and rights, should not 
be made a pretext for removal for the purpose of putting in their place our political 
friends. 

There can be no doubt, it seems to me, that every member of the Democratic party 
is in honor bound to sustain the present Democratic administration in fulfilling the 
pledges made to the people in its behalf, with the approval and indorsement of the 
parly. These promises and assurances constituted the conditions upon which the 
party was intrusted with power, and common honesty demands that they should be 
faithfully kept and preserved. 

It can be only those who suppose that, under a code of morals peculiar to political 
affairs, promises can be made when the people's suffrages are solicited and easily for- 
gotten afterwards, who can find fault with the course which I have determined to 
pursue. 

Yours very truly, Grover Cleveland. 

This letter is a very clear exposition of the views of the President at 
that time. It is one of the most characteristic of the epistles that have 
come from his pen at any time. It shows unmistakably Mr. Cleveland's 
intentions when he first entered the Presidency. It is highly practical. 
Eules of action were laid down which were easy to carry out, with the 
requisite firmness. They were carried out in their main features, mak- 
ing in this respect a revolution from the practices which had prevailed 
during the fifty years preceding. It was the first step in civil service 
reform under Executive action, and a highly important one. To that 
extent the President carried out his pledges to the people; and he did it, 
as he says in his letter, not solely because of the pledge, but also be- 
cause he shared in the belief of its propriety and justice. In Novem- 
ber, 188.5, Mr. Lamar wrote to a friend: " The President is very inflex- 
ible in his opposition to turning out any meritorious officeholder on 
account of party principles." 

Here was a great point gained. It was established as a precedent 
that officeholders should not be removed solely on political grounds. 
The issue was made squarely; and the Eepublicans, when they subse- 
quently resumed power, were compelled to concede the same policy to- 
ward the officeholders. They did it grudgingly, and when the time came 
that Democratic incumbents could be replaced, on the expiration of 
their terms, by Eepublicans, it was done relentlessly; but still the point 
was conceded. 

While Mr. Lamar was in accord with the views of the President on 



488 LUCIUS Q. a LAAfAR: 

this important question ( as is fully shown in his letter to Gen. Penny- 
packer), and while he did what he could to make these views effectual, 
he was not inclined to deny to the Democrats the legitimate rewards of 
their political services or to underrate the importance of having the 
officers of the government in sympathy with the policy of the adminis- 
tration. On that subject here is an extract from his pen: 

With the fact ever hi view that the sole end sought is good government, yet to at- 
tain this end successfully, in the present state of advancement of political education, 
it cannot wisely be ignored that he who loves a cause best most earnestly labors for 
its success. If the patriotism of the adherents of each political party be conceded to 
be equal, yet the love of party to some extent exists in both; and this love of party 
in a Democrat will be added to his patriotism as an effective force ; while in a Repub- 
lican, as the success of the administration will detract from the probable success of 
his party, his love of party will be in antagonism to, and will be subtracted from, his 
patriotism. As a result, the Democrat will accord to the end of good government, 
under a Democratic administration, a sympathy greater than a Republican, equivalent 
to twice the force of party spirit; and therefore, all things else being equal, will gen- 
erally be likely to make the better officer. 

The following letter, dated October 2, 1886, responding to an inquiry 
by Mr. Schurz, is of interest in this connection: 

^fy Dear Mr. Schurz: ... I am to-day surrounded with men of the opposite par- 
ty, with whom I have had no relations except those that are purely official, and liave 
retained them against the protest of my personal and political friends, who believe 
that they are bitter political enemies, not only of the party to which I belong, but of 
my own success as the chief administrator of this department. 

Nothing is needed to defeat the purpose and the operation of the civil service law 
except bail faith ; and the fact that the great body of the clerical force is still Repub- 
lican is due not so much to the compulsory power of the law as to a sincere coopera- 
tion with its intent and purpose. 

I am very glad to find that you think that the President lias done many good 
things. Let me communicate to you one fact aliout the President, in the perfei-t free- 
dom of private and personal contidence. A man's life is twofold : one, internal, which 
is his real nature— the life of thought, feeling, intention, and purpose; the other, ex- 
ternal and public, which is very often a hindered and imperfect embodiment of the 
former. I liave been in close contact with the President, and I have never seen, in 
moments of the most unrestrained familiarity and unconscious disclosure of himself, 
a thought, word, or deed inconsistent with his ideal of a pure civil service. Whatever 
aberrations have occurred during his administration from the exact line are due to 
the impossibility of infusing into his subordinate ayents and agencies his own spirit 
as a uniform and persistent motive power. I, for instance, lia\(> yielded to the rep- 
resentations of my political friends, both in removals and appointments, which I 
found out afterwards were erroneous representations, to use no stionger expression. 
But I do not believe that the President would swerve one inch from his policy. I 
state this to you because I know how you prize real sterling worth and courage. I 
am satisfied that the country will never get another President more sincere and more 
rooted in his convictions in favor of civil service reform, as you understand it. Even 
if it shouhl, it will not get one who combines with these convictions such intrepidity 
of character. I know that you are practical statesman enough to realize that there 
are environments which must necessari|!y prevent an absoluteconformity of principle 
witli practice in governmental affiurs. S-'ou cannot bring the operations of govern- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 489 

ment to a mathematical square. . . . The unquestionable fact that the gieat mass 
of ofticeholders — over one hundreil thousand — in this cpuntry liave been impressed 
with the conviction that anj' use of their official influence for party purpose, or any 
improper purpose whatever, will be sure to bring them under the censure of a Chief 
JIagistrate, whose intelligence is penetrating and ever observant, and whose will is 
inflexible, certainly marks an advance on this subject, especially when you consider 
how much all persons connected with the administration have been addicted to im- 
pressions and traditions and beliefs so entirely the reverse. 

In my opinion the transfer of power at the last Presidential election to the Demo- 
cratic party has certainly eliminated ofliceholding as an instrumentality of corrup- 
tion. I do not mean to say that either very efficient men or men especially pure lia\e 
been put into office in every instance in place of those ejected; but what I do mean 
to say is that there are no such things, by outsiders or insiders, as schemes and jobs 
of corruption. They may arise hereafter, but no man or set of men now hopes to get a 
lodgment in this administration fur the purpose of perpetrating great frauds or of ob- 
taining favors by which to enrich themselves and others. The real source of embar- 
rassment to the administration is the pressure of Congi'essmen to put their own par- 
tisans into office, irrespective of their merits and efficiency, for purposes of political 
strength at home; and it is a constant fight, and not always a successful one, to pre- 
vent that result. 

The fact that the President is not an old Congressional politician of long and dose 
acquaintance and friendship with the public men of the country, while it has its dis- 
advantages, exempts him from many difficulties to which an old politician would be 
subject. There is not the facility of approach and appeal upon the score of personal 
and old political friendships and alliances in his case that there would be otherwise; 
and I have more than once, in my mind, felicitated tlie country ujjonthe fact. 

Perhaps uo mau in high official jiositiou was ever more solicitous 
about the personnel of his department than was Mr. Lamar. His cor- 
respondence is filled with expressions of the greatest anxiety that his 
subordinates should be, in the highest degree, competent, faithful, and 
efficient. He exercised a jealous and minute watchfulness over the de- 
tails of their conduct, even over those removed across the continent. 

One very noticeable feature of Mr. Lamar's character and his ad- 
ministration of his department was his freedom from the taint of nepo- 
tism. With unusual affection for his relatives, both in its comprehen- 
siveness and its intensity, he would never consent to allow the ties of 
blood to lead him into bestowing office. Indeed, relationship was a de- 
cided objection to an applicant, otlier things being equal; for, as ex- 
pressed in one of his letters to one of his subordinates, it was a car- 
dinal point with him to avoid the appearance of evil, as well as its 
reality. He writes: 

" The charge is a public one, and the offices to be disposed of are public trusts. If I 

could give them out according to my own wishes, not only Mr. , but some very 

poor members of my own family, would lie provided for. They have my heartfelt 
sympathies, but the limitations upon me as a public man are such as to prevent my 
giving them help through pulilic offices." 

"I confess to you a reluctance toward appointing my own relatives to office. It is 
proper to state here that the applications from this source are numerous and distress- 
ing to me. There is no personal sacrifice that I would not make for my own kin, ex- 



490 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

cept that of using tlie patronage which is in my hands as a public trust for the pur- 
pose of advancing the private interests of relatives and friends." 

lu auticii^atiou of tlie opening of Congress, Mr. Lamar made to the 
President his first annual report, under date of November 1, 1885. It 
is an elaborate document, or rather book, of eighty-seven printed images, 
giving a full and most instructive account of his year's work and man- 
agement. The special correspondent at Washington of the Inter-Ocean 
said of it, on December 12, after the meeting of Congress, that 

Tlie report of Mr. Lamar is considered the best that has come from the Cabinet, 
not only as a literary work, but for its comprehensive, statesmanlike review of public 
questions. . . . Mr. Lamar is the literary man of the Cabinet, and wrote every 
line of his report, devoting a great deal of time and attention to its prei^aratioii and 
to the preliminary study of the ttipics of which it speaks. I think that ]Mr. Lamar 
wishes that he was back again in the Senate, out of the hurly-burly. . . . He is 
an intense man, with a very keen sense of the importance of things, and he worship.? 
justice. Very often he goes home from the department all Ijroken up, when the office 
seekers have been more pestiferous than usual, or something has gone wrong in the 
department; and lie broods over his cares until his mind is in a fever heat. Then he 
gathers himself together, brings his will to the exercise of its full force, and goes back 
to the department to ajiply his ideas of justice and law with a vigor that fills the 
building with electricity. 

The Xeir Yoik San said of this rejjort: 

Great industry, great conscientiousness, and great good sense, as well as uncommon 
length, distinguish Secretary Lamar's report. It is one of the longest documents of 
the sort, if not the longest, ever submitted to a President by a Cabinet officer. It 
would fill two pages and a half of the Sun. This happens not because Mr. Lamar has 
wasted many words, but because he has been so diligent in informing himself as to 
the conditions and needs of the multifarious interests under the supervision of the 
Secretary of the Interior, and so anxious that Congress shall have, to the fullest ex- 
tent, the benefit of his investigations and conclusions. 

It is proper to say that this document is as far as possible from being the produc- 
tion of a dreamer who goes aromid with his head in the clouds. It is the work of a 
practical intelligence, able to ex]5ress itself in excellent English. Few State papers in 
the rapidly at'cumulating literature of the Cleveland administration are so well writ- 
ten. 

This item went the rounds of the pajjers very extensively: 

Rarely does a departmental report receive as much favorable mention from the press 
of the country as has been accorded to that of Secretary Lj^mar. Notwithstanding 
the misgivings exj^ressed at the time of his appointment, the idea is now very gener- 
ally entertained that he is the I'ight man in the right place. 

The United States Minister to Switzerland wrote from Berne, under 
date of December 28: 

The rejwrt furnishes, as it were, a renaissance of that combination of ()hilo8ophy, 
thought, and the highest culture, with ability for details and practical affairs which 
in ante beUum days illustrated the official utterances of Southern statesmen. May the 
country enjoy a full restoration of tliis almost lost art! You have given a perfect 
model for a beginning. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 491 

Wlieu Mr. Lamar became Secretary he received numerous letters and 
other commuuications, from various quarters, in respect to the Indians. 
There seems to have been a widespread expectation among those who 
were interested in that question, either officially or philauthropically, 
that the Indians, in all of their varied and difficult relations, w^ould re- 
ceive at his hands a treatment more than usually intelligent, careful, 
and generous. 

This delicate and responsible office, which had annoyed the govern- 
ment since it was first organized, Mr. Lamar undertook with all the en- 
ergy and sympathy of his nature. The problem resolved itself into 
several principal elements, presenting difficulties both inherent and ac- 
cidental. The Indians themselves needed detailed and accurate study. 
Their mental and moral traits; their laws, traditions, and superstitions; 
their tribal relations, both as between themselves and toward the whites; 
their diversities of instinct and habit and feeling, as between diiferent 
tribes; the facts of their treatment by the whites; the causes of their dis- 
contents, or of their occasional peacefulness and comparative jDrosperity. 
— these and other considerations presented a problem of unusual com- 
plexity, and a problem in which not only the material welfare of the 
nation was to a certain extent involved, but also, as the modern world 
had CDUie to regard the matter, its reputation, and its honor. The prin- 
cipal difficulties to be overcome were the strong tendency of the Indian 
nature toward wildness, cruelty, and idleness; the ignorance, injustice, 
greed, and brutality of Indian agents; and the persistent invasion of the 
resei'vations by great syndicates of cattle raisers undftr the cover of 
leases from the tribes. But a few months had passed before Mr. La- 
mar's stewardsliip in this department of his work was rewarded by nu- 
merous and warm expressions of applause for the " firm stand taken in 
behalf of the Indian," for " the discomfiture of their cattle king oppress- 
ors," for "the advanced measures toward the legal protection of the 
Indians of our country." For example, the Omaha Herald, of Septem- 
ber 29, said: 

Secretary Lamar, it is within our knowledge and province to lie able to saj', is mak- 
ing a close studj' of the needs of the Indians, and also of the character of the men 
who are to have charge of their interests. This is equally true in respect to appoint- 
ments to the land offices in this and other States. 

The philosopher-statesman of Mississippi may be "a dreamer," as he is sometimes 
called by the politicians; but it might lietter be understood now than at a latei- time 
that he is a dreamer of very practical dreams. 

The following abstract and quotation from Mr. Lamar's report of 
1885 will give an idea of his general treatment of the question and of 
his opinions and plans about that intricate problem: 

The recent disturbances are first considered, including the outbreaks 
of the Apaclies of Arizona, aiul of the Southern IHes, and the discon- 
tents of the Cheyennes and the Piutes; then the special needs and 



492 LUCIUS q. C. LAMAR: 

troubles of the Nez Perce aud of the Pueblo Indians, the allotments of 
lands in severalty among the Omahas, the Santee Sioux, and in the Uma- 
tilla Reservation. The condition of the Indian trust funds is described, 
also that of the Indian schools. Passing to the subject of the leases of 
the Indian lands, Mr. Lamar shows that, beginning with the month of 
January, 1883, leases of e;itensive tracts had been taken without iDublic 
competition and at unreasonably low rental ( even below two cents per 
acre, for the most part), to an amount in excess of seven million acres. 
Said he: 

From all the facts developed on the subject, I am convinced that the assistance 
rendered by the respective Indian agents in the making of these alleged leases was 
directed more for the interest of the cattle men than that of the Indians placed under 
their care and supervision. While many of the Indians favor the leasing of their 
lands for grazing purposes, otliers opposed and proteste<l against such use and occupa- 
tion of their i-eservations, and refused to participate in the making of the alleged leases, 
or to accept any aliare of the money received thereun<ler. Sulticient influence, how- 
ever, seems to have l)een brought to bear upon a majority of the resjiective tribes to 
induce them to enter into the arrangements made. In my judgment not the least 
among such influences were the encouragements and persuasion of the respective In- 
dian agents, or some of them at least; and in many instances I fear that they have 
shared in the profits of these speculative transactions. 

The immediate consideration of this subject by the department be- 
came absolutely necessary, as the Secretary points out. The opinion 
of the Attorney-General was taken upon the validity of the leases, and 
he held them to be without authority of law, and void. Their exist- 
ence in the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Reservation had been found to be 
the main cai;se of the complaints of these Indians; wherefore, nnder 
proclamation of the President, the cattle men and their cattle were re- 
moved from those lands. The general subject was submitted as to the 
wisest and best course to pursue. 

The report then sets forth the arbitrary obstruction by cuttle men, les- 
sees, of the old established cattle trails through the Indian Territory, by 
fences aud arms, and their effectual removal. The Cherokee Outlet and 
the rights of way of certain railroads through Indian Reservation.s tlien 
receive attention. The reversal of the action of the preceding admin- 
istration in throwing open to white settlement the old Winnebago and 
the Crow Creek Reservations, by their reestablislimeut as reservations 
and the removal of all settlers, is set forth and explained. Then the Sec- 
retary concluded this branch of his report in these terms: 

Having given a detailed account of the operations of this bureau, I desire to oft'er 
some suggestions of a general character. 

It is evident that the Indian race has reached a crisis in its liistory. The Indians 
can no longer exist in this country in a savage or semicivilized sfcite, nor can they 
longer recede before tlie advancing march of civilization. It lias already surrounded 
them. Movements of poi)ulation eastwanl and northward and southward have gone on 
with unprecedented raiudity, until every reservation is closed in aud pressed upon by 



HIS LIFE, TIMJ'X, AND SPEECHES. 493 

colonies of settlers, miners, ranchmen, and trailers. The [iracticeof iiinvin^ the Indian 
to more distant reservations can be continued no lonirer. He must make his linal stand 
for existence where he is now. Unless he can adapt himself to the nece.^sities of these 
new conditions, and jjartake of this all-pervading civilization, his extinction will be 
sure and swift. The need of a permanent scheme of Indian management to meet 
this emergency is pressing upon the government with imperious urgency. 

To determine projierly the question as to the true method of conducting our Indian 
affairs in the present cris^is, there should be a clear understanding of the state of things 
which lias tlirown uiion the government the responsilnlity of an Indian policy of any 
kind, and a clear perception of the object which, in dealing with it, the government 
proposes to accomplish. What, then, is this thing — our Indian policy, or, as it is 
sometimes called, the Indian service? Here in "Washington it means a great bureau 
or governmental department, with its system of divisions and clerks and insjiectors 
and special local agents — a sort of State Department, conducting correspondence and 
adjusting the relations of sixty-seven inferior governments of certain "domestic de- 
pendent nations," and at the same time vested with authority to control and protect 
the individuals living under those governments. 

Here, then, is the Indian service, as seen in the workings of the Indian Office. It 
certainly shows a great expenditure of money, eflbrt, i)olitical enterprise, and organ- 
ization. For whom and for what is required this expensive eijuipment of a great 
department of the government, with the constant vigilance and occasional active as- 
sistance of the military establishment? 

There is but one answer: It is for the control, protection, and management of a 
population of only two hundred and sixty thousand, including men, women, and 
children — less than the population of the city of Baltimore. 

Whatever may be said about the injustice and ciuelty with which these Indians 
have been treated in the past, characterized by some as a " century of dishonor," the 
government is now, as all must admit, putting itself to great trouble and expense for 
a very small and inutile population. The question arises: What is the purpose sought 
to be accomplished? Is it to protect this country against the Indian as a menace to 
the security and peace of our people? Nothing could be more absurd. 

It is not, therefore, to protect the peace of the country, or the security of its fron- 
tiers from the danger of Inilian war, or on account of their hindrance to our material 
progress, that all these eflbrts and expenditures are made in their liehalf. It is be- 
cause this government is bound by duty, humanity, religion, good faith, and national 
honor to protect, at whatever of expense or sacrifice, these original posses.sors of the 
soil from the destruction with which they are threatened by the very agencies that 
make our prosperity and greatness. The sense of this obligation was profoundly felt 
by the founders of our Republic. They not only recognized it as the rule of their 
own conduct, but they wrote it dow^n in their statutes and ordinances for the guidance 
of their posterity. 

■ Assuming, then, that the civilization — the moral, intellectual, social, and industrial 
elevation of the Indian, to tit him to take part in the civilization of the country and 
the age — is the common object of all, the question arises: What means should be adopt- 
ed to accomplish this? 

I recommend that a portion of every reservation be divided up into separate tracts 
of suitable size for farms, to be allotted to each individual as his sole and separate es- 
tate. Provision should be made against the power (until after a time limited) of sell- 
ing or mortgaging the same, or even leasing it to any except Indians living within 
the same reservation. Without legislation of this kind, all efforts to make the Indian 
support himself by his own labor will jirove fruitless and unavailing. To overcome 
his natural aversion to labor there must be the incentive, given alone by a sure guar- 
antee that the fruits of his labor shall be enjoyed in security. No man will clear 



49i LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

forests, inclose fields and cultivate them, anil rear houses and barns, when at any mo- 
ment he may be removed and carried ofl' againi^t his will to some distant and un- 
known region. The ownership of land, freeholding, tends to inspire individual inde- 
pendence, pride of character, personal industry, and the development of the domestic 
virtues. Provision should be made that the Indian accepting a patent for his land 
shall not tliereby forfeit any of his rights as a member of his tribe, nor the protec- 
tion and benefit whicli the laws of tlie United States extend to the Indians general- 
ly. . • • 

My recommendation that only a portion of each reservation be divided into sepa- 
rate tracts, as stated above, is based upon the conviction that we must lead the In- 
dians into holding lands in severalty Viy ripening their right of occupancy under their 
commvmal system into a fee simple by a gradual process, and not by the sudden abo- 
lition of a system which is with them a religion as well as a law of property. 

Those who urge the speedy breaking up of tribal relations, the obliteration of 
the reservation system, and the localizaticm of individuals upon separate allotments 
of land as a general policy, overlook the important fact that the Indian race is not a 
homogeneous race. It consists of numerous widely separated tiibes, speaking dilfer- 
ent languages, and varying greatly in customs, habits, and conditions, from the en- 
lightened Commonwealths of the five nations to the wild, fierce, roving bands who 
eke out l>y plunder the scant\' subsistence that they derive from the chase and gov- 
ernment rations. Any general policy adapted to the advancement of one tribe would 
be disastrous and destructive to another. Eacli must be managed as its peculiar cir- 
cumstances and conditions require. 

The policy of change and \insettlement sliould give way to that of fixed homes 
with security of title and possession, and liereafter the civilizing influences and forces 
already at work among tlie Indians should be pushed forward upon the lands which 
they now occupy. The only exceptions should be the reservations where the lands 
are so rugged, mountainous, and sterile, or destitute of water as to be unfit for iigricul- 
tural cultivation or pastoral pursuits. 

The condition of our Indian schools and the progress of Indian education, as ex- 
hibited in the report of the Superintendent of Indian Schools, presents a most grati- 
fying spectacle. The practicability of Indian education is no longer a question. . . . 
I have detailed at some length the transactions of this bureau, in order to enable 
you to recommend such measures as in your judgment will be best for the interests 
involved. But is my duty to say that I do not lielieve that any measures of the gov- 
ernment or efl"ort of philanthroiiy will of themselves solve the Indian problem, but 
that the Christian religion nnist and will be the chief instrumentality (through its 
pure and holy influences upon individual character, morals, and aspirations) to regen- 
erate and uplift this race from its present condition to a higher life and a nobler 
destiny. 

The ludiau ciuestion is finished in Mr. Lamar's report by explaining 
the status of Oklahoma and the effort of the "boomers " to invade and 
settle it in defiance of the law as declared by the rulings of the Interior 
Department, the proclamations of the Executive, and the solemn adju- 
dications of the courts. Their claim was that the lauds were part of 
the public domain, and, as such, subject to homestead entries; while the 
dei)artment held them to be reservations for Indian uses. He showed 
that it had been necessary to use a part of the military force of the 
government to remove intruders who had succeeded in getting into that 
country, and asked: "AVill it not be a lesson, valuable there and valua- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 495 

ble elsewhere, to show to such transgressors that their way is hard, and 
that uotliinf? will render the ludiau occupation more permanent, or 
postpone the change in the use of the lands longer, than the attempts 
to invade and by force to obtidn possession and enjoyment of theuiV" 

The subject of the Public Lands was next considered. The report 
sets forth in detail the acreage of the public lands and of the Indian 
lands disposed of during the current year and the methods of their dis- 
position. The casl) receipts from these sources are also detailed. Then 
comes an account of the origin and extent of the public domain, show- 
ing a residue of lands subject to future disposal (exclusive of the com- 
paratively unexplored and unknown Alaska) of 600,772,654.41 acres. 
In order to arrest the accumulation of large bodies of those lands in 
the hands of capitalists to the exclusion of poor settlers, the report 
recommends an increase of the minimum price. Showing that alleged 
Mexican land grants, made before the acquisition by the United States, 
were a prolific and increasing source of frauds, the report urges the 
enactment of a law barring the laresentation of land claims based upon 
such giants. It was then said that 

Good government seeks to secure to the citizen the undisturbed enjoyment of his 
natural rights. Among tliese is the enjoyment of his lawful acquisitions. Land, law- 
fully acquired, is among the most important of his possessions. Its security depends 
upon the certainty of its title; uncertainty, litigation, and contention depreciate its 
value, disturb the peace, waste the means, and mar the prosjierity of a community or 
nation. To insure certainty of title, the land laws should be simple, few, and, as far as 
practicable, general in their character. Special and local laws, known to but few, 
diminish the merchantable value of land; for titles acquired under such laws are not 
widely known, and the range of competition on their sale is diminished and limited. 
Laws which in their administration are lialjle to abuses which exceed their probable 
utility suliject the government to suspicion, and often make it the instrument of knav- 
ery. Laws exist on the statute books which violate these principles, and are objection- 
able. 

Thereupon the repeal of the Desert Land Acts, and of the Timber 
Culture laws, and of the Railroad Grant Relinquishment Act of the 22d 
of June, 1874, and of the laws allowing surveys to be made on private 
deposits of the costs of survey, was urged, as well as the modification 
of the act of June 3, 1878, allowing timber to be cut in certain territo- 
ries upon public mineral lands without compensation. 

The report then gave the history of the suspension of the patents to 
the New Orleans Pacific Railroad. It showed that, on a subsequent in- 
vestigation and hearing, the company had abandtmod its claim as to 
sixty-eight miles of the line, and, as to the residue, that it had properly 
constructed tlie road on the faith of the supposed validity of the grant 
and the assignment, and submitted the question to Congress of the pro- 
priety of waiving technical points of forfeiture as to the lands appertain- 
ing to that part of the line. 

The report then closed this title of the Public Lauds by submitting 



496 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

an outline for an Act of Congress providing for the preservation of the 
timber on the public lands. 

The next subject considered is that of the railroads which the gov- 
ernment had i^rojected. The Bond and Interest Account is set forth in 
brief, and then the Sinking Fund Account. Short statements are then 
given of the condition of the following railroads: the Union Pacific, 
with separate accounts of its Central Branch ; the Oregon Short Line 
and the Kansas Division; the Central Pacific; the Northern Pacific; 
the Atlantic and Pacific; the Atchison, Topeka and Santa F6; the Mis- 
souri, Kansas and Texas; the Texas and Pacific, and the Memphis and 
Little Eock. The subject is concluded with these remarks: 

These rei:iorts show the state of advancement of the system of railways projected 
by the government. Much has been done of which tlie nation may well lie proud. 

Public highways are an index of national progress, as well as an important means 
to its promotion. They originate in the winding path of tlie barbarian, exi^and with 
the advance of civilization, and are perfected with the march of science. In these 
successive stages of advancement they are essential to comfort and success, alike in 
the rude hut of the pioneer, tiie scattered hamlet, the thrifty town, and the busy city. 
Upon them tlie pleasures of society, the gains of [iroduction, the profits of commerce, 
and the safety of life are largely dependent. 

To secure a good system of national highways for tlie use lA oH the people was the 
primary object of the governmental giants, subsidies, and loans of credit to the several 
Western railways. Direct pecuniary profit to the government was little contempla- 
ted ; still less was it intended that the system should be appropriated to the enriching 
of the few at the expense of the many. 

In a free Republic the rights of each citizen on the public highway are equal. Dis- 
crimination Ijetween individuals under like circunistances is not equality, not within 
the intent of the national grants. Neither should tlie interest of the stockholders 
alone be considered, regardless of the interests of the people. In the management 
tlie greatest possible profit to the road should not be the sole ol.iject of solicitude, nor 
should the fact that a road ]iays the highest possible dividend on its stock be accept- 
ed as evidence that it best subserves the end of its creation. 

The field of future investigation might well include how the great franchises grant- 
ed by the nation are conducted with reference to the convenience, wants, and neces- 
sities of the people wliose interests they were intended to promote. 

This broad field would embrace, among others, rates of fare and freight, discrim- 
inations, combinations for the suppression of legitimate competition, and convenient 
terminal fiicilities ami connections. 

The protection of the peouniaiy interest of the government in its dealings with 
these great highways is important, but to secure equal justice to every citizen in his 
rights thereunder is vital. 



When Mr. Lamar was appointed Secretary of the Interior one of the 
principal objections, if not the chief objection, made by Eepublicans to 
his appointment was based" upon the fact that his department included 
the vast and delicate interest of the pensions, while he had been him- 
self a Confederate ofiicer. It will be remembered that the New York 
Times, in the editorial quoted above, commented upon this sentiment, 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AKD SPEECHES. 497 

and suggested that it might be met by appointing some brave veteran 
of the Union army as Pension Commissioner. Tliis was an eminently 
wise suggestion, but Mr. Lamar did not need it. It was characteristic 
of his far-sighted sagacity that he should have exactly that idea; and 
one of his first official acts was to telegraph Gen. John C. Black, of 
Wisconsin, an ofi'er of that resiwnsible position. Much to his gratifi- 
cation, the General accepted promptly. Their relations were always 
most cordial, and their woi'k harmonius. 

Mr. Lamar had great respect for the just rights of the Union vet- 
erans, recognizing fully and generously their relations toward the re- 
stored Union, while insisting upon the rights of the Southern citizens 
within the LTniou, notwithstanding their Confederate history. His po- 
sition was so judicial and impartial in this particular that it early at- 
tracted the commendation of even the Union veterans themselves. 

In his consideration of the subject of pensions, Mr. Lamar touched 
upon some questions of a more economical service and upon the large 
number of illegal and fraudulent names upon the rolls of various agen- 
cies, pointing out that in two agencies alone more than a thousand 
names had been stricken from the rolls. As to the general subject of 
the payment of pensions to those justly entitled, he said: 

I know of no burden of government that is more cheerfully borne than that of the 
pension system. I concur fully in all efforts to demonstrate that it is universally re- 
garded as a noljle beneficence and in the view that when well and cleanly adminis- 
tered it is noble in its purpose and good in its results, diffusing with a liberal and just 
hand the wealth of a wealthy people among those who sutler from the strokes of war, 
and who have become impoverished by its misfortunes. 

From a statement in the report of the Commissioner it appears that the amount 
of money jiaid as pensions does not equal the amount of interest paid upon the public 
debt incurred during the war. So long as the premium paid to those who contribu- 
ted to the money exceeds that paid to the <lefenders of the country, I think the com- 
plaint of excessive jiensions is not well founded. 

These expressions gained for Mr. Lamar great applause from all 
quarters, especially from the North. The Loitlsville Courier-Joiinial 
had this to say about them: 

AVithout any desire to shock their delicate sensibilities, the Courier-Journal desires 
to call the attention of its esteemed contemporaries, the New York Tribune and ancin- 
nati Commercial Gazette, to the following concerning the pensions paid to the soldiers 
of the Vnion (quoting the first ])aragr!ipli above): These patriotic sentiments are from 
the first annual leport of L. Q. C. Lamar, the Democratic Secretary of the Interior, a 
Southern man in all that the term implies; a man who is great and honest and just, 
and who shames by his manly utterances the blatant shriekers who cried out in sim- 
ulated alarm when he took office that "the South is in the saddle; the Tnion in 
danger ; that the Democratic party having come into power, the results of tlK> war 
would be reversed ; the soldier and the soldier's widow robbed of their iiensions, 
while the Confederates devastated the land they had failed to destroy by war." Who 
of them will have the manliness, the sense of justice, to set out in their editorial 
columns the sentences quoted from Mr. Lamar's repoi;t? Who.will say to the peo- 
32 



498 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAH: 

l>\e of the North: "We have wronged this man, the jiarty to which lie belongs, unci 
the people of whom he is so true and prominent a representative? " Not one, not one. 

The Toledo Journal, of December 13, 1885, said: 

Secretary of the Interior Lamar is called a Rebel Brigadier, and a yell was set up 
against him in certain quarters, fearing that he might lie hostile to pensions to Union 
soldiers. We are glad to know that the Secretary is not hostile to liberal pensions. 
His report shows him to be keenly alive to the broadest instincts of patriotism. . . . 

Every veteran soldier of the Republic should thank Secretary Lamar for his splen- 
did contribution to patriotism an<I valor. 

Mr. Lamar's report then passes iu rajjid review the ojjerations of the 
Patent Office, the progress of the Geological Survey, including the min- 
ing industries and the discoveries of mineral deposits, the development 
of the Bureau of Labor, the completion of the tenth census, the condi- 
tion of the capitol, the work of the Freedmeu's Hospital aud of the 
Hospital for the Insane and of the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb in 
the District of Columbia, the storehouse for the Government Printing 
Office, the improvement aud management of the Hot Springs in Arkan- 
sas and of the Yellowstone Park. Then are i^resented the condition, 
the prospects, and the needs of the Territories of Alaska, Arizona, Da- 
kota, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, and Utah; all of which are carefully 
detailed. 

The rejjort concludes by presenting the subject of education in con- 
nection with that bureau. After setting forth briefly the work of that 
deijartment, Mr. Lamar said: 

The Commissioner is entitled to the highest commendation tor the work which he 
has accomplished with such limited means and so small a force. If the bureau is not 
to be anything else than a beginning and a nucleus; if it is to be confined within its 
present insignificant scope, and yet be regarded as a representative of the nation's 
thought and action on the general subject of education, I am of the opinion that it 
should never have been established, and ouglit to be abolished. 

iMghty years ago President Jefferson, then in the fullest tide of his authority as a 
party chief, told Congress that to complete the circle of Democratic policy a national 
university was a necessity, and should at once be created. In this he followed the rec- 
ommendations of his predecessors, Washington and Adams, the former of whom ten 
years before declared that the desirableness of a national university had so constiintly 
increased with every new view he bad taken of the subject that he could not omit 
the opportunity of recalling the attention of Congress to its importance. Mr. Madi- 
son in 1810 renewed the recommenilation, with the declaration that such an institu- 
tion would contribute not less to strengthen the foundations than to adorn the struc- 
ture of our free and happy system of government, and that it would be universal in 
its beneficial effects. 

This national institution which Washington, Adams, Jeffereon, and Madison 
thought so necessary has never been estaVilished; and in these latter years the idea of 
a national university constitutes no part of the plans of statesmen, and seems to have 
been lost sight of by the people. 

In the meantime scientific bureaus have grown up one by one under the govern- 
ment, with observatories, laboratories, museums, and libraries, until the whole range 
of physical science is represented by national institutions established by the govern- 



HJ.'S LIFE, TIMES, AKD SPEECHES. -lUD 

nieiit for the purpose of prosecutinsj researches embracing astroniiiny, meteorology, 
geography of land and sea, geology, chemistry, statistics, mechanical inventions, etc. 
If the various commissions, bureaus, and divisions of the executive departments at 
AVashington which have for their object the prosecution of scientific research could 
be combined as integral parts of one scientific institution, such an institution would 
be of greater proportions and more comprehensive than any other in the world; 
and should a university be erected thereon with such a siij)erstructure comuK^nsurate 
with the foundation, it would be without rival in any country. The common school 
system, designed to furnish every citizen with an education which ought to be a strict 
necessity for his daily work of life, constitutes the foundation of our democracy ; but 
this is not enough to satisfy its instincts. In the history of nations democracies have 
been the cradles of pure thought and art. The same cause which operated on tliein 
exists in American society ',, and, whether through a national university or in fragmen- 
tary institutions in the several States, sooner or later a higher education, higher than 
the common school or the academy or the college can furnish, will alone realize and 
express the higher aspirations of American democracy. 

The foregoing analysis of Mr. Lamar's report has been given with a 
fourfokl purpose: to show tlie niimerons, extensive, and very dissimi- 
lar classes of the public business committed to the charge of his de- 
partment; to present the importance and inherent interest of those va- 
ried and too little understood matters ; to indicate, although but feebly, 
the infinite joains and fidelity wdth w^hich Mr. Lamar inquired into and 
mastered their minutest details; to disclose his feeling and thought in 
respect to the sttbjects treated, and to disclose them in all of their ele- 
vation and catholicity. In order, however, to reach these ends fully, the 
report itself should be read. It deserved the praises bestowed upon it. 



The second official report of Mr. Lamar was presented to the Presi- 
dent on the 1st of November, 1886. It was qttite as elaborate and ex- 
haustive as the first, embracing seventy-eight printed pages and touch- 
ing on all of the titles included in the former report. No analysis of it 
is given here for the reasons that its theories have already been fully 
presented and a statement of its details would be foreign to the bio- 
graphical nature of this volume. Let it suffice to say that, iu every par- 
ticular, the second report supports the first, and clearly shows that the 
ideas submitted in the first were the conclusions of matured thought, 
which bore the tests of discussion, of applaitse, and criticism, equally.* 

Mr. Lamar's third annual repoi't, submitted November 1, 1887, was 
equal to the two others. It coutaiued eighty-two printed pages, and 
covered all of the subjects connected with his department. It was his 
last report; for which reason, and because it gives expression to the set- 
tled results of nearly three years of experience in several of the most in- 

* It is proper tn say tli.'>t in this report Mr. Lamar said of the action of Secretary Teller, in issu- 
ing patents to the Sew Orleans Pacific Railrnail, that "I h.ave seen in that action nothhig inconsist- 
ent with tlie strictest good faith and honest adniiuistration.*' 



500 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAIi: 

terestiug matters of his trust, sometliing of its substance aud of its lan- 
guage are given : 

PuBLio Lands. 

Perhaps the most diiiii'ult and important duty with wliich tliia department is 
charged is the administration of the i^uhlic land system. The tlieater (jf its opera- 
tions emhraces nearlj' tliree-fourtlis of tlie area of the American States and Territo- 
ries, and tlie vital influence exercised by the distriljution of land ownership among 
the people renders the proper administration of the system of profound importance 
to the present and future prosperity of the country. 

Under existing laws it is apparent that the area of our public land is rapidh' dimin- 
isliing. This would not be an evil if the lands were passing from the government to 
seats of actual occupation by bona fide settlers or honafidc purchasers for purposes of 
settlement. Notliing can be a surer safeguard in a free community against the domi- 
nating influences of powerful corporations and combinations of capital than a body 
of independent small land owners living upon theirown freeholds. But the fticts are 
known to Ije otherwise. It is a sul iject to which I have been forced by the necessities 
of my position to give much thought; and the conclusion to which I have come is 
that most of the troubles and abuses that environ it can be removed by legislative 
action, and that such action is the sole remed}'. 

The report then shows that since the 4th of March, 1885, when Mr. ' 
Lamar came into office, the following amounts of lands had been re- 
stored to the i^ublio domain: 

ACRES. 

Area withiir railroad limits S,P5S,1 77.33 

Area within railroad indeninity limits 21,.j1'3,(j00.0O 

Private land claims 570,000.00 

Entries canceled for fraud, illegality, etc 14,238,913.04 

Making an aggregate of more than forty-five million acres — an area 
about equal to that of the States of Ohio and Indiana. 

In addition, there were suits in the United States Courts and mat- 
ters pending before the department involving the question of the re^;- 
toration of 9,499,480.10 acres more. The report then shows the acreage 
disjDosed of during the current year and the cash proceeds received, 
and continues: 

The immber of patents issued during tlie year upon agricultural lands was 24,558, 
an increase of 4,073 over the i>re\ious year, aci'onling to tlie report of the Commis- 
sioner ; but a decrease, as comi)ared with 1885, of 48,614. 

In this I'oiinection it is to be stated that my immediate predecessor in the depart- 
ment called attenti(jn to the great abuses flowing from the illegal acciuisition of land 
titles by lictitious entries and the iniquitous exactions made upon "honajkle settlers, 
who are often obliged to buy olf suet claims in order to get access to the public lands." 
He states, through the then Commissioner, whom he quotes approvingly, that enor- 
mous numbers of preemption claims are filed for illegal and fraudulent purposes ; that 
large areas of agricultural and grazing lands are entered in fictitious names for the 
purpose of holding lands in large quantities in violation of the spirit if not the letter 
of the law. After enumerating the number of fraudulent entries in the several land 
States and Territories that have been investigated, and the large number of others 
that were suspended and awaiting investigation, he (the tlien Commissioner) states 
that he was forced to suspend all heai'ings, and that he could not take final ai'tion 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 501 

upon them until Congress should [irovide him with more means and larger authority, 
in view of the vastness of the territory and the great proportion of such fraudulent 
hearings. He also stated that he was compelled to remove general suspension of en- 
tries in localities in which fraudulent entries had been reported as i^revalent, "and to 
permit entries to go to patent without the investigation necessary to determine the 
hand fide or fraudulent character of any of them." 

It thus happened that the present aduanistration at the \'ery start was confronted 
with a large accumulation of cases upon the tiles and records of the Land Department, 
in many of which irregularities and insufficiency of proof were apparent, and in others 
alleged fraud in the inception or attempted consummation, but no investigation had. 
It was evident that the administration of the Land Office would lie powerless to prevent 
this indiscriminate and wholesale absorption of the public domain by fraudulent means, 
unless steps were taken at once to ai-rest the issuing of patents " without the investi- 
gation necessary to determine their buna fide or fraudulent character." It was deter- 
mined, therefore, to inaugui-ate new methods and establish other lules, which it was 
hoped would tend to prevent these frauds and to facilitate and promote the interests 
of the honest settler. Assuming the declarations made by the then Conmiissioner, 
and evidently believed by my predecessor, to be true, anything like an approximate 
arrest in the amount of fraudulent entries of ev^ry kind and in the issuance of fraudu- 
lent patents must materially and signally diminish both. 

New rules to reme<ly these great abuses, thus announced and reiterated, have now 
been in operation for some time, and are acting well; yet the claims which were ini- 
tiated under them have not yet been reached and passed upon preliminary to patent, 
for the reason that it was found necessary to clear away as far as iiossible the mass of 
suspended and uninvestigated cases which had accumulated during former years. 
Most of the work has now been disposed of. The new cases are now about reached, 
and will be disposed of with much more expedition and facility than was perhaps 
heretofore practicable; so that settlers will hereafter receive the muniments of their 
title in a comparatively short time. 

The report of the Commissioner demonstrates the imperative necessity of provid- 
ing a much larger force of special agents for effective work in the prevention of these 
frauds upon the government and the people. I concur with him as to the necessity 
of such legislation, but I deem it my duty to state that the most liberal appropriations 
for this purpose will be inadequate to prevent the wholesale appropriation of the pub- 
lic lands, either liy actual frauds or such technical compliance with the Preemption, 
Timber Culture, and Desert Land Laws, as will violate and defeat the great policy of our 
public land system looking to the preservation of the public lands for the abodes of 
our homeless people, to be aoiuired by actual settlement, residence, and cultivation. 
With these laws in force, and the appliances used for their perversion in vigorous op- 
eration, every attempt by mere administrative agencies to prevent the evils com- 
plained of will be fruitless and unavailing. 

I respectfully liut earnestly reiterate my advice that you recommend the immediate 
and total repeal of the preemption laws, the Timber Culture Acts, and the relinquish- 
ment acts,ancl add thereto the cash entry laws and the Desert Land Law. Preferring a 
tentative and gradual system of reform, I have hitherto suggested amendments to 
these two latter; but the failure of Congress to make such amendments, and further 
experience of the injurious effects of their remaining on the statute book in their 
present form, have convinced me that all except the homstead law should be swept 
from the statute book. More flian a quarter of a century has elapsed since the pas- 
sage of the homestead law. Its operations, at least during the last decade, have shown 
it to be the wisest ami most honest method of disposing of the agricultural public 
lands, embracing all the advantages of the preemption system without its acknowl- 
edged facilities for fraud and abuse. 



502 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

The Ad.tustment of Railroad Grants. 

Shortly after my appointment to the position I now liave tlie honor to liold, and 
as I became somewhat famihar witli tlie pubhc laud system, its organization, and the 
workings thereof, I became more and more imi>ressed with the fact that the public 
domain was being diverted from its legitimate purpose, and converted to olijects the 
inevitable effects of which w ere repugnant to the entire theory on which the land sys- 
tem was based. 

Apart from the methods of illegal appropriation of the public domain effected 
through the perversion of the several laws for acquiring title thereto, I became con- 
vinced that the administration of Congi-essional grantsof lands to wagon and rail roads 
had given rise to enormous abuses. Congress had not only made grants which in 
some instances exceeded in extent the area of a half dozen of the largest and most 
populous States of the Union, but in addition proviiled that any losses of lands within 
the granted limits should be satisfied by selections of lands within other and adjoin- 
ing limits, thus nearly douljling the area of the original grants. Under these acts the 
Land Department had withdrawn from public appropriation, not only the granted 
limits as required by law, but also the lands within the indemnitylimits, at the request 
of the grantee companies. Thus enormous quantities of the public land were held in 
reservation to await the convenience of the respective corporations in the construction 
of their roads, the selections of its lands, and the uncertain adjustments of the grants 
by the department. 

Notwithstanding these indemnity withdrawals were made exclusively for the inter- 
ests of the company, few of these, if any of them, constructed their roads within the 
time prescribed in the granting act, as an express condition on which the grant was 
made. Maps of "probable," "general," "designated," and "definite" routes of the 
roads were filed with rapidity in the department, and withdrawals thereunder asked 
and almost invariably granted, until the public land States and Territories were grid- 
ironed over with railroad granted and indemnity limits, and in many instances the 
limits of one road overlapping and conflicting with other roads in the most bewil- 
dering manner ; so that the settler seeking a home could scarcely find a desirable loca- 
tion that was not claimed by some one, or iierhaps two or three, of the many roads 
to which gi-ants of land had been made by Congress. 

Nor was this all. Though the desired tract might not be apparently covered by a 
i-ailroad location, the settler would luirdly select it before agents of the corporations 
would set up a claim to it, or to the right to occujjy and denude it under the right of 
way and construction privileges conferred by the granting act. Thus the settler, ig- 
norant of his legal rights, and with no one to advise him with respect to either the 
law or the facts, would, for the sake of peace and a home, readily consent to purchase 
from the company. In this way these corporations, in addition to the lands granted 
to them, have claimed, sold, and received the price of, a great deal of other land to 
wdiich they had neither legal nor moral right, nor the shadow of either. 

Years have elapsed since many of the grants have been made, and other years since 
the withdrawals. Some of the companies have constructed the entire line of their 
roads ; others, fragmentary portions only ; and others again, none at all. But the with- 
drawals of the lands were no less effective as a barrier against the settlers in the one 
case than in the other. It mattered not what might be his equities, acquired by years 
of .toil upon what he believed to be a part of the national domain; it was declared 
by the highest judicial tribunal, as expounded by the highest law officers of the Exec- 
utive, that a withdrawal once made by competent authority was legal and efl'ective to 
exclude all from intrusion within its limits. 

A law was passed IVIarch M, 1S87 (24 Stat., 55r,), whereby the Secretary of the Inte- 
rior was "directed to immediately ailjust each of the railroad land grants made by 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 503 

Congress to aid iu the construction of lailroails." With an earnest desire to obey the 
nianilate of Congress, to give to the corporations tlieir every riglit under the laws, and 
at tlie same time follow tlie directions given by you to see that ample protection sliould 
be extended to settlers and tliose seeking to make settlement on the public lands (a 
matter which had been so long and so utterly ovei'shadowed), I entered upon a most 
careful consideration of tlie whole subject of the lustory and law i-elating to land grants, 
and concluded that if the department was clothed with authority to make indemnity 
withdrawals, as had been done in so many instances, the exercise of that authority 
was a matter entirely within sound discretion, and not a matter of legal obligation in 
any respect; that the same sound discretion which, in the interest of the companies, 
justified said withdrawals now demanded peremjitorily in the public interest a speedy 
revocation of the same; and that the most eti'eetive way of expediting an adjustment 
of the lanil grants, and doing exact justice to the companies, L'uarding and promoting 
the interests of the settlers also, was to permit the public to enter into. competition 
with the companies in the selection of lands heretofore withdrawn for indemnity 
purposes. 

Accordingly, on May 23, 1887, with your approval, rules were laid upon the different 
companies for whose benefit withdrawals had been made, to show cause by a certain 
day why said withdrawals should not be revoked. ... 

Following this action, instructions were subsequently issued to the Commissioner of 
the General Land Office to detail all the available force in his office to the work of ad- 
justing the road grants, making said work special, and proceeding as rapidl}' as possi- 
ble with the same, to the end that the companies should be fully protected in their 
just claims, and have certified to them all the land that they were entitled to, speedily 
and without delay ; and the residue of public lands, disembarrassed of coi'porate claims 
and pretensions, become free for the use and (juiet enjoyment of settlers. The amount 
of land restored to the public domain through the orders revoking the indemnity with- 
drawals is stated by the Commissioner of the General Land Office to be 21,323,600 
acres. 

The rexjort coutinites the consideratiou of the subject of the Public 
Lands by explaining the ingenious and iniquitous methods by which, 
iu the Northwest, immeuse areas of the public domain had been fenced 
in for private uses, aud suggesting remedies therefor; by explaining 
the frauds committed in the public surveys, and their inadequacy, and 
urging their rectification aud enlargement; by presenting anew and at 
length the frauds growing out of private grants made by the Spanish 
and the Mexican Governments, and suggesting measures for the cor- 
rection of that evil; by offering suggestions for the preservation of the 
public timber aud for the utilization of the public laud strip west of 
tlie Indian Territory. It then passes to the question of the Indians. 

After sketching the success which had attended the efforts of Mr. 
Commissioner Atkins iu managing the affairs of the Indians, the report 
says: 

While these results are generally gratifying, they fall far short of guaranteeing an 
early consummation of our policy of a complete Indian civilization; and I can only 
reiterate the conviction, expressed in former reports, that the Indian race has reached 
a crisis in its history. Surrounded on 'all sides by the forces of civilization, all the 
reservations closed in, and pressed upon by ever increasing masses of population, 
made up of impetuous, daring, and aggressive settlers, miners, ranchmen, and traders. 



50-i LUCIUS Q. C. LA MAE: 

with no possibility of removal to other reservations or of escape into mountain fast- 
nesses, the only alternative presented to the Indian raee is al)Solute extinction or a 
quick entrance into the pide of American civilization. 

Indians Becoming Individuai, Freeholders. 

The most imiiortant measure of legislation ever enacted in this country affecting 
our Indian affairs is the general allotment law of February 8, 1887. By this law 
every Indian, of whatever age, may secure title to a farm, enjoy the protection and 
benefits of the law, both civil and criminal, of the State or Territory in which he 
may reside, and be subject to the restraints of those laws. It goes still further. 
Under it the Indian, in accepting the patent for his individual holding of land, takes 
with it the title to a higher estate: that of a citizen oftlie United States, entitled to 
all the privileges and immunities of such citizenship, and yet invested with all the 
lawful responsiliilities of that position. 

Thfi statute is jii-actically a general naturalization law for the American Indian, ex- 
cept that it is provided therein that its provisions shall not extend to tlie territory 
occupied by the five civilized tribes and some other a<Uani-ed communities of In- 
dians. 

The way thus opened, however, will not be without its ditficulties, its tedious prog- 
ress, its slow success, its sufferings, disappointments, and failures. It will be wholly 
unknown to many of them, and few will be able to pursue the journey alone and un- 
aiiled. The strongest and most advanced among them are feeble indeed, to step from 
the tribal customs and habits of the race to the individual ownership of the soil and 
the pi'oper use of it. Though many are fully persuaded that the conditions and re- 
quirements of the general severalty law are favorable for their physical prosperity, 
moral improvement, and political advancement, they will assume them with much 
hesitancy and with many misgivings. They will need constant encouragement, ad- 
vice, and assistance. 

But whatever difficulties and grievous discouragements may attend the execu- 
tion of the purposes of this law, it is, in my ojiinion, the only escape open to these 
people from the dire alternative of impending extirpation. 

The argument that this legislation or the measures adopted under it should be 
postjjoned until the race by gradual process is morally and intellectuall}' adapted to 
the condition of civilized society, is conclusively answered by the fact tliat a century 
of ellbrt to so adapt them has produced utithing in that direction which promises any 
such fitness within a century to come. The exigencies oftlie ag^ will not await an- 
other century, or even a quarter of a century, of such expenditure of effort and time 
with such incommensurate results. 

Under the direction of the President the department has begun the work of mak- 
ing allotments to such of the following designated Indians as are found competent, 
ready, and willing to take lands in severalty. ... At the date of this report the 
work is proceeding quietly and cautiously on the several reservations, under the joint 
management of the local agents and the sjiecial agents appointed to cooperate with 
them. 

The aim has Ix'cn to proceed with the work of allotting lands on those reservations 
where the Indians have maile the greatest progress, and where their disiiosition and 
general conditions jiromise success in this impoi'tant movement. Many of the tribes 
and Viands, as such, are not favorably disposed to the provisions of the law, but among 
them all are an appreciable number of individuals ready to take their lands in sever- 
alty. The benefits oftlie law should not be withheld from them. They will be al- 
lowed to take allotments and accept the means and instrumentalities afforded for 
their material prosperity and social elevation. It is expected that their example will 
encourage and lead others to do likewise. 



niS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 505 

It will not lie (difficult to allot lands to many of the Indians; but to locato and set- 
tle them upon theii' respective allotments, and to attach and hold them each to his 
own homestead, is a work that will not be so easily accomplished. For the ijresent, 
carp will be taken that the provisions of the law will not be forced upon any unwill- 
ing Indians; but even those who are hostile to its provisions should be made, by 
kind, gentle, but very firm treatment, to learn that they must not continue to stand 
in the way of the accomplishment of the purposes of the law. 

The report then coutiuues the subject of the ludiaus by treating of 
their schools; of the conditiou aud wants of the five civilized tribes; of 
railroads, irrigating canals, etc., affecting Indian reservations; of the 
financial lialjilities of the United States to the Indian tribes; of their 
fishing privileges; and of the peculiar difiiculties and needs of several 
particular tribes. 

The numerous other titles treated of in this report are indicated in 
the analysis given of the first report. A new feature, however, was the 
section upon the Interstate Commerce Commission, authorized by the 
act of February 4, 1887, aud Mr. Lamar's recommeudation that the 
Commission be authorized to report directly to the President, to appoint 
its own officers and employees, and to draw upon the treasury for the 
payment of the salaries of its subordinates, as well as for all expenses 
incurred under the act. 

He was also able to make a gratifying report of the work and stand- 
ing of the Bureau of Labor, which had been organized under his ad- 
ministration, and successfully conducted under his authority. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

Anecdotes of ]\Ir. Lamar — Honorary Degree Conferred by Harvaril University — Sec- 
ond Marriage — Oration on John C. Calhoun — Speech at Banquet of New Yorlc 
Chamber of Commerce — Deatli of Mr. Justice AVoods, of tbe Supreme Court — Mr. 
Lamar Diticussed as tlie Successor — Correspondence — Nominated bytlie President — 
Objections to Confirmation — Correspondence — Complexion of the Senate — Resigns 
Oflice of Secretary — Character as an Administrative Officer. 

TO follow Mr. Lamar iu detail throiigli all, or even the most strik- 
ing, of the incidents of his official labors as Secretary of the In- 
terior, wonld unduly extend this Yoliime. For this reason many things 
interesting of themselves must be omitted; and this part of his career, 
as a general rule, miist be considered iu its broader outlines only. This 
chapter, therefore, shall be devoted to his more strictly personal for- 
tunes. 

In a previous chapter mention vras made of the habit of the public 
and of the newspapers of discussing his personal traits, etc., and in cir- 
culating anecdotes and jokes, more or less uncertain as to truth, but 
never malicious, about him; and a few illustrations . were given. The 
following stories of similar nature, tolerably well authenticated in these 
instances, were current, among many others, while he was Secretary. 

Premising that the salary of a Cabinet officer is §8,000, it was said 
that 

Senator Lamar had been ti-ansplanted from the Senate to the Cabinet by President 
Cleveland. Pie wanted to rent a residence. Mrs. Dahlgren, widow of the late Ad- 
miral Dahlgren, had just completed an elegant house — in the same neighborhood, by 
the way, wliere the Justice has now l>ought a lot — which she wanted to let. Secre- 
tar}' Lamar called upon her, was ushered into the parlor, and made known his busi- 
ness. The lady replied that the house was for rent, the rental being 87,500 jier an- 
num. The Secretary sat perfectly quiet, his eyes bent upon the carpet, ajiparently 
absorbed in profound thought. This was kept up so long that Mrs. Dahlgren finally 
inquired if he were ill. 

" No, madam," rejilied the Secretary ; " I was only wondering what I could do with 
the rest of my salary." 

Another of the jokes ran thus: 

Mr. Lamar has been one of the most picturesque characters in "Washington society. 
He was eccentric and peculiar in nrany resjiects. He was frequently the victhn of 
many ludicrous occurrences. There are many stories now recalled illustrating this 
and other peculiar features of his character. Although he was a most scholarly man, 
particularly well read in diplomacy and legal lore, he was passionately fond of light 
literature. Goitig to and from the capitol when he was a Senator, and Ijctween his 
home and the Interior Department when he was in Jlr. Cleveland's Cabinet, he rare- 
ly spoke to any one that he met, but sat in the street car or his jirivate carriage, as the 
case might be, with his nose buried in a book. 

One dav, when he went to attend a Cabinet meeting at tlie White House, an em- 



LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 507 

barrassing incident occnvred. He had just descended from his carriage in front of 
the White House, bearing under his arm his portfolio, an oflicial-looking leather re- 
ceptacle. As he descended from the carriage a group of coirespondents saluted hini. 
In returning their greeting, JNlr. Liimar'a portfolio fell to the ground. A half dozen 
well-known "Seaside" novels tumbled out of it. They were scattered in every di- 
rection, and the correspondents, witli exaggerated politeness, helped the distinguished 
Cabinet officer to gather them together. Mr. Lamar thanked them greatly for their 
assistance, and, stuthng the books back into his portfolio, he walked with dignified 
step into the AVhite House. 

And here is still auother: 

One of Secretary Lamar's characteristics is sympathy for inebriates. This kind of 
philanthropy, however, has its drawbacks. The other day an individual tottered into 
a street car where the Secretary was riding. The first thing that he did was to throw 
a dollar through the opening in the front door. By and by the driver passed back 
the change done up in a little package. The drunken man shoved it into his i)ocket. 
Pretty soon the driver opened the door and called out sharply: " Put in your fare! " 
The drunken man stared, but didn't move. People began to titter. " Kever mind," said 
Mr. Lamar, looking benevolently at the befogged passenger; " I'll fix it for you." And 
he stepped up and put a nickel in the box. The situation was still misty, but the 
drunken man recognized that in some way the Secretary had done him a friendly 
act. He extended his hand, and Mr. Lamar shook it, saying : " That's all right." 

The drunken man gazed steadily and earnestly at his benefactor for nearly five 
minutes. Then a broad grin si)iead over his face as he reached out his hand and 
said: "How d'ye do, Gen. Butler? I thought I know'd yer; fit with yer at New Or- 
leans." 

Mr. Lamar accepted the hand again, but with less sua\ity. "I know'd yer," con- 
tinued the drunken man ; and he kept on grinning, while the people began to snicker. 

" You don't think tliat he takes me for Ben Butler, do you? " asked j\Ir. Lamar, 
rather painfully, of a friend who sat beside him. The Secretary wasn't left long in 
doubt, for, after another hard look, the drunken man delightedly pointed to his left 
optic, and broke out with: "Got yer eye fixed sence we was at New Orleans, hain't 
yer?" 

Mr. Lamar dropped out at the next corner, with an effort to look resijonsive to the 
smiles which followed him. 

In the course of his varied career Mr. Lamar had several times con- 
ferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D., but the instance which 
he most valued was the bestowal of it by Harvard University in Novem- 
ber, 1886. On that occasion he attended the exercises of the institution 
(being the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its founding) in or- 
der to receive the degree; and President Eliot, in conferring it, as he 
stood before the assembly, described him by the terms, " teacher, ora- 
tor, legislator, administrator." 

On the 5tli of January, 1887, jNtr. Lamar was united in marriage with 
Mrs. Henrietta J. Holt, widow of Gen. "William S. Holt, late President 
of the Southwestern Piailroad Company. Mrs. Holt was the daughter 
of James Dean, of Geoi-gia, a planter of wealth, a politician of impor- 
tance, and a citizen of public spirit. As a young lady. Miss Heuuie 



0U« LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR.- 

Dean was adiuired for her attractions of person and mind, not only in 
her native city of Macon, but also throughout the State of Georgia, and 
beyond. She married Judge Holt when quite young. At the time of 
her second marriage she retained much of her youthful beauty. She was 
fair, with a figure somewhat inclining to embonpoint, biit not too stout; 
with a tine presence, and an abundance of the silken, silvery hair which 
is sometimes very lovely, and was so in her case. Of mild and retiring, 
although self-possessed, manners, loving the domesticities and disliking 
all forms of display and publicity, a devout member of the Church, a de- 
voted mother, a tender, thoughtful, and helpful wife, having many pre- 
cious early memories in common with her husband, she was to Mr. La- 
mar in his old age a great grace and a great consolation. 

A request made of Mr. Lamar to deliver the oration on the unveiling 
of the Calhoun monument in Charleston, S. C, gratified him deeply, and 
afi'orded to him what he regarded at the time as a most fortunate and 
acceptable opportunity to close his public utterances. 

The invitation was conveyed to Mr. Lamar l)y a letter from Mr. 
H. E. Young, chairman of the Gentlemen's Committee, in which he 
was informed that his selection was unanimous. Having accepted the 
invitation, he began at once an extensive correspondence for the purpose 
of collecting not only books and articles about Mr. Calhoun in addition 
to those already in his possession, but also authentic unpublished per- 
sonal reminiscences of the great statesman. 

In writing to the chairman of the Gentlemen's Committee, ^Ir. Lamar says in one 
of his letters : " The theme magnifies in importance as I study it. The more I consid- 
er the career and speeches of 3Ir. Calhoun, the more firmly is the conviction riveted 
upon my mind that he was, among the profound thinkers and great statesmen of the 
century, primus inter pans. This can be sliown within the limits of a not very long 
address. I am not sure that I can do it, even with opportunity for study and prepa- 
ration ; but if I can, it will be the proudest achievement of my life, and one that I 
would- be glad to make the peroration of my own humble career."* 

The ceremony of the unveiling took place and the oration was deliv- 
ered on the 26th of April, 1887; that day being selected because it was an 
anniversary of the day on which the committee of Congress delivered 
the remains of Mr. Calhoun to the people of South Carolina, nearly 
forty years before. 

There was a most imposing pageant. A great procession of military 
and civic organizations, which took thirty-five minutes to pass a given 
point, and was accompanied by numerous bands of music, defiled througli 
the streets. It was estimated that not less than twenty thousand people 
gathered along its route. 

It was a bright scene. The waters in the harbor were glassy, not a ripple disturb- 



' History of L'.illumn Mouiiiiiciit.'' p. 



UIS LIFE, Times, AXD SPEECHES. 509 

ing the bos^oin of the water, in wliich numerous vosisels lay gaily decked in bunting 
from i?tem to stern. The bayonets of the soldiers glistening in thesun, tlieir handsome 
uniforms mingling with the varied colors of the many brilliant i)arasols and dresses 
of the ladies, with the dark green of the trees in White Toint (iarden as a background, 
formed a kaleidoscope of rich colors, the shifting beauties of which would defy the 
brush of an artist. Gaily caparisoned stalf officers galloped hither and thither, mov- 
ing the troiips into line.* 

Promptly at noou the vast crowd of soldiers aud citizens moved off in 
three divisions. By one o'clock the people had settled into such quiet 
as could be expected of such an assembly, and the meeting was called 
to order by the Chief Marshal, Maj. H. E. Young. Mayor William A. 
Courtenay then opened the proceedings by a short address. A prayer 
was delivered by Kev. Charles C. Pinckney. Then, " after a brief inter- 
val, the appointed signal was given, and a band in the midst of the plaza 
suddenly poured forth the inspiring strains of ' Dixie.' The vast multi- 
tude recognized the familiar strains before half a dozen ncjtes had 
sounded, and began to cheer. In the same instant the cords were drawn 
by the hands of fair young girls, the flags that liad closely draped 
the statue up to this time mysteriously quitted their place and floated 
away to the height of the neighboring standard," while, amid the boom- 
ing of the Vice President's salute of nineteen guns, the majestic form 
of the great statesman stood revealed to the people. 

In that impressive moment the shouting quickly subsided into a sol- 
emn silence, and every eye seemed fixed upon the stern, bronzed coun- 
terpart of the face of the honored dead. The stillness was broken by 
the voice of Eev. Charles A. Stakely, who read an ode to Calhoun com- 
posed for the occasion by Miss E. B. Cheesborough. 

Then Mr. Lamar delivered his oration.f 

After the oration, Rev. ^\. F. Junkiu read another ode to Calhoun, 
composed by Mrs. Margaret J. Preston. A benediction was then pro- 
nounced by Rev. John O. Willson, and the ceremonies ended. 

This great gathering was the last in which Mr. Lamar confronted a 
popular assembly upon any question of a political nature. 

The scheme of Mr. Lamar's address was both comprehensive aud 
philosophical. He first assigned the reasons why it was right to erect 
to the memory of the great South Carolinian a monument so imposing, 
and to erect it in South Carolina, (1) because, notwithstanding his im- 
posing position as a national statesman, his real life and motive were 
those of a home man, identified with his people and neighbors in love, 
in sympathy, and in private life as a planter; (2) because of his price- 
less contribution to the intellectual wealth of his age in his writings on 
the Ainerican Constitution; (3) because of the singular purity of his 
life and character. He reviewed the conflict in the early history of the 
Republic, and in its subseque nt progress, between the principles of local 

* " History of Calhoun Mouument," p. 13. f Aiu>euiUx, Xo. 23. 



510 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

State sovereignty and of a national union ; sliowiny liow, notwithstand- 
ing the early separateness of the colonial communities and the conse- 
quent ijredominance of the principle of State sovereignty in the forma- 
tion of the constitution, in the course of years the moral, social, and ma- 
terial forces at work among the people of the United States, wrought a 
great, although a silent, revolution in fact, and united the vast jjopula- 
lation into one web of thought and of feeling; also how, by the great ex- 
tension of our territory westward, the Federal Government, which in 
its earlier period was the creature of the original States, became itself 
the creator of a majority of the States of the Union. Pointing out how 
natural it was, as a consequence of these great changes, that the integ- 
rity of the Union should be established on the battlefield, Mr. Lamar 
touched upon the policy of the reconstruction, its results, the present 
state of national sentiment in respect to its processes, and impressed the 
duty of the South to al)ide by those results with good faith and loyalty. 
■ After these preliminaries, Mr. Lamar proceeded to an elaborate and 
masterly consideration of Mr. Calhoun's services, his political philoso- 
phy, and his past position as a political leader and his future position as 
a political philosopher. He showed how Mr. Calhoau rejected alike the 
dogma of the sovereignty of monarchies and the shallow fiction of the 
social contract as the foundation of government, how he maintained that 
the people were the source of all power, and how his faith in man and 
his capacity for self-government never for a moment deserted him. He 
set forth the sudden, dynamic, sagacious, and fruitful leadership of Mr. 
Calhoun in the war with England in 1812-15 for the vindication of 
American commercial independence. He explained Mr. Calhoun's views 
upon the tariff, and vindicated him from the charge of inconsistency in 
his earlier and his later positions, emphasizing the vast difference he- 
tween a protective tariff as a war measure and a continuance of such pol- 
icy into times of peace to the impoverishment of one section for the en- 
richment of another. The doctrine of nullification was exj^lained, the 
occasion of its invocation by South Carolina set forth, and the distinc- 
tion between that doctrine and the dogma of secession pointed out. It 
was shown that Mr. Calhoun was a devoted lover of the Union, and that 
his great struggle for nullification was by him lielieved to be but a 
struggle for a peaceable remedy within the Union for undue encroach- 
ment by the Federal Government upon the reserved rights of the States, 
and subject always, in the event of necessity for it, to the action of the 
Congress of States by amendment to the constitution in the manner 
prescribed. 

Mr. Lamar then narrated Mr. Calhoun's position and services "ftbout 
the national bank and the removal of the deposits, and his report and 
speech on the extent of the government patronage and the disposal of 
offices. In connection with the latter topic, the orat<n- touched briefly 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 511 

upon the policy and course of tlic admiiiist ration of wliit'h he liiniself 
was a. member, and tlie support whicli the administration had received 
from the State of South Carolina. 

Tlie speaker then reviewed the services of Mr. Calhoun in the annex- 
ation of Texas and in the settlement of the Oregon boundary, his op^jo- 
sition to the war with Mexico and his forebodings about its ultimate 
consequences. His position upon the subject of African slavery was 
explained and compared with that of Webster and Clay. 

"With an analysis of the secret of the eloquence of the gi-eat orator 
and statesman, the address terminated after a few remarks of a jjersonal 
and local nature. 

This brief abstract of the oration can give but a faint conception of 
the speech itself. It is an original and masterly statement in compara- 
tively brief compass of Mr. Calhoun's place in political history and his 
philosophy. In time it will go far to vindicate the memory of that 
great man from the miscoucei^tion and injustice which have resulted 
from the fact that thus far his reputation seems to have been in the 
hands of his foes, his epitaph written by enemies, reversing the true 
principle of biography, which should be written by friends, or, at all 
events, by tliose in sympathy with the subject, and riuderstandiug him. 

On the next day after the delivery of the oration the CharJesfoii Xc/rs 
and Courier, in the coiirse of its remarks, said: 

It would be worse than useless to attempt a review of Mr. Lamar's oration. His 
analysis of the sentiments and motives which were the inspiration of JNIr. Calhoun's 
puljlic conduct and the gviide of his private life affords a clear and luminous reflection 
of the character of the great Carolinian. But there is so much tliat throws a new 
light upon the history of the excitinij questions that engaged the attention of Mr. Cal- 
houn, so much tliat is associated witli the development of the theory of popular gov- 
ernment, that the oration comprises in itself a complete text-l)Ook upon our Rejiuhli- 
can institutions. 

Perhaps the strongest, as it certainly is the most striking, passage in :Mr. Lamar's 
oration is that in which he discusses the effect that territorial acquisition has had in 
reversing the relations of the States to the Federal Government, and which has been 
a potent cause in determining our political system. A more concise, and at the same 
time more comprehensive, view of the radical change that is claimed to have taken 
place in the re-lation of the States to the Federal Government has never been oflered. 

So, six years later the same paper declared also that "the breadth of 
Mr. Lamar's mind and his thorough understanding of the political 
problems which confront the statesmen of this country were probably 
never more thoroughly illustrated than by the speech which he made 
in this city at the unveiling of the Calhoun Monument." 

On the 11th of May Mr. Lamar wrote as follows to his friend, Hon. 
H. S. VanEaton, member of Congress from Mississippi: 

... As to the address on Calhoun, it was not the result of any immediate or 
continuous preparation, but simply noting down, through my private secretary, tlie 
result of long years of reflection upon politics generally, and as expounded by Cal- 



51-2 LUCIVS Q. a LAMAR: 

hoiin especiall}'. I tried to throw the whole doctrine into a consistent whole, very 
much as Cousin, in Ids criticism upon Locke's philosophy, was enabled to develop his 
own system of philosophical eclecticism. In other words, the speecli was the I'esult 
of years of reflection. I do not think in the whole time I had one hour of continu- 
ous, unbroken preparation. 

To Mr. Pleasant A. Stovall, of Athens, Ga., Mr. Lamar wrote on May 
11 as follows: 

The true purpose of a speech upon an occasion of that sort is to give an exact im- 
age of the man's life and thoughts and character without any reference to what eflect 
they may have upon the politics of the present time. The reviews and biographies 
of Mr. Calhoun from a Northern standpoint have been amenable to this very criti- 
cism of leaving out those portions of his public life and his services which would 
have commended him to the respect and admiration of the Northern people, and 
putting forth those which would excite their dissent and hostility in a magnified 
and distorted form. 

On the same day, May 11, he also wrote as follows to Mr. Sheffield 
Phelj^s, of Colorado Springs, Col.: 

I desire, sir, to thank you very kindly for the service you have done myself and 
the subject on which I spoke. Will you allow me in the spirit of reciprocal kindness 
to suggest to you the study of Mr. Calhoun's speeclies and writings? It may be that 
you will not concur with him; but he was one of the most jihilosophical thinkers of 
his age, an ardent American patriot, a practical and sagacious statesman. You will be 
surprised to find how much was held in common between Mr. Webster and ^Ir. Cal- 
houn. They both/iijelieved firmly in the Americanism of government, the sover- 
eignty of the people, the necessity of constitutional limitations and checks .upon the 
absolutism of government of any kind, whether monarchical or popular;/ and tliey 
both believed in the division lietween the delegated and reserved powers 6f the Fed- 
eral Government and of the government of the several States respectively. They dif- 
fered very rarely and not very radically as to where the line of demarcation was. 

The chief difference between them in constitutional theory was as to the residence 
of Ike poiver of determmiwj a dispute in the case of a conflict Iwtween the Federal Gov- 
ernment and that of a particular State, as to the extent of the powers of the formei- ; 
Mr. Webster holding that whenever the question could assume the form of a case in 
law or equity the Supreme Court was the arbiter, and, in cases where it could not as- 
sume such form, that Congress was the sole and flnal judge of its own powers. Mr. 
Calhoun held that in case of such a conflict each State was the judge /or its own people 
of the infraction of the constitution and the mode and measure of redress, subject to 
an appeal to a convention of all the States, whose judgment was binding, both upon 
the States and the Federal Government. They sometimes cociiierated, and not infre- 
quently they were opposed to each other; but in every case theV were patriots and 
brothers, even when contending against each other; and while seemingly antago- 
nistic, they were really helping each the other to bind the selfsame sheaf m the great 
field of public action. 

I would especially recommend to you the reading of his speech on the veto power. 
I believe it is my favorite of all his efforts. 

In writing you this letter I have departed somewhat from the reserve which I have 
mainUiincd toward the critics of my speech at Charleston, irrespective of the favor- 
able or unfavorable character of the criticism; but yours seemed to catch so clearly 
and to present so fairly the purport of ray remarks that I have yielded to this impulse 
of ackowledirment. 

I am very sincerely yours, Ij- Q- G. Lam.\r. 



HJS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 513 

On the 6tli of July Mr. Lamar wrote to Donn Piatt: 

If you will read that speech cjirefully, you will liml in it nothing eloquent, nothing 
Tery literary, but the blended results of lessons learneil in a liarsh school of experi- 
ence and of reflections derived from close study in the closet. 

What criticisms of Mr. Lamar's address were made, seem to have been 
political in their school and motive. A volume would be needed to set 
forth the favorable and enthusiastic notices from all over the country. 
Let one suiEce, as a sample, from a New York Congressman: 

YoNKERS, N. Y., ]\Iay 7, 1887. 

My Dear Mr. Secretary : The inclosed will show wliat they think of you here. The 
eyes of the people were upon you at Charleston, ami I hear only words of the highest 
praise. With love to you, and kind regards to friends. 

Yours sincerely, AY. G. St-^hlneckei:. 

In the delivery of this address upon Calhoun Mr. Lamar unquestion- 
ably rendered a valuable public service. To the student of the political 
history of the United States one of the most interesting inquiries, and 
one of the most obscure, is the history of opinion concerning the nature 
of the constitution. It would not be difficult to show that at times long 
anterior to the era of nullification some of the most virtuous and jja- 
triotic men in the Eeijuljlic north of Mason and Dixon's Line held 
doctrines which would now be deemed exceedingly heretical. Nor is it 
to the curious student of political history alone that these topics are 
important. It is of the utmost importance to the present and future 
generations to understand the exact nature of the teaching of Mr. Cal- 
houn and the belief of his followers; how, although he did not intend it, 
his philosophy tended toward secession as a constitutional right; and 
what it was that the South surrendered when, for the sake of promoting 
harmony and the welfare of the whole country as well as her own, she 
submitted, loyally if not cheerfully, to the stern results of a civil war. It 
was a long-cherished and a sincere conviction that she gave up, and it 
was that surrender which made impossible forever all further theories 
respecting the constitution not based on the irrevocability and jjerpe- 
tuity of its powers. 

On the 6tli of October, 1887, Mr. Lamar was invited to deliver an ad- 
dress of a half hour at the One Htmdred and Nineteenth Annual Ban- 
quet of the New York Chamber of Commerce, to be given at Delmon- 
ico's, on the 15th of November. " You shall have the place of honor at 
the table," his invitation ran, " and make the leading speech. You are 
no doubt aware that this is a conspicuous occasion, and corresponds 
very nearly to the dinner of the Lord Mayor of London. They are 
anxious to have you make the speech of the evening. It would be a 
good thing for the country, the South, the chamber, and yourself. You 
33 



514 LUCIUS Q. r. LA.VAR. 

know this is the first and greatest chamber of commerce of the couutry. 
Your address will go all over the country." 

This invitation was not definitely accepted imtil the 23d. 

Only a very short time before the day set for the banquet Mr. Lamar 
■was notified that he would be expected to respond to a toast of " The 
President." This, of course, disturbed his plan to some extent; but it 
will be seen that he avoided the difficulty, answering to the request, 
and at the same time i^ersevering in his contemplated line of remark. 

The banquet was held at the time appointed. Many distinguished 
guests were present, among them Secretary Fairchild, and Hon. Joseph 
Chamberlain, Special Commissioner of the British Government. At 
nine o'clock Mr. Charles S. Smith, President of the Chamber, called 
the assemblage to order, and inaugurated the jiroceedings by a short 
speech. Letters were read from the President and from Senator Sher- 
man. Mr. Smith then said: "Now, gentlemen, I ask you to fill your 
glasses and drink to the first regular toast, ' The President.' " [Music, 
"America."] He then introduced Mr. Lamar, who said: 

^fr. President and Gentlemen: Fully appreciating the honor conferred in calling upon 
me to respond to the toast just read, allow me to say that it has taken me somewhat 
by surprise, as I was not aware that I would be called upon to respond to such a toast 
until a day or two since. I confess that I have another cause of embarrassment. I 
have been so close officially to the President for the last three years, so identified with 
his purpose's and his aims and his eftbrts, that it is almost impossible for me to either 
contemplate or present him in the peispective. [Applause.] In my trouble I con- 
sulted the President himself [laughter] as to what I should say; and I do not think 
that I could make a more appropriate response to the toast than to give you his very 
words. Said he: "Remind the gentlemen of the New York Chamber of Commerce 
that the two great causes which originated the convention which adopted the present 
Federal Constitution were, first, the necessity of a National Executive to represent 
the united sovereignty of this great Republic ; and, secondly, the necessity of a national 
supervision, protection, and regulation of the national commerce with foreign nations 
and between the States of the Union." [Applause.] So that the interests which the 
President represents and the interests which you, gentlemen, are the representatives 
of, are tlie joint creation of that matchless creati<in of p<ilitieal wisdom and sagacity, 
the Constitution of the Vnited States. " Say to the gentlemen of commerce, also," 
said he, "that the government of the people should reflect the same sturdy virtue and 
industry which lie at the foundation of the people's success and prosperity ; and that 
you, gentlemen of the New York Ciiamber of Com inerce, can contribute no little to that 
important result by exacting of your national government the observance of the same 
methods and the exercise of the same qualities which have enabled you to do so much 
fur your proud metroplis, and to support a government emleavoring to reach those 
standards with your characteristic firmness of jmrpose and energy of action, so that a 
business government and a business people may go hand in hand together." [.Ap- 
plause.] 

Now, gentlemen, this is the speech that I would have made if I could have made 
just such a speech as I would wish to make in response to your toast. [Applause.] 

Permit me, however, the privilege which we Southern men enjoy upon occasions 
like the present of offering a volunteer toast, which I had determined to do; and 
that is: "The New York Chamber of Commerce: the representative of a class of 



ins LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES 515 

American citizens Iield in higli and lionorable estimation all over the Tnited States." 
[Applause.] 

And now, gentlemen, I desire to thank you for the invitation which brin-s me 
here, and for the very gracious reception which has welcomed my coming. 1 am well 
aware that I can add nothing to your knowledge, nor communicate the slightest im- 
pulse to that enormous and ever-growing influence which your daily occupations ex- 
ercise upon the future and fortunes of this country. 1 am only your guest, but you 
could have summoned no one whose feelings are more deeply moved by the associa- 
tions and suggestions which this assembly presents. [Applause.] 

For, Mr. President, if, with a supposed faculty of vision, one could be put in a posi- 
tion from which he could look down upon this vast continent, what a splendid, what 
a marvelous spectacle would be spread out before him! From the stormy shores of 
Labrador and the fierce gales of the great Banks to the icebound waters of the Behring 
Sea; the great lakes, stretching out like miniature oceans in proud succession, and ri- 
valing the ocean in the magnitudeof their navigation; the ^Mississippi Puver, with its 
mighty trihutarieg, bearing on their inland waters the rich burden of a commerce with 
wliich the trade of Tyre and ^'enice and Alexandria, whose names are stamped in 
gold upon history, could bear no comparison; States as large as kingdoms, whose 
broad acres glow with the golden glory of corn and wheat, or are white with the flakes 
of cotton, that snow of our Southern summers [applause] ; innumerable and inex- 
liaustible mines of coal, which will feed forever the fires of manufacturing imlustry ; 
forests of lumber, if not inexhaustible, not half exhausted ; gold and marble and un- 
counted herds of cattle; and with all this a population ever increasing, the most im- 
petuous in its industry, tlie most daring in its enterprises, the shrewdest in its aims 
and calculation^;, tliattlie world has ever seen ; free, individually and nationally, as no 
other people has ever been ; moving and working with the speed and power of steam ; 
talking, directing, thinking with the swiftness and directness of lightning, which is 
their slave — where ou earth can you find such a spectacle of industrial activity? 
[Applause.] 

And when 5'ou come to trace the source of this peaceful splendor of material pros- 
perity, these miracles of art and industry and expansion of commercial growth, wdicre 
can you find one of tliem operating with more intensity than in the countinghouse, 
in the plain order or the homelj' invoice, which represents that essential principle of 
barter and sale that, orignating in the needs of prinutive life, grows with the growth 
of trade until it becomes the world-encompassing commerce that sharjiens ingemiity, 
excites the desires, and stimulates labor, and finally crowns with wealth and glory 
the successful nations of the earth? [Ajiplause.] 

And then when we think of the fact that all this wondrous development is within 
our own boumlaries, our own local trade, our own interstate commerce, we may well 
realize the position which we hold, as my friend said, between Europe and Asia. 
What will our foreiirn commerce be when even the most distant recesses of Africa will 
be open to our enterprise? Contemplating these things, we can almost imagine the 
future condition of this country, as portrayed by a great American statesman forty 
years ago. "Magic wires," said he, "are stretching themselves in all directions; and 
when their mystic meshes are uniteil and perfected, our globe itself will be endoweil 
with sensitiveness, so that whatever touches it at one point will be felt at every othei'." 
[Applause.] 

Now, gentlemen, having referred to our foreign commerce, I am reminded of the 
assertion, oft-repeated and reverberated (I believe before this very assembly upon a 
previous occasion), that our foreign commerce is so rapidly declining that even heroic 
remedies are necessary to its revival. [Applause.] You will permit me to say, gen- 
tlemen, that I believe the contrary to be tnie [laughter and applause], and that our 
foreign commerce is rapidly increasing [cries of " Hear ! hear ! "] — yes, increasing at a 



516 LUCIVhi Q. C. LAMAR: 

per cent greater than tljat of that great commercial nation, Great Britain herself 
[laughter] — and that with a few reformatory measures, consisting in the removal of 
obstructions and the relief from legal restraint, the United States will not only in a 
short time overtake Great Britain, but will outstrip her in tlie great race for cnmmer- 
cial supremacy. [Applause.] 

[A voice: " What have you to say about our navigating interests? "] 

I will answer tlie intimation that my friend over there has just sounded to 
me— that that liranch of commerce, that great interest connected with it, and by 
some supposed to be indispensable to its growth, is in a state of rapid decline and 
fcaiful decadence; I mean ytiur navigating interest, that interest which concerns 
itself with the carriage of our commodities of international exchange, and with the 
vehicles and the lines of foreign trade. That interest, I admit, is in a state of fearful 
and deplorable depression. [Cries of " Hear ! hear ! "] I do not propose to go into the 
question of the remedies. I leave that to you, gentlemen, my friend, and others, who 
have no doubt given the suljject the consideration which its importance merits; but 
there are some interesting facts connected with it which, if you will bear with me, I 
will state to you. Our country has jiassed through several periods of alternate increase 
and decrease of our tonnage and navigation interests, during which periods different 
and opposite national policies respectively prevailed. From 1824 to 1831 the aggregate 
tonnage of this country fell more than one hundred thousand tons. On the contrary, 
from 1831 to 1841, without any subsidies, it rose until at the close of that period of ten 
years it almost doubled what it was at the beginning. Then again, from 184(1 to 1860 
the aggregate tonnage of the United States, as if touched by magic, sprang forward, 
progressively increased, until at the close of that period it was many thousand tons 
more than double what it was at the beginning. From 1860 to 1886 (I have not the 
figures for 1887) the aggregate tonnage of this country, so far from proportionately in- 
creasing or holding its own, continued to decrease, until it is less by more than a mill- 
ion and a quarter of tons than what it was twenty-seven years ago. Now, gentlemen, 
when you come to look at the amount of conmierce carried in American vessels at 
these two epochs the disparity is still more striking. The proportiijn of your exports 
and imports then carried in American vessels, as compared with those exports and 
imports carried Ijy the vessels engaged in the whole world's carrying trade, was 66i 
per cent. In 1886 it was only 16 per cent. No wonder that my friend's patriotic 
pride, which looks forward to the time when American shipping will whiten every 
sea and when Americans will navigate their own commerce, gives way to his pungent 
apprehension that American navigation, unless this constant and continuous decline 
is arrested, will cease to appear upon the list of American industries. [Applause.] 

Gentlemen, I am only stating facts, and I leave you to look into causes, to trace con- 
sequences, and to devise remedies. [Ajiplause.] But, mark you, I shall not be sur- 
prised if you will find one of those causes— not all of tliem, not the only one, l>ut per- 
haps the principal one— will be what every intelligent merchant with whom I have 
conversed upon the subject believes : that artificial restrictions and restraints are as 
ruinous to commerce as they have ever proved to be fatal to human thought and hu- 
man freedom. [Applause.] 

Mr. President and gentlemen, while all of us unite in recognizing the influence 
which commerce exercises in elevating and strengthening and even refining national 
life, that influence is due not alone to our vast and varied intelligence, nor to the 
profits of great judicious enterprises. There is another vital element which accounts 
for its work in human civilization, and which forms the basis on which rests alike it* 
Fniallest profits and its grandest achievements, and that is mercantile honor. [Ap- 
plause.] 

Many have l)een the inventions in these scientific days which, by increasing the 
speed of locomotion and the ca]iacity of freiglitage and facilitating the quickness and 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 517 

certainty of correspondence, and extending beyond calculable limit the i)owers of 
production, liave expanded the commerce of this country; but none of you can name 
one of these great inventions tliat can compare, in what it has achieved, totlic inven- 
tion of the bill of exchange, the discovery of the force of credit, which, like an ethe- 
real essence, imparts buoyancy to capital in its most solid forms, and even bears im- 
movable properties to the uttermost parts of tlie earth. [ Api>lauKe.] But, gentlemen, 
you may surround credit with all the guarantees and resources which you can com- 
mand, and what does it finally rest upon l;>ut mercantile integrity? [Ajiplause.] 

Much has been said, and beautifully as well as truthfully said, fif that high sense 
of knightly honor which was the highest development of the old institution of feudal 
chivalry. Fully as nolile and e(iually important is that sense of honor which, from 
the days of the merchants of Venice, the bankeis of Amsterdam, the goldsmiths of 
London and Edinburg, down to the mighty merchants of America, has rendered it 
possible — not only possible, Init necessary — that an American merchant's credit shall 
be as far above suspicion as the knight's courage or woman's chastity. [Applause.] 

To preserve tliis credit, created by patient self-sacrifice, resolute endurance, con- 
stant and self-denying labor, and a genuine community of sympathy, will require all 
the virtue and the ability and the energy which you can leave to your children; for, 
gentlemen, none of us can conceal from ourselves that, with all the wonderfiil advan- 
tages of our position, with the almost superhuman activity individually of our peojile, 
with the rapidity with which fortunes are acquired and can be acquired, notwith- 
standing the immense and almost exhaustless resources of our i)eople, they liave 
brought with them to ua evil as well as good. Terrible temjitations come with un- 
precedented and dangerous opportunities, and the very greatness of our possibilities 
has sometimes turned men's heads and seared their consciences, until sober puldic 
opinion is bewildered by the notoriety of gigantic scandals, and public indignation 
is fatigued by their frequency. [Applause.] 

Mr. President, nearly half a century has elapsed since Robert J. Walker, in one of 
his matchless reports as Secretary of the Treasury, presenting his great scheme of fis- 
cal policy, made the following prophecy: 

From these great events the whole country would derive vast benefits, but espe- 
cially the city of New York. It would become the depot and storehouse and entrepot 
of the commerce of the world, the center of business and exchanges, the clearing house 
of international trade and business, the place where assorted cargoes of our own prod- 
ucts and manufactures, as well as those of all foreign countries, would be sold and re- 
shipped, and the point to which specie and bullion would flow as the great creditor 
city of the world, for the adjustment of balances, as the factor of all nations, and the 
ponit whence this specie would flow into the interior of our country through all the 
great channels of internal traile and intercourse. With these great events accom- 
plished, and with abundant facilities for the warehousing of foreign and domestic 
goods at New York, it must eventually surpass in wealth, in commerce, and popula- 
tion, any European emporium ; while, as a necessary consequence, all our other cities 
and every portion of the Union and all our great interests would derive corresjiond- 
ing advantages. [Applause.] 

Gentlemen, you are the representatives of the commerce of this continent. It is 
for you to guide the future of that commerce which is to stamp itself upon the future 
and the character of the country. Alreaily has your imperial city in view the goal 
which Roljert J. Walker predicted, and the time is not far distant when you will con- 
vert into facts of history the divinations of that great statesman; already has your 
city become one of the great centers of the world's trade; already has it been raised 
by you to honorable rivalry with London, the heart of the world's commercial system. 
It is for you, therefore, to see to it that, whatever may be its future success, itshall al- 
ways be purified and strengthened and vivified by the old good faith and the old 
good sense of the American merchant, [.\pplause.] 

And now, gentlemen, will you not permit me, as the representative in part of that 



518 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

great agricultural section which furnishes the staple that constitutes in large degree 
the basis of your foreign commerce, to say to you that the pride of the American peo- 
ple in your proud city lies in the fact that it is an American city, representing the 
character of American proiluctions and American commerce, and that it is in the en- 
joyment of an unrestricted commerce of sixty millions of people of American States 
and Territories, and that the enormous profits of American exchange which you han- 
dle far exceed the profits which you derive from foreign commerce. [Apjjlause.] 
These are the bonds of American unity ; these are the hostages of American fraternity, 
exhibiting the progress and the develoiiment and the glory of a harmonious and 
united people, all of whom are contributing to the magnificent triumph which you 
are achieving and to the siilendid destiny which you have before you. [Applause.] 

It has been said by an English poet that "commerce is the golden girdle of the 
globe." See to it, gentlemen, that that link which American commerce contributes 
to this friendly bond shall be of pure giild, worked with industry, strong in the hon- 
esty of its substance, symbolizing by its weight, its brilliancy, and its solidity the 
character of the men who wrought it. [Loud applause.] 

The President, Mr. Smith: Gentlemen, your obligation, as well as my own, will 
be increased to our friends, members of the Cabinet seated on my right and left, when 
I tell you that, having spent the evening with us, they expect to return to their la- 
bors in Washington by a night train. 

Coutinuing the celebration, Mr. Lamar's sjseecli was followed by ad- 
dresses from Hou. Chatiucey M. Depew, Hou. Joseph Chamberlain; a 
letter from Governor Hill; speeches from Hon. Abram S. Hewitt, 
IVIayor; Hon. George W. Curtis; Hou. William E. Creamer Member of 
Parliament; and Mr. James C.Carter. 

On the 14th of May, 1S87, Hon. William B. Woods, Associate Justice 
of the Supreme Court of the United States, died. Judge Woods had 
been appointed from Georgia; and that State, with the Gulf States, 
constituted the Fifth Judicial Circuit, to which Judge Woods had been 
assigned for dttty in his capacity of Circuit Justice. It was therefore 
expected that his successor woidd be selected from among the lawyers 
of that circuit, although there was no law making such a reqnirement. 
Still, probably every Southern State presented a candidate for the ex- 
alted position, some of them more than one candidate. Mississijjpi 
offered as her choice Senator George, who was not only a lawyer of 
great distinction and long experience, but also had served as Chief 
Justice of the State Supreme Court. However, almost immediately 
after the death of Judge Woods the name of Mr. Lamar, without any 
agency of his own or of his closer friends, came into discussion as a 
jiossible and the proper nominee. 

On the 6th of June, 1887, the following telegram was sent out from 
Washington to the press, and was extensively circulated: 

Congressman Gates, of Alabama, who is at present in Washington, had a talk with 
President Cleveland before he started for Saranac about the vacancy on the Bench of 
the Supreme Court of the United States, and, in an interview on. the subject, says: 
" There are a large number of candidates before the President. Every Southern State, 
1 think, has put forward at least one candidate. Alabama has several. The State, I 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 519 

think, would have a better chance of the appointment if slie luid fewer candidates. 
There are also several Northern men in the field, but they have no chance. The 
President told me himself that he would not consider the candidature of any of them. 
The appointment will go South. Justice Woods was a citizen of Alabama when he 
■was appointed Circuit Judge. He afterwards settled in Georgia. I feel quite certain 
that if Secretary Lamar desired the position he could get it. The President, I know, 
has the very highest opinion of Lamar. He told me so himself I heard him say that 
Secretary Lamar had the clearest and most comprehensive intellect that he had ever 
known." 

The suggestion of Mr. Lamar as the futui-e Justice was received with 
widespread favor without respect to party politics. A few of the notices 
appearing in the paj^ers are here given to illustrate this fact: 

From the Ddrmt Free Press (Democratic), of June 23 : " Of the suggestion that Sec- 
retary Lamar be appointed to the Supreme Bench, the Providence Journal, good Re- 
publican authority, says : ' He is a man of broad learning, both legal and other, and of 
a philosophic and judicial mind. . . . The habit of strict constitutional construc- 
tion which he would bring to the decision of his cases is something for which there is 
no small need in these times, when the tendency of legislation, as regards the exten- 
sion of the central authority, is so oljviously away from the wise precedents of the 
fathers. For Calhonnism, indeed, the time has gone by ; but there is still need for 
that theory in Supreme Court decisions which will prevent the Federal Government 
from engaging in charity schemes, or in any way overstepping the limits prescribed 
for it by the States. Holding the opinions that he does in this regard, few Southern 
lawyers could be of more service on the Supreme Bench than Mr. Lamar.' " 

From the New York Mail and Express (Republican), of June 22: " The story comes 
from Washington, by way of an administration organ, that Secretary Lamar is to quit 
the Cabinet for the Bench, and that next autumn he will be ajipointed to the vacancy 
caused l)y the death of Mr. Justice Woods. We trust that the story is true. We be- 
lieve that the President ought to select the new justice from tlie Soutli, if he can find 
a sound lawyer, and one whose views of the powers of the national government are 
of the kind which the war made dominant. Mr. Lamar is such a man. 

" In the first place, Mr. Lamar is a sound lawyei-. It is true that he has a reputation 
for dreaming a good deal more than appears to be consistent with the duties of a 
judge, whose task is with the practical concerns of life ; buta good deal of Mr. Lamar's 
dreaming is over practical (juestions. His administration of the Interior Department 
ha-s shown that he can transact business in a masterful way, and he is probably bet- 
ter fitted for a judgeship than for an executive office. He is a student, and has a stu- 
dent's hal)it of investigating subjects to the bottom. His speeches in the Senate and 
House of Representatives on questions of business show great breadth and lilierality 
and much patient research. They also show a courageous and independent mind. No 
free trader spoke with more learning or force in the debates of 1S8-4 than did Sena- 
tor Lamar, and the country will not soon forget his valuable contribution to the dis- 
cussion of the silver question- valuable from a moral, as well as from an economic, point 
of view ; for he consciously braved the anger of his constituents in disobeying the 
demands of the Legislature of Mississipjii, and defending the cause of a sound cur- 
rencv. There is no question of constitutional or statute law to the consideration of 
■which Mr. Lamar could not materially contribute. 

"The new Justice will be a Democrat, and it is announced that he must come from 
the South. We hail every proper eflbrt to give that section of the country its share 
in the administration of our common government. Therefore we have hoped that the 
President would find a Southern lawyer in every way worthy of a place on the Su- 
preme Bench, and no one has been named who so nearly approaches the high stand- 



520 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR.' 

ard of the court as Mr. Lamar. We trust that the prediction of his appointuient ^ill 
be verified." 

Froui tlie Washlnglon National T'it'H' (Independeut?), of June 18: " Rising above party 
bias or its requirements, in the ordinary Umited sense to wliich they are applied, up 
to that broader and more liberal place which emljraces all citizens within one com- 
mon fold of rights, duties, and obligation, we cannot help but join in the general ac- 
claini which points to Secretary Lamar for the vacant seat on the Supreme Court 
Bench which Justice Wood's decease has caused. 

" We know that lie is eminently fitted for the place; that he has a judicial mind, 
which opens a broad and liberal outlook, free from all local prejudice, or partial, con- 
tracted sentiment. 

" The appointment of such a man will satisfy the country North and South, East 
and West. Bear in mind this fact: a great point will here be gained, whicli will go 
far to harmonize tlie sections and renew the old-time spirit of loyalty and patriotism 
which culminates in ' one country and one destiny.' 

" Followdng in the line of these remarks, the Boston Herald (Independent) sub- 
mits some practical reflections which we are prompted to embody herewith, and 
wherein it says: 'It seems to be taken fur granted in Washington that Secretary 
Lamar will be appointed to fill a vacancy im the Benclr of the Supreme Court. If this 
is the case, the President will part with the man who has been perhaps in all respects 
the most satisfactory of his Cabinet appointments. The work of the Interior Depart- 
ment under Mr. Lamar has been well done, and he has at the same time had an in- 
fluence in Congress which has not been possessed by his Cabinet associates.' "... 

Ou the 7tli of July Mr. Lam^r wrote to Hon. J. F. Kiug, of Louisiaua: 

Your kind wishes, and especially your estimate of my c|uali Scat ions for the posi- 
tion of Supreme Court Justice, give me the keenest pleasure. 

In the spirit, however, of open-hearted frankness which has always characterized 
our intercourse, you must permit me to express my regret at one thing, and that is that 
you should have sent letters to your numerous personal friends upon the subject. If 
the position is offered me, I wish it done from the promptings of the President's free 
and imconstrained choice, and in acconlance with the spontaneous and unsolicited 
manifestations of public opinion. I have no reason whatever to think that the Pres- 
ident intends to offer me the position apart from the impressions which others have 
derived from conversations with him. 

I beg you to believe that I would much jtirefer to have the office go in some other 
direction than to feel tliat it came to me by any sort of active and energetic manage- 
ment. 

On the 9th of July he wrote to Senator Walthall: 

In reference to the Supreme Court Judgeship, I am fully aware of the fact that my 
friends in Mississippi had no expectation t>f the turn things have taken in connection 
with that ])lace so far as I am concerned, for it was wholly unexpected to me. I came 
into the Cal)inet with noteven a glancing thoughtof a jiosition on the Supreme Couit, 
while it was generally supposed that Garland was appointed Attoi'ney-Gencral as a 
preliminary step to a place upon the Sujireme Bench. The publication of my name 
in connection with the place arose from the imiiressions wliidi Congressmen, making 
applications for aspirants from their respective States, carried with them after convers- 
ing witli the President himself. Not a word has ever been exchanged between the 
President and myself on the subject of myself for the position, nor has any one at my 
suggestion ever approached him. 

The objection made to me by Garland and Vest, which is spreading around a httle 
and perhaps making its impression on the President's mind, is that I am not a practi- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 521 

cal lawyer and not fit for the ordinary business and drudgery of the position, though 
amply qualified now and then to write a good opinion on constitutional law. Vest 
also objected to me on the ground of my age— a very good objection. 

Three weeks later, on July 30, Mr. Lamar wrote again to Senator 
Walthall: 

In relation to the judgeship, I am more inclined to-day than I was when I wrote 
you to think that the President's mind has been jDjetty well made up to oifer me the 
place. This inclination of my mind, however, is derived more from the decided im- 
pression which his conversations still make upon the minds of those who consult with 
him on the subject than from anythhig which he has said to me; for not one word 
has been uttered upon that subject by him to me directl)', or, as I suppose, with a view 
to be communicated to me. 

With reference to the work and drudgery necessary for the Bench, I have no fiear 

whatever of that. I believe I work more on details and more continuously than 

and both put together could do. The only misgiving in my mind is about the 

result of that work in the line of jurisprudence. I do not feel myself fully equipped 
to be a Judge of the Supreme Court; and whatever might be m}' dimppointment AtoaM 
the President's mind take another direction, it will not be as great as the relief which 
it will afford me. ... 

Jennie's wedding was a very jileasant affair. I thought until then that nearly all the 
Lamar kin were dead, but there were forty of them present, living in one little city. . . . 

The next letter to be noticed is one from Henry W. Grady, of the Af- 
Jantn Cousfitutioii, dated October 29, but, as to this matter, referring to 
an earlier date not given: 

Now let me say one thing personal to yourself. "While riding with the President, 

we passed 's house. I mentioned it to the President. He at once commented on 

the unwisdom shown by Mr. in getting up meetings to press him for so high an of- 
fice as Supreme Court Judge, and said that when came to him in 's interest, 

he urged that in appointing a man w ho would be retired on a jiension the President 
ought to get a young enough man to have the guarantee of several years of service be- 
fore pensioning. The President said: " I knocked that out by saying: ' Yes, unless 
we get a man of such overweening ability that one year's service is worth ten of an. 
ordinary man's, and unless we could get a man who has given his whole life already 

to the public service.' " He ailded that Mr. had never troubled him any since. I 

then said that I thought Lamar the best equipped man, living or dead, the South had 
given to the public. He said: "I think certainly the best of the living men." 
I replied that I did not except Clay or Calhoun ; for, while they may have been abler, 
I thought no man from the South had ever been so perfectly equipped for public 
life as Lamar. He then made this significant remark : " I have noticed one thing 
about him : he cannot decide a thing wrong. His temperament is such that when 
he considers a question he is obliged to decide it right. I have never seen this quality 
so marked in any other man. The truth is, his mind and his heart are right, and he 
cannot decide anything wrong." This statement was made in the carriage in which 
Mrs. Cleveland and Mr. Collier and myself were riding. I know it will please you to 
hear it, and I have intended to write it to you ever since it was uttered, but have been 
so busy that this is the first oiipoi-tunity. 

This letter from Postmaster-General Yilas continues the story: 

Ashland, Wis., September .5, 1887. 
Mij Ihiir Friend: I need hardly write of the joy with which I read in your letter 



522 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

the information that the good President has definitely determined upon your (^elec- 
tion for tlie vacancy on the Supreme Bench. I am persuaded, not by love — which 
gives me such gratilication — but by a clear and discriminating judgment, a perception 
of your qualities whicli lighted the way for my affection, that no one could have been 
chosen with greater satisfaction to the country, nor could the place have been more 
suitably a reward for great deserving. Your education, your experience of affairs, and 
your observation of men, have generously aided to accomplish a mind naturally 
adapted, in a peculiar degree, to deal with the great questions which will invoke jiro- 
found political forecast and a lofty, impartial judgment. Your value in that seat will 
be vast to your countrymen. 

And you have so well earned it by your constant devotion to the pacification of 
our people after their terrible strife, and by your unflinching fidelity to the principles of 
national fraternity, out of which national perpetuity and happiness spring, that your 
elevation will be accepted with less envy and more general approbation, I sincerely 
believe, than would have attached to the choice of any other. Its meets, with great 
felicity, tlie fitness of all sectional and general considerations appertaining to the ex- 
igency, and will be accepted, I am sure, as another illustration of the President's wise 
perception of the suitability of men for places of public duty. It gi\'es me greater 
pleasure, too, because it proves the justice of my confident reliance on the sure out- 
come of his wisdom and meditation, which never fail to issue conspicuously above all 
the whirl of passion, personal feeling, and personal greed, in calm superiority. 

I congratulate you with all my heart, and rejoice that your remainder of life will 
now be spent in the study and laljor which will give you happiness, with advantage 
to your fellow-men. Heaven grant you many years full of strength and usefulness, to 
record your learning and wisdom in the enduring volumes of national law, and to 
enjoy and bestow the delights of friendship in the association with them w hom you 
love, and who love you ! 

It is impossible, though ungracious, for me to withhold expression of my pain at 
parting with you as my associate. It has been such a source of pride and honor to 
possess your friendship in that collaboration we have enjoyed. It has been such 
a solace to feel unquestioning assurance of your symiiathy and kindness when you 
took your seat at our table, and I have had such timely help to my inexperience and 
many lacks when help was so grateful, that I melt at the thought of your loss to our 
ofticial concord and to my jiersonal support and delight. It has been, as you say, a 
warmer bond between you and me than perhaps tietween any other two. My at- 
tachments liave been jieculiarly to the ends of our table, and all nnist cling with equal 
reception to the great head of it. I shall have no longer an especial grasp on the love 
of any one beside, by which my errors and shortcomings maybe tenderly consiilored 
and reheved; but this cannot (lualify, after all, the profound joy and gratitude with 
which I contemplate your well-merited honors of the gown. 

By all that has compelled my esteem and affection, you are the more entitled to 
and the more deeply congratulated on your just rewaril. 

The bright skies which smiled over Mr. Lamar's fortunes at this time 
were not, however, to continue imclouded. Even now the cloud no 
larger than a man's, hand was plainly visible. The nest coming year 
was to witness the great struggle of the Republicans for the resumption 
of the executive power, and already the mutterings of party were heard. 
About the last of August and first of September some of the Eepubli- 
can papers began to make war upon Mr. Lamar's appointment. A let- 
ter from Mr. Geo. Ticknor Curtis, of New York, dated September 16, 
states that he had read an editorial in a leading New York paper which 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 523 

opposed liis api)oiiitmeiit and coutained a good deal of misrejirosenta- 
tiou of his public life, and offers bis services to make, through the press, 
such corrections as might seem to be needed; which offer Mr. Lamar, as 
liis custom was, seems gratefully to have declined. The opposition in- 
dicated grew. The New York Tri/uiiie especially helped it on, and by 
the time Congress convened it had assumed threatening proportions. 

On the 6th of December the President sent in the name of Mr. Lamar 
for the action of the Senate. The nomination was referred to the Ju- 
diciary Committee. A majority of that committee were Republicans, 
and their action upon the nomination seems to have been delayed in 
order to give time to work up the party vote in the Senate to the point of 
rejection; at all events, the Democratic papers of the day arid some others 
so state. Meanwhile jjrotests and remonstrances against Mr. Lamar's 
confirmation were sent in from many Republican sources over the coun- 
try. For instance, the Veterans' Rights Union, of Washington City, 
protested, " not on political grounds, but on the charge that he has re- 
peatedly violated the law providing for the retention of Union soldiers 
and sailors in office," the j^articular occasion being the discharge of an 
employee from the Pension Office. The Young Re2:)ublican Club, of 
Lawrence, Kan., requested Senator Ingalls to vote against Mr. Lamar; 
and to this request he responded thus: 

My relations with Mr. Lamar personally are entirely friendly; but there can be no 
doubt that he rejiresents everything that is bad in the past, dangerous in the present, 
and menacing in the future, of the history of this country. His nomination is still 
pending before the Committee on the Judiciary, of which I am a member, and will 
probably be disposed of at an early date. I regret to say that, in my opinion, there 
is little doubt of his confirmation. 

On December 27, in reply to a communication from the Buckeye 
Club, of Springfield, Ohio, protesting against the confirmation of L. Q. 
C. Lamar as Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 
Senator Sherman, in a letter, said: 

I take the same view of the nomination of Mr. Lamar as stated by your Buckeye 
Club. You may be sure I shall do all I can to ]>revent his confirmation. I regret to 
say, however, that I fear my eflbrts will tie unsuccessful. 

This letter is of interest here: 

Philadelphia, Pa., December 20, 1S87. 

Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar. 

Dear Sir: I looked in at Ihe " Blaine Convention " in New York last week, and con- 
tributed somewhat to the defeat of the proposed resolutions against your confirmation. 
I have also during the past week met representative men from all parts of the coun- 
try; and I am assured that the opposition to you is not personal, but sectional. Un- 
der whatever pretexts your opponents may pretend to speak, the true motive is to de- 
feat the confirmation of any ex-Confederate to the Supreme Bench. Any other South- 
ern man of like antecedents would meet with the same opposition: and, in my opin- 
ion, the antagonism to you is less than would be directed against any other Southern 
man who could be named for the same position. 

So that the South might just as well understand that they must stand shoulder to 



524 LUCIUS Q. C. LAM AM: 

shoulder in prest-ing your confirmation to a successful result, if they ever intend to 
break down and surmount the bitter j^rejudices of the " bloody shirt" faction. 

I l)elieve that I was nearly, if not quite, the first man that crossed to Southern soil 
in 1801 with a Federal unilorm on my back and a hostile gun in my hand. As you 
are well aware, I am a stalwart Republican, and .shall always contril)ute my individual 
efforts to the success of that pai'ty and to the defeat of the Democracy; but I am 
also one of very many other Northern men who realize that nearly a quarter of a cen- 
tury has lapsed since the war closed, and that the theory of a reunited country neces- 
sitates tlie jjiactice of an equal recognition of all parts in the three great divisions of 
the government. I and those who, like me, believe in the whole nation, feel, tliere- 
fore, that we are equally intere.sted with all true citizens of the reunited and rehabil- 
itated South in successfully antagonizing this effort to keep alive sectional prejudices 
and war animosities. 

In the uncomfortable position which you now occupy please, then, to accept from 
me a word of good cheer, and believe that there are many, like myself, who are con- 
tributing what we can to your contirmation. I can do so with good heart foranother 
reason; because, having been at the bar for thirty years, and having a professional in- 
come exceeded by but few if any lawyers in the United States, I can truthfully say 
that I prefer to argue a case before yiiu rather than any otlier judge I have ever ad- 
dressed. You will, I am confident, be assured of the sincerity of this remark, because 
I never asked a favor at your hands, and have no otlier possible relation to you than 
that of esteem for your character and ability. 

Yours very sincerely, A. T. Britton. 

Two letters written by Mr. Lamar at this period give interesting in- 
formation in respect to motives ami influences centering al)ont this 
matter. The first letter, dated December 21, was addressed to his sister, 
Mrs. Ross, of Oxford, Miss.: 

There is one thing I wish to trouble you about. You have, I believe, our old family 
Bible, beginning with the birth of my grandfather Bird and going down I don't know 
how many generations. I wish tlie record transcribed and certified to, so that my 
birthday will be seen just as it is in the old family Bible. They have not only alleged 
that I am sixty-seven years old, but they prove it by an old book purporting to be 
biographical sketches of Congressmen in 1857, by a man by the name of Lanman, and 
he put me down five years older than I am. 

Three months ago I wnuld have been confirmed •unanimously; but since then po- 
litical passions have been aroused, and the conviction seems to be strong upon the 
mind of the Republicans that their only chance of success in the next contest is sec- 
tional excitement. I have just received a note from a leading and very distinguished 
Republican lawyer, in which he says that after a practice of thirty years he would 
rather appear before me to argue a case than any judge he ever appeared before in 
his life. I have constant applications from litigants all over the country whose cases 
involve millions of dollars, both sides begging me to decide their cases before I leave 
the department. I do not think that any man ever had more numerous evidences 
of confidence in his judicial integrity, as well as capacity, than I have had; butforall 
that, tendencies and the course of events are stronger than the individual wishes of 
men, and I can see, as the observer of these events, that every Republican friend that 
I have in the Senate will lie sooner or later swept from me by the strong force of party 
organization and sectional passion. I give you these facts to save you from disap- 
pointment. As to myself, you know it has been my cherished object to keep my 
mind upon great issues, unaffected by any consequences personal to myself, and I am 
anxious only for those which concern the great interests of the country ; and while 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 525 

I can see that the disappointnient will in one respect be a keen one, in many other 
respects it will be more than compensated by the infinite sense of relief which it will 
bring. This result will not exclude me from my connection with the Cabinet unless 
I myself insist upon it, whicli I am very much disposed to do, as I am tired, tired, 
tired with public life, and want once more to enjoy the happiness of home and the 
society of my loved ones, from which for three years I have been almost entirely 
isolated. 

The second letter, dated December 23, 1887, was written ti > Mrs. Kate 
W. Freeman, sister o£ Senator ^Yaltball: 

Ml/ Dear Mrs. Freeman: . . . Three months aiio as many perhaps as one-half 
of the Republican Senators had congratulated me on the nomination, and assured me 
of the pleasure with which they would cooperate in the confirmation. But always 
on the eve of a Presidential election parties maneuver for choice of position; and in 
the struggle passions arise and influences are put in force not anticipated, and men 
find themselves hurried by the force of events in a direction entirely opposite to 
what they had intended and expected. And this is the case with me. The Repub- 
lican party has determined that it gives tliem an advantage of position in the coming 
campaign to have me defeated, and it will give the administration a black eye. They 
start with no feeling of a personal nature ; but in the course of the conflict party pas- 
sions and sectional animosity will come into play, until the struggle against me lias 
become not a little embittered Jly friends are still quite confident of victory; but 
in that judicial frame of mind for which I am so eminent (in my own esteem) I ob- 
serve indications that escape the most sanguine, and do not feel confident at all. 
You may not believe it, or rather, many would not believe it (1 believe you do) ; but 
I would not exchange the love, friendship, and good wishes of my friends for the 
honors and emoluments of the office in question. Besides, there is one point on 
which I think that my opponents have .some ground for criticism. I do not believe 
that one of them sincerely entertains a greater dou))t and misgiving of my qualifica- 
tions for the office than I do myself; and nothing but the conviction that I ought not 
to turn my hack upon such an exalted position in the teeth of the perfect confidence 
as to my competence with which it was tendered to me, and with which I am sup- 
ported by my friends, would have prevented me from declining it. 

Excuse this egotistical letter, but I never communicate with you that my heart 
does not instinctively open. 

On the 4th of January, 1888, the matter was still held before the com- 
mittee, although it was no secret that the majority report would be ad- 
verse. On that day Mr. Lamar writes: "I do not think that my pros- 
pects of being a Supreme Court Judge are of the best, though my 
friends are still quite confident, notwithstanding the fact that organiza- 
tion is drawing its coils so close around me that I begin to breathe with 
some difficulty." 

The political composition of the Senate was as follows: Thirty-seven 
Democrats, thirty-eight Republicans, and Senator Riddleberger, an In- 
dependent, from Virginia. On a strict party vote Mr. Lamar would be 
defeated; and even if Riddleberger voted with the Democrats, he would 
still be defeated, because of the tie. Of course speculation was rife as 
to the result. The Democrats hoped that all of the Republicans would 
not join in the movement, and especially hoped for the support of Sen- 
ators Jones and Stewart of Nevada, and Stanford of California. 



o2G LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

The situation was esceediugly unpleasant to Mr. Lamar, not merely 
because of the uncertainty about his attaining to a position of such dig- 
nity, but also because it bore the appearance of availing himself of the 
influence which necessarily hung about a Cabinet office to influence the 
result, and also because the administration was to a certain extent com- 
plicated and embarrassed by the assaults made upon himself under the 
color of a personal opposition. For these reasons, on the 7th of Jan- 
uary he executed the intimation of his letter to Mrs. Eoss, quoted above, 
and sent in his resignation to the President. He wrote to Mr. Cleve- 
land as follows: 

Department of the Interior, AVashington, January 7, 1S88. 
To the President. 

Sir: When, some months ago, you invited me to accept the vacant judgeship in 
the Supreme Court of the United States, you expressed tlie wish that, as the court was 
not in session, I should postpone tlie resignation of my present office until the meet- 
ing of Congress allowed you to send my nomination to the Senate, as there were cer- 
tain matters before the department, inaugurated by me, which it was therefore de- 
siralile that I sliouU close before leaving: an<l, as I would have been very reluctant 
to take the jtlace upon the Bench until your nomination had been coniirmed by the 
Senate, I cheerfully consented to yourrequest. My nomination has now been sub- 
mitted to the Senate, and, recognizing both their right and duty to subject its fitness 
to the most critical examination, I would still waitin my present position their de- 
cision ; but I think that I am warranted in supposing that the final decision may be 
delayed for some time. As you have at the same time nominated both my successor 
in this department and his successor in the PostofRce Department, this delay may, 
to some extent at least, emtiarrass the administration of the pul)lic Imsiness in the 
departments affected. To avoid such eudiarrassment, which is my duty to you and 
to tlie country, and to leave before the Senate in its final judgment upon my nomina- 
tion the sole question of my fitness for the position, dissociated from any other 
nomination and unaffected by any other considerations, I now respectfully ask you 
to accept my resignation as Secretary of the Interior, which I hereby tender. 

In terminating my relations to you as a member of your official family, I desire to 
express my grateful sense of the obligation that I am under to you personally for the 
consideration and kindness which have always characterized your treatment of me, 
and for the generous confidence and support which you have steadily given me in the 
trying and arduous administration of this department. I shall always be proud to 
have been associated with the honorable record which you will leave upon the page 
of your country's history. 

Sincerely and respectfully. L. Q. C. Lamar. Sea-etanj. 

The President's response was given in these lettei's : 

ExEcnTivE Mansion, Washington, January 7, 1888. 

}Iy Dear Mr. Lamar: When I determined to nominate you to a position upon the 
Bench of the Supreme Court, the personal gratification afforded by the tender to you 
of so honorable and suitable a place, and the satisfactory conviction that an impor- 
tant executive duty would thus be well performed, led me almost to forget that my 
action involved the loss of your conscientious and valuable aid and advice in Cabinet 
counsel, which for nearly three years I have so much enjoyed and appreciated. 

Your note of to-day forces me to contemplate this contingency with the most pro- 
found and sincere regret. But since I know that the separation which you now in- 
sist upon arises from that conception of public duty which has always so entirely 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 527 

guided your conduct in our olt'u-ial relations, I am constrained to aeee]it the resigna- 
tion that you tender, lioijini; that it only anticipates your entrance upon tlie dis- 
cliarge of higlier and more congenial functions than those now relincjuii^lied. 

What I liave thus far writti-u seems very formal indeed. I intended this, because 
I am sure that the close confidence and the relations of positive affection which have 
grown up between us need no expression or interpretation. 

And yet I find it utterly impossible for me to finish this note without assuring 
you that the things which have characterized your conduct and bearing in the posi- 
tion from which j-ou now retire — all your devotion to your country and your chief, 
all your self-sacrificing care and solicitude for public interests, all the benefit which 
your otlicial service has conferred upon your fellow-countrymen, and all the alTection 
and kindness so often exhiliited toward me personally — I shall constantly reniend;er 
with tenderness and gratitude. 

Yours very sincerely Ghover Cleveland. 

To Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar, Sccretarij (if thr Interior. 

Executive ^Mansion, Washington, .Tanuary 7, 1888. 
Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar, Secrelarn of llic Interior. 

Dear Sir: Supplementary to my persimal note herewith delivered to you, in which 
I have signified my purpose, at your reciuest, to acce])t your resignation as Secretaiy 
of the Interior, I hereby formally accept said resignaticjn, to take effect on Tuesday, 
January 10, at twelve o'clock noon. 

Yours truly, Grover Cleveland. 

By this step, taken over the earnest written protest of his friends. 
Secretary Bayard, Senator Col(]nitt of Georgia, and others, Mr. Lamar 
burned his ships behind him. It was characteristic of him, and was but 
one of those strikingly unselfisli acts by which he compelled the ad- 
miration of even those who were his foes politically. The Xeir York 
Herald, of the 9th, contained these editorials upon the resignation and 
correspondence: 

"It is like JMr. Lamar to do that which he has just done. He has alwa.vs been a 
high-minded as well as a broad-minded statesman — a man as conspicuous fur moral 
courage as for wise, patriotic, and unselfish statesmanship. 

" Determined, like the brave and honest man that he is, to stand only upon his own 
character and public career, he resigns from the Cabinet in order 'to leave before the 
Senate in its final judgment upon my nomination the sole question of my fitness for 
the position, dissociated from any other nomination and unaffected by any other con- 
siderations.' 

" :Mr. Lamar is, therefore, to-day a private citizen. Let the Senate decide upon his 
nomination as the oaths and the highest duty of Senators demand, without fiivor or 
prejudice. This act of his will fix the eyes of the country ujion his judges; and the 
people, honest and brave themselves, and cherishing above all other qualities cour- 
age and honesty in their public men, will require that the Senate do not injustice in 
this case. 

" It is for the Senate to judge, and to do no injustice; but injustice and prejudice, if 
these should prevail, cannot harm Lamar. He is now, by his own brave act, a pri- 
vate citizen ; but if by the action of the Senate he should remain so, that would not 
lower his character or standing, or lessen his influence with the American jieople. 
He has worthily won their esteem and confidence, and injustice done to him will only 

increase these." 

" The President's Letter. 

" The correspondence between the President and ]\Ir. Lamar is removed from the or- 



528 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

<linary routine of public communication by the grace and delicacy of their letters, and 
especially the tenderness and appreciation shown in the letter of the President. We 
are reminded in their tone of those between Washington and Hamilton, as well as 
those between Jackson and the men whom he trusted. To have inspired so high a 
feeling in the heart of a man as resolute and perhaps as severe as Mr. Cleveland, shows 
the possession liy Mr. Lamar of rare personal traits of loyalty which are the reserve 
of true character. Mr. Cleveland in his tenderness and sincerity shows the same 
qualities. It is this capacity for strong, sincere friendship which gives the President 
so firm a hold upon the public heart. The ])eoiile like a man who can feel like a man." 

Thus, after fifteen years of varied aiul excitiug political and official 
life, Mr. Lamar was again, altliougli for only a brief period, a "private 
citizen." He had held the office of Secretary of the Interior for two 
years, ten months and one week, during a most trying period — that of 
the transition from long-continued Kepublican policies to the new Dem- 
ocratic ideas. His administration had proved diligent, vigilant, patri- 
otic, wise, and temperate. Profoundly impressed with the necessity of 
rescuing almost all branches of the inil)lic interest from the grasp of 
speculation, avarice, and other forms of abuse, and laboring always ear- 
nestly to that end, yet with the unfailing love of law and justice which 
characterized him, he never allowed his zeal for the j^eople to overturn 
his cool judgment and lead him into the wrong of denying to any the 
exact measure of his right. AVhat higher meed could a Secretary win 
than to have had his chief say of him, after nearly three 3'ears of inti- 
mate association and watchfulness, that he '" could not " decide anything 
wrong? 

An immense array of testimonials from the contemporary papers and 
journals could be piled up, bearing witness to Mr. Lamar's high merit 
and efficiency as an administrative officer, Init the limits of this volume 
will allow of only a few. It was his own especial j^ride and earnest ef- 
fort that his tenure should be signalized by absolute freedom from even 
the slightest taint of the scandal and wrongdoing which had thereto- 
fore been not uncommon in Washington. How he succeeded in this 
respect is shown by the fact that in the bitter opposition made to his 
appointment to the Supreme Bench not a whisper was uttered of that 
nature. 

From the TFos/u/»/'o't Post (speci.al corrcspomlence): " Those who think that Secre- 
tary Lamar is lost in reveries away up in the heiglitsof fancj', or down in the depths 
of metaphysics, and not kneeling ardently at the shrine of his onerous duties, even to 
the minutest details of his huge department, with all its ramifications, ' rings,' wrongs, 
and rights, were never more mistaken in their lives. Jnst walk into his department 
some morning at 9 A.M. You will hear the queries: 'Is the Indian Commissioner in?' 
Answer: 'No, not yet.' 'Is Mr. Muldrow here?' Answer: 'No.' 'Is the Secretary 
here? ' Answer: ' Yes, sir.' And sure enough here he will be before all the rest, many 
a time, hammering at bis mail, directina his aids, and just noW' studying with all bis 
liig heart the ' true inwardness ' of the Okhdioma question. And,deiM-nd upon it, when 
this judge gives out his ijiae dixit, the boomers, cattle men, and Indians may rest as- 
sured that it will be just, fair, and final. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 529 

"I am a humble looker-on in tliis Veniee, without fear or fiivor; and the conclu- 
sion of the whole matter is that the new Mississippi Secretary is not only the braini- 
est, most logical and clear-headed man this department has ever had at its helm, l)ut 
the most laborious and practical. His head is a vast lalxiratory that is cai)a1_ile of 
coining and issuing, not merely the most eloquent rhetoric and reason that human 
ears ever listened to, but of the rarer genius for devisinir the l)Os) ways and means of 
unraveling and extricating the often tangled web of our political fal)ric, and satisfy- 
ing all concerned. 

"Mr. Lamar embodies a mesmeric power in a smile and in a fniwn. WiMe Ids 
physical strength commensurate with hi< mental calilier, it would be of iron; as it is, 
his friends, who are legion, nmst bear in min<l that lie is but mortal, and be indulgent. 
One minute of time was worth a world to the dying Hume; a horse, a kingdom to 
the fleeing Richard; and to the overwhelmed Secretary 'one minute' to him may 
perhaiis be worth all that his valuable life is worth to the State." 

The Augusta (Ga.) ConslilutionaliM: "Secretary Lamar is not only the most fascina- 
ting member of the Cabinet, but the most active, hard working, and industrious. So 
far he has completely put to the sword all predictions that he W(.iuld be a scholastic 
dreamer and a moody iiUer. And yet the men who thus prophesied had some basic 
reason for their vaticination. As a Senator, Jlr. Lamar was apparently conspicuous 
for inertness, when not, at long and rare intervals, roused to tremendous activity by 
some occasional thrust from Conkling or Hoar, and the delivery of a carefully jire- 
pared oration about once in two years. All attempts at industrious ellort were es- 
chewed or carefully concealed. He appeared only on great occasions, and bore him- 
self like a Jupiter Tonans; but as a rule he was silent, abstracted, absent, and con- 
temptuous of detail and drudgery. So, his recent awakening, alertness, circumspec- 
tion, and enthusiastic jiersistence, may well surprise the sujierficial observer, who has 
no other explanation than that the Secretary is experiencing tlie zeal that comes from 
the freshness of novelty, and that it is ' too beautiful to last.' 

" We would rather take another view. Mr. Lamar, as a man of genius, is necessari- 
ly a man of surprises; and he is not so essentially a philosopher that a profounil dra- 
matic calculation does not give method to much of bis action or inaction. He knew 
well enough that the people who watched his Senatorial career would expect him to 
repeat its lotus-eating languor on a large scale; wherefore he determined to startle 
them by the astonishing quickness with which, when provoked, he can wheel upon and 
smite an enemy or demolish an obstruction. Conkling found that out. The world is 
finding out what Conkling comprehended too late. Nothing could more dazzle the 
public than Mr. Lamar's exliibition of practical talents and energies hitherto unsus- 
pected ; and no one comprehended the value of popular surprises more than the new 
Secretary of the Interior, whose most brilliant eflbrts have, like those of Tom Mar- 
shall in old days, been the result not so much of inspiration as of well-directed labor 
and consummate opportunity. 

" Honors have changed manners in ^Ir. Lamar's case to a certain degree, but the 
change was effected when it suited his purpose and when the time was ripe. The 
matter-of-fact Horatios of the day, who cannot discern the subtle character of the 
Hamlets, may still wonder that j\[r. Lamar did not. as Senator, display the same in- 
dustry that he has done as a Secretary. It may be said, in reply, that Mr. Lamar, the 
Senator, knew the value of silence as well as of speech ; that he understood how to se- 
cure the drudgery of others, so that his mind might dwell in serene and thought- 
breeding altitudes; that he attained a greater reputation for himself by two nr three 
famous speeches than commonplace men have made in two or three humlred ha- 
rangues; that he, by reflection, adorned, illustrated, and consecrated his adopted Com- 
monwealtli ; and that, in fine, he reserved his strength and capacity for a wider field, 
and under auspices that are really revolutionary in a political sense. He cannot, 
34 



530 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

tliei'ofore, be judged by ortliiiary methods, because he is an estraordiiiary man. The 
men of Rome who took Brutus to be a fool liave descendants in this country who be- 
lieved Lamar to be only a coruscating visionary." 

From the Naskoille (Tenn.) Daily Union : " That Secretary Lamar possesses in as high 
a degree as any of our public men the attributes of oratory, philosophy, and states- 
manship, has long been conceded ; that he had the courage of his convictions, and 
without fear marched in tlie advance guard of luiblic sentiment, has been demonstra- 
ted in every stage of his life; that his integrity and honor were without impeach- 
ment, even the most prejudiced of his political opponents never questioned. The 
quicliness of his intellectual and moral perceptions was exceptional, which made him 
a bulwark of strength to his friends, and ever commanded the respect of the mifriend- 
ly and silenced the censorious. 

" But with all these sliiniug and useful qualities the voice of detraction, seeking some 
ground for its utterances, claimed that his completeness of character was marred, in tiiat 
his genius was entirely abstract, and his personal indolence deprived him of the abil- 
ity to execute his own conceptions. His appointment as Secretary of the Interior 
gave him his flrstopportunity to refute this cliarge. Priortothis, Ids national duties had 
always been in the halls of legislation ; but after the 4th of Marcli, 1885, was commit- 
ted to his charge an executive department embracing tiie most varied and comprelien- 
sive duties, larger in its extent and more important in its affairs than was this govern- 
ment the flrst quarter of a century of its existence. AVith the same master mind that 
had characterized him in every former walk of Tfe, he grasjied its every detail. Ev- 
ery bureau and division became im]iressed with his magnetic power. Old abuses 
were brought to light and the appropriate means adopted for their remedy. Indolence 
was banished, and thousands of emploj'ees were each called to earnest, active work. 
Tlie absolute supremacy of law became the rule of administration. The philosopher 
liad become the active worker; the alleged dreamer had Ijecome the accomplished ex- 
ecutive officer. 

" Tlie comjileteness of a fully rounded cliaracter gives him the undisputed jilace 
among the first statesmen of tlie age. 

" What lias tlie dreamer done? At his advent into office he found that an eager 
band of speculators had been organized toseizea valuable tract of governmental lands 
reserved from settlement by treat)' obligations. With the resistless power of tlie law 
he maintained the nation's faith and justice against the Oklahoma boomers. 

" Tlie peace of the nation was endangered by the encroachment of the cattle rings 
on tlie Indian lands under color of invalid leases. As soon as known the wrong was 
righted, and the peace preserved. 

"The settlement of the public domain was obstructed by unlawful inclosures. The 
equality of riglits in tlie common patrimony was announced ; and, in oliedience to tlie 
call of the President, immediate steps were taken to remove the obstruction. 

"Hundreds of millions of national wealth had been donated or invested in the Pa- 
cific railroads, to secure great national highways for the benefit of the people; and al- 
though a regularly organized bureau had for years been emjiowered by a system of 
reports to obtain information as to the honest application of tliis great trust fund, no 
such system had ever been provided. This calleil for tlie attention of the Secretary, 
and rules were promulgated which will enalile the proper officers of the government 
to intelligeiitl}' sujiervise tlie disposition of this great trust and secure to the people 
the intended results of the nation's generosity. 

" In every other divi>^ion of departmental work the same vigilant, untiring energy 
is displayed in his administration. Nothing is too small for his notice, nor too great 
for his apprehension and courage. 

" Mr. Lamar has the full and entiri^ confidence of the President, who seeks his ad- 
vice and opinions in nearly all of the great national questions that arise." 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND srEECIIES 531 

The Emporia (Kan.) Saturdan Eivning Xew.f, of July 2A, 1880: " The following is from 
the letter of a friend in Washington: ' Nothing can hitter illustrate the wise and con- 
servative policy of the present administration than the management of the Interior 
Department under Mr. Secretary Lamar. 

" ' It was predicted by certain carpers at the outset that ]\Ir. Lamar liad few of the 
qualifications essential to conducting this great department, but the sequel has shown 
that these predictions were not grounded in fact or based upon an accurate knowledge 
of the character of the man they were attempted to be applied to. 

" 'That the Interior Department is complex and difficult to handle, is true. That 
it cannot be run on precedents is equally true, as new' precedents, or, more projierly, 
new rulings, are made almost daily to meet the exigencies continually arising; and the 
people watch it closely, because it deals with a greater diversity of the people's inter- 
ests than any other department. 

" 'In assuming the duties of his office, Mr. Lamar stood confronted with great tasks, 
the greatest of these arising from an entire change of /'^'rsoHiiW among the subordinates, 
and which was claimed as a " political necessity." Such a change, after possession of 
the office for twenty-five years by men alert and generally well qualified by training 
and tradition for their respective duties, meant little less than an upheaval of the service 
all over the country, especially in the land, pension, Indian, and territorial branches. 

" 'Against this clamor the Secretary has borne himself with coolness and delibera- 
tion, and in unison with the pronounced policy of the President. To many who be- 
lieved, or had Ijeen taught, that he was a typical, uncompromising, recalcitrant South- 
ern man, his course has been a surprise, lie having proved himself thoroughly nation- 
al in the broadest sense of the term. He has been a consistent and persistent observ- 
er of the civil service law ; and, while he may have been led into seeming errors by 
the zeal of subordinates to meet the cry of party friends with a twenty-five years' thirst 
for places, he has corrected them as fast as they have been brought to his attention. 
Those who have seen a stampede of wild buffalo on the prairies can form some idea 
of this rush for places, and will understand what it means. 

" ' :Mr. Lamar is not the typical reformer (?) dear to the hearts of the " heelers " 
and " touters," but is rather a conservative man instinctivelj-, and by reason of wide 
knowledge of men and thorough education in the affairs of the world. He does not 
incline to the mastery of minute details, but readily and efiectively imbues others 
with his ideas of governing principles and equities. Tender-hearted and gentle at 
most times, avei-se to cuusing pain to any one even in the smallest degree, disliking 
the official duty that requires him from any necessity to deprive any person of em- 
ployment or position, he is a very whirlwind when imposed upon or deceived. It has 
been his rule not to supplant ex-Union soldiers who are Republicans except by other 
ex-Union soldiers who are Democrats ; and his record in this respect is not excelled by 
any other member of the administration. Neither will any meritorious pension case 
suffer at the hands of this " ex-Confederate," even to the extent of a strained construc- 
tion of the law, or room for a doubtful opinion against him. 

" ' Mr. Lamar's unobtrusive management of the Interior Department is a subject of 
general comment. Let those who think him dreaming or sleeping, however, try some 
scheme with him on that basis and see where they will come out. Politicians have 
sought, Ijy blandishments and subterfuges, to get on his " blind side" for personal ends, 
but they have generally quit work where they began. Those who are nearest to him 
speak in warm terms of his geniality and courteous demeanor to all, his impatience 
of the littleness common to many men, especially those who believe it to be their des- 
tiny to reform the world, and who generally commence on some poor devil without 
friends or money; and one might infer from the manifestation of his character in 
this respect that he isof the opinion that most reformers should commence work upon 
themselves. 



532 Luaius Q. a lamar.- 

"'Secretary Lamar's administration of the department is not a marked central one, 
but ratlier distributed among his subordinate bureau cliiefs, wlio are lield responsible 
for their branches of tlie service, and who get brought up with a round turn, or have 
theiractions reversed, when the Secretary becomes convinced tliat they are wrong. It 
is perhaps too early to judge whether liis administration as Secretary of the Interior 
will rank with preceding ones, and be a fitting complement to his previous career ; but 
he is a man of strong characteristics, and likely to impress his individuality upon the 
department.' " 

The Memphis Appeal, November 7, 1886: " Some men never live too long, never out- 
grow their usefulness. Such men grow with the years, and when generous nature 
gathers them to rest, their names are so embalmed in the afi'ections of the people that 
the nation laments their death. Washington and the early Presidents exercised as 
much influence in their retiracy as they did in the full blaze of public life. Had Lin- 
coln lived a whole century, his voice would have been potential in the councils of the 
nation. He entered the White House feared and hated ; but the Confederates mourned 
over his death, because they saw he was a just, good man, a statesman who could lift 
himself above the passions engendered during the war, and be merciful and just to a 
fallen foe. L. Q. C. Lamar is one of the American statesmen who will never live too 
long. He makes no mistakes ; he is equal to every emergency, and the longer he lives 
the greater will be his influence; for the whole country has confidence in his wisdom, 
patriotism, and statesmanship." 

The Winona (Miss.) yldoctncc, January 21, 1888: "The retirement of Mr. Lamar from 
the great office which he has so aldy and satisfactorily filled for nearly three years 
was the occasion of many sincere expressions of regret. . . . This feeling was man- 
ifested while the employees of the Interior Department were thronging in liundreds 
to say farewell to the ex-Secretary. There were many misty eyes and sorrowful coun- 
tenances." 

The New York World: "Mr. Lamar was unquestionably the most popular Secretary 
that ever held the Interior jiortfolio. His manner toward his subordinates was the 
very essence of kindness, and the young peojile of the department looked upon him 
with a respect that was almost filial. There were many touching scenes on Tuesday, 
when he bade farewell to his associates and took his formal leave of the department. 
It was a rainy, disagreeable day, but the employees of the bureaux that are located 
outside the main building did not mind the weather. With umbrellas and water- 
proofs they niarche<l over to the department to shake the hand of their chief, many 
of them perhaps for the last time." 



CHAPTER XXX. 

Senator Stewart's Letter on Lamar for the Supreme Court — Senator Walthall's Friend- 
ship — Adverse Report b\' the Judiciary Conimittee — Confirmed — Press Comments 
— The Burial of the Bloody Shirt — Congi-atulations — Installetl in Oiiice— Labors as 
a Judge — Character as a Judge — The Neagle Case — Kidd cs. Pearson — Lamar's 
Opinions— Enjoys His Work — Anecdote — Work on the Circuit — Interviewed on 
Cleveland's Administration — Address at Emory College — Letter to Barker on Mis- 
sissippi Politics — Address at Center College — Letter to Mr. Cleveland — Letter on 
Ch. J. Marshall — Reminiscences of Mr. Lamar's Last Summer — Joins the Church — 
Religious Experiences and Character. 

ON the same day when Mr. Lamar resigned his office as Secretary, 
Senator Stewart addressed to one of his constitiients a letter, 
which was made public on the day after. In it the Senator announced 
his intention to refuse to cooperate with the Republicans in defeating 
Mr. Lamar's confirmation, and proceeded to give his reasons in full for 
his action. It was a wise, just, courageous, and independent announce- 
ment, passing in brief review the whole of Mr. Lamar's life, and con- 
cluding with the observation that 

The jHiblic press has so framed the issue that the rejection of Mr. Lamar will be 
construed both in the North and South as a declaration that his participation in 
the war disqualifies him and all others occupying the same iiosition for a place on 
the Supreme Bench. It is unreasonable to expect that the people of eleven States 
of the Union shall, during all the iiresent generation, be excluded from participation 
in the judicial determinations of the highest court of the United States. 

While matters were in this uncertain state, Mr. Lamar received a 
most striking and gratifying evidence of unselfish friendship from Sen- 
ator Walthall. Gen. Walthall had implored Mr. Lamar not to leave 
the Senate and accept a Cftbinet position, although it was more than 
likely that the General would be the successor. He now thought that 
Mr. Lamar would lie the most useful man to the State and to the South 
that could be sent to the Senate, believing that he had so proven while 
a member of that body. He feared that the opposition to Mr. Lamar's 
confirmation would succeed, and, so fearing, thought that the State Leg- 
islature should make him a Senator again, both for his personal vindi- 
cation and for the good of the State. It was his intention to bring this 
about by resigning his own seat, in order to create a vacancy. This in- 
tention he communicated to Mr. Muldrow, the Assistant Secretary. 
The fact was stated by Mr. Muldrow to Mr. Lamar, while the action of 
the Senate was still in suspense, and Mr. Lamar replied: "Sir, before I 
Would permit Walthall to do that I would go upon the streets of Wash- 

(533) 



534 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

iugtoii and break rock for a living! " So generous a rivalry in renunci- 
ation, for the sake of friendsliip, is not often encountered in these days 
of selfish office seeking. 

The Judiciary Committee finally brought in its report, a majority op- 
posing Mr. Lamar's confirmation on the ground of his age and his al- 
leged lack of legal experience. As Mr. Lamar himself said, in the let- 
ter to Senator Walthall quoted above, the objection on the score of age 
was not without merit. Excepting only Mr. Justice Hunt, who was 
about two months older, Mr. Lamar was the oldest man ever nomiirated 
for the Supreme Bench. Still he was only three mouths and a half 
older than was Mr. Justice Blatchford when he was appointed by PresT 
ident Arthur. As to the other objection, it was very well answered at 
the time by the Neir York Ereniru/ Telegram: 

It" tlie delivery of a eulogy on Sumner niiikes a good lawyer of a poor one, what an 
army of briefless barristers in this and other large cities can follow Mr. Lamar's ex- 
ample! — The Press. 

But the barrister who could crowd so much patriotism and lofty eloquence into the 
same compass as Lamar crowded into that classic eulogy would not be "briefless" 
twenty minutes. 

The absurd notion that a man can't be a great lawyer unless he passes his entire 
time in a musty olfice witli a professional sign on the door would disqualify Hon. 
Theodore Dwight, one of the profoundest jurists in America. 

At a later day, Hon. T. C. Catchings, member of Congress from Mis- 
sissippi, made this just observation on the subject, in a memorial ad- 
dress: 

He had given his best thoughts for many years so largely to matters of a political 
nature that when he was appointed an Assoc'iate Justice of the Supreme Court there 
were grave apprehensions in the minds of some that he would not prove equal to the 
demands and requirements of a high judicial station. The brilliancy and magnitude 
of his political achievements had obscureif the fact that no man was better trained or 
more profoundly versed in the science and philosophy of the law. There are to-day 
in ^Mississippi many able and accomplished lawyers who were educated by him while 
Professor of Law in the University of Mississipja, which position he filled with gi-eat 
dignity and distinguished ability. 

The story is thus continued by a special to the Neir Yor/r World, of 
date January 16: 

At one o'clock this afternoon Senator Riddleberger, who by common consent has 
been accorded the i)rivilege of offering the resolution to gn into executive session upon 
the Cabinet nominations, rose in his seat and said; "If the business of the morning 
hour is over, I move that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of executive 
business." 

The motion was at once a'jrced to, and it was not until half past four o'clock that the 
doors were finally reopened and the announcement made that after three and a half 
hours spent in executive session the Senate hail confirmed the nominations of Mr. 
Lamar to the Supreme Court Bench, Mr. Vilas to the Interior, and IMr. Dickinson as 
Postmaster-General. Though the ijroceedings of the Senate were shrouded in the 
veil of mystery which hides from the public gaze all the incidents of executive ses- 



ins LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 535 

sions, it is known tluit Mr. Lamar's nominatii)ii was confirmed by a vote of thirty- 
two to twonty-eight, Senators RiiMloberger, Stanford, Stewart, and Sawyer voting in 
the atfirniative. * 

Senator Stewart had already distinctively defined his position in his lengthy argu- 
ment given to the press some days since. Senator Riddleberger had expressed him- 
self in Mr. Lamar's favor in themost unmistakable terms upon the iloorof the Senate, 
and his action did not consequently occasion any particular surprise. Senators Sawyer 
and Stanford have been regarded as INIr. Lamar's friends from the time of his nomina- 
tion, and in casting their votes for liim to-day they have evoked little comment. As 
foresliadowed in Tlie World some time ago, the Republicans abandoned the attempt to 
coerce their colleagues by insisting upon a caucus which should bind all by its instruc- 
tions. They recognized the futility of such action after tlie outspoken utterances of 
Senators Stewart and Riddleberger, and thus saved themselves the embarrassment 
and chagrin which would have been occasioned by the failure of the caucus to hold 
the Republicans together. 

In the session to-day the ground which has been gone over in the public prints and 
in private Senatorial debate was again reviewed, and the old straw thrashed over 
again. The Republicans who spoke in opposition to IMr. Lamar recited the oft-repeat- 
ed charges that he had not been a practicing lawyer for many years, and that his 
views upon the important question as to the constitutionality of the thirteenth, four- 
teenth, and fifteentli amendments, were not strictly orthodox. These charges were 
warmly combatted by Jlr. Lamar's friends. In the course of the debate every Sen- 
ator who has taken any prominent part in the discussion grasped the opportunity to 
express himself at considerable length. No new views of the case were advanced ; 
and the final outcome did not greatly surprise any one, though in some quarters it 
■was not expected that a confirmation would be reached to-day. 

There was much discussion of the matter in the press and elsewhere, 
for it was universally considered as of far greater moment tlian a mere 
question of Mr. Lamar's personal advancement. The drift of comment 
may be gathered from the following favorable and adverse editorials, 
examples culled impartially from very many more: 

Cincin7iati Enquirer CDemocTatic): " The United States Senate on the 16th inst., by 
a vote of thirty-two to twenty-eight, confirmed the nomination of Mr. Lamar as an As- 
sociate Justice of the Supreme Bench. . . . Thus ends the first chapter of this con- 
trovei-sy. The second chapter will be recited in the coining Presidential campaign, 
when the Republican managers will seek to persuade the country that the continuation 
of the Democratic party in power will result in turning over the Federal Supreme Court 
to the Southern Confederacy, and the consequent resurrection of slavery and succession. 
The country will listen to this with the same equanimity that it did to the declara- 
tions of 1884 that a Democratic victory would paralyze the whole financial system of 
the United States, and bring ruin upon all of our business and commei-cial interests." 
Cincinnati Commercial Gazelle (Republican) ; " The expected happened in the case of 
Mr. Lamar. ^ Two Republican Senators flew the track and voted to confirm him as Jus- 
tice of the Supreme Court of the United States. About that percentage of Republicans 
generally jump the fence when there is a tight pinch. The Democrats donothing of the 
kind, and gain a vast advantage by their solidity. Of course the Democrats were solid 
for Lamar; and Stewart and Stanford, Pacific coast Senators, voted for him. Riddle- 
berger, the free lance of Virginia, also voted for Lamar. With Stanford and Stewart 
with the Republicans, Lamar would have been defeated. A tie vote defeats. Mr. 
Lamar should have been beaten: 



"An eri'nr in jiart. Senator Sawyer was paired in the negative. 



536 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

" 1. Because he has been the beneficiarj- of the disfranchisement of the colored 
people of Mississippi. 

"2. Because the demand was made that he should be placed upon tlie Supreme 
Bench for the reason that he had been in arms against the United States. 

"3. Because he will represent on the Bench the nullification of the Constitution of 
the X'nited Slates, and must construe the constitution to mean that there is no rem- 
edy outside the States that break the com^titution for the wrong done within their 
borders that is revolutionary and subversive of liberty. 

" The objections to Mr. Lamar are not personal or sectional, but rest upon high and 
solid ground. Those who construed the constitution to have a suicidal cla\ise in it — 
that is, an omission to provide against the imbecility of death — should have no part 
in the construction of the constitution. Jlr. Lamar's personal integrity is not doubt- 
ed. He may be relied upon as an honest man, faithful to his obligations. He is eld 
for the place, but it is not for the Republicans to complain of that; and he is not in 
the business sense a lawyer, and will neccl a good deal of indulgence and to pull up 
with hard work of the most exacting character before lie can feel comfortable as a 
member of the court. It is possible that his nomination, and the confirmation after 
along delay and general debate, may have a serious influence in teaching the people 
of the United States who do care forour nationality, and who do distrust the Confeder- 
ate Democratic party, that the Supreme Court is in danger as well as the Senate of 
the United States, which is first in the place of peril, and that the only salvation fir 
them is to elect the next Repulilican candidate for President of the United States." 

Buffalo Courier (Democratic) : " Mr. Lamar's rejection would for a time have revived 
the belief at the South that the North cannot be reconciled, and thus would have pro- 
duced sectional bitterness and strife. This calamity has been averted. It is now 
clear that the opposition to Mr. Lamar was nothing but an attempt of Republican pol- 
iticians to promote their own interests liy fostering sectional controversies. A large 
majority of the Republican party followed the lead of these men, and is therefore 
responsible for their political conduct." 

Cleveland Leader (Republican) : " Little ground now remains for the South to win back 
in order to regain all its lost prestige and posts of honor and emolument. The Army 
and Navy will doubtless soon be attacked by the Democrats in behalf of ex-Confed- 
erate otflce'-s; and if the assault succeeds, everything will be captured. The confir- 
mation of Lamar will hasten every jiroject of the kind, and in this way, as in many 
others, it will prove a mistake little short of a crime." 

New York Evening Post (Independent) : " In the broaderaspectof his record and his at- 
titude toward the government and the North since the war, no representative Southern 
man was so fit for the place. Mr. Lamar was one of the first to ' accept the situation,' and 
has always been the most conspicuous among former ' rebels ' in urging the South for- 
ward in the new career of freedom. His eulogy upon Charles Sumner was an act 
which showed the character of the man. This act and other acts of the same sort 
have made him as offensive to the irreconcilables of the South as they have made him 
aihnired by progressive men at the North. It is an instructive coincidence that when 
he left the Interior Department the other day he was waited upon by a delegation of 
employees who had served on the Union side during the war, and who, through their 
spokesman, 'expressed their appreciation of the kindness and consideration which 
he had always shown toward the members of the Grand Army,' while, at the same 
time, the Xew Mississippian, a Bourbon sheet, was complaining of 'the extraordinari- 
ly conservative course which he has pursued at Washington, the preferen<-e which he 
has shown to the Grand Army of the Republic, and the tenderness with which he 
has dealt with the negro Republicans from ]\Iississippi.' " 

Chicago Evening News (Repulilican) ; " The Senate Committee's unfavorable report on 
the Lamar nomination is a sort of half defeat for the ex-Secretary, but it would have 



CARTOON FROM THE SAN TRAnCISCO *BGU5. JANIJAHY 19. IBBB. 




THE FUNERAL OF THE BLOODY SHIRT. 



//7,S' LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 537 

been better luul the coimiiittee not voted soelose to part}' lines. To many it will now 
look as though the matter was partisan, whereas the contrar}' is true. It is not be- 
cause the Rejiublican sentiment of the country is against Mr. Lamar that the Daily 
News has cham]iionecl the opposition. This jiapcr's stand in the disimte is one that 
must commend itself to every honest and loyal man, and every resjiecter of the Su- 
preme Court; fur we have held that, waiving the fact that JMr. Lamar was a leader in 
the Confederacy, it is to his present discreilit that, while profiting by the friendly 
spirit of the pcojjle, he has never given up the principle for which he fought, and 
that he is seeking to fill a position which he cannot occupy acceptably so long as he 
holds his obnoxious views on the constitution. Loyal men, whatever their pb'itics 
may be, can appreciate the merits of this objection." 

Neiv York Star (Democratic) : " The opposition to Mr. Lamar has brought great dis- 
credit upon the Republicans in tlie Senate. There has never been any reason for re- 
fusing to confiim him. In character, in natural endowments, and in anjuirements, lie 
is above the standard of the Supreme Court. Since the close of the war he has been 
a patriotic statesman, showing an independence of local influences and ol)ligations, 
and a comprehensive interest in all parts of the country, which are very rare in Con- 
gress. It is pitiful to find this great and generous Commonwealth misrepresented in 
a matter like this." 

Nashmlle National Review (Republican) : " The opposition to Lamar was not based 
upon the ground of ' sectionalism,' nor was it an attempt to wave the 'bloody shirt;' 
it was a just, reasonable, potent, and unavoidable opposition. There are many differ- 
ences that could arise, involving the question of State sovereignty ujion the identical 
line as discussed during the aiile helium period, and which discussion finally culmi- 
nated in the Civil War." 

Richmond Wiig (Democratic): "The opposition to Mr. Lamar was more apjiarent 
than real, and we douht if there is a single man among the twenty-eight Repuhlit-an 
Senators wdio voted against him who really regrets the result. Their opposition was 
altogether for political etfect; and they fully accomplished their oliject, such as it w-as, 
by casting their votes against him, while secretly they no doubt are really gratified at 
his confirmation. Their speeches and votes on the negative side of the question were 
for ' buncoml.ie.' . . . Mr. Lamar, in native ability, learning, and attainments, is 
the peer of any man upon the Supreme Bencli ; and,notwithstanding the silly charges 
that have been made against liim by the malignants, he is equal to any of them in 
patriotism and devotion to the Union and the constitution. He goes upon the Bench 
in the fullness of his years and the maturity of his intellect, and with a ripe experi- 
ence in law and in public life that cannot fail to place him among the most distin- 
guished jurists that ever graced the Bench of the Supreme Court." 

San Francisco Bulletin (Independent): " Mr. Lamar, contrary to all precedent, never 
sat on any bench before. He is not known to be ' learned in law.' There is no evidence 
that he possesses the judicial mind. He opposed the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fif- 
teenth amendments to the Constitution of the United States, and cannot be trusted to 
enforce them. His elevation to the Supreme Bench may be regarded as Democratic 
ascendency in its most dangerous aspect." 

The Atigmta (Ga.) Chronicle (Democratic): "The negative votes of the Republican 
Senators will be looked vipon with wonder and disgust ten years from to-day." 

There was a good deal of talk at the time to the effect that the nomi- 
nation of Mr. Lamar to the Supreme Bench was a stroke of policy on 
the part of the administration; that he was a candidate for either Pres- 
ident or Vice President, and his advancement might do much to pre- 
vent the pressing of his claims in that direction, etc. This unworthy 



538 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

suggestiou, however, had no foundation whatever in truth. In fact, Mr. 
Lamar's correspondence at this time shows abundantly that he did not 
regard either the Presidency or the Yice Presidency as a possibility for 
any Southern man, and that he thought that no Southern man ought 
even to aspire to either of those offices. 

His confirmation was promptly greeted by vast numbers of interest- 
ing letters to Mr. Lamar of congratulation from distinguished gentle- 
men all over the United States, without respect of party. Of these the 
following are perhaps the most strictly pertinent: 

Washington, D. C, January IS, 1888. 
. . Allow me also to congratulate you, as I do most heartily and sincerely, on 
your confirmation to tlie high and most honorable office of Justice of the Supreme 
Court of the United States— an office which your ability, ac(iuirements, and character 
eminently qualify you to fill with honor and usefulness alike to yourself and to the 
country; as I have not the least doubt that you will. . . . T. M. Cooley. 

20 Nassau Street, New York, January 17, 1888. 

Pray accept my cordial congratulations upon your confirmation by the Senate. 
The action of the Senate must be all the more gratifying to you, as it is to your 
friends, because of the desperate and unworthy means used to defeat it. As a native 
of the South who did not agree with you upon the issues which led to the late un- 
happy and fratricidal struggle, I accept your appointment to the Supreme Bench as 
an important step in the direction of complete restoration of fraternal relations. With 
great respect, I am, dear sir, 

Sincerely yours, B. II. Bristow. 

141-5 F Street, January 17. 

My Dear Sir : The newspapers this morning give me the good news of your con- 
firmation. Come to us as soon as you can, for we want you. I wish you could be on 
the Bench to-day, when we take up some Arkansas bond cases, which are important in 
amount at least. By Thursday we shall reach an interesting California land case, in 
which I hope we may have your help. 

You will have a hearty welcome from us all; and don't keep away from ns any 
longer than is absolutely necessary. 

Very sincerely yours, -^f- K- ^^ aite. 

The World' f< correspondent of January 16, quoted above, says further: 

The World correspondent called upon Mr. I>;imar at his home on K Street this 
evening. Upon a small talile in the hallway lay a pile of congratulatory dispatches 
and many cards of distinguished visitors who had called to pay their respects to Judge 
Lamar. Several of the telegrams were addressed " ]Mr. Justice Lamar." The corre- 
sponilent was cordially received by Judge Lamar, wJio was surrounded liy friends. 
Among them were Secretary Vilas, Senator and l\Irs. AValthall, and Mr. and ]\Irs. La- 
mar, Jr. Intense gratification beamed from every lineament of Judge Lamar's counte- 
nance. 

"I have never lost my confidence in the ultimate action of the Senate," said he, 
" but it is none the less gratifying to have the matter settled. It is far pleasanter to 
be relieved of any anxiety in an afl'air which so closely and materially bears upon 
one's future." 

" When will you assume the duty of your new office?" 

"I cannot state that definitely. The Suiireuie Court really needs another member 



HIS LIFE, TIMEtS, AND SPEECHES. 539 

at once. A tie may now frequently occur on importantquestions, and it is eminently de- 
sirable that such a stiite of affairs should notexist. It is likely that I shall begin work 
with very little delay. The World has described me as feeling very lively and gay 
while enjoying my quiet vacation, but I nuist again settle down to steady occu|)ati()n. 
I have received a number of pleasant remembrances in the way of messages of cun- 
gratulation, and have received many kind friends who have come to express kindly 
wishes for my health and prosperity." 

Judge Lamar then asked Secretary Yilas if it would be convenient for liim to be 
inducted into the mysteries of the Interior Department to-morrow. 

"I suppose," replied Mr. Vilas, "that the Cabinet commissions will be speedily is- 
sued, and I may as well begin to-morrow as at any other time. I realize fully that 
the hardest task that will confront me in my ne%v office will be the necessity for cun- 
stant endeavcir to keep the department uji to the high standard which you have es- 
tablished. I can but do ni}- best, however." 

" You will not find the task so difficult," replied Mr. Lamar, while a glow of pleas- 
ure suffused his countenance, and his eye kindled brightly at the compliment so 
gracefully tendered. " It is true, I have left many things undone, that you might not be 
in any way hampered in assuming charge of the department; but I do not doubt that 
you will soon have everything well in hand. I have devoted my energies of late more 
particularly to keeping up the legal decisions of the otiice, and believe they are quite 
up to date." 

Ten clays later the following rather amusing squib appeared in tlie 
"Personal and Social Items" of the Philaclelpliia Public Ledger: 

Senator Edmunds and Justice Lamar met, for the first time since the former tried 
to defeat the hitter's confirmation, at the Thursday reception at the AVhite House. 
They collided at the entrance of the Green Room, and those who stood around and 
knew how bitterly Edmun^is had fought the nomination wondered what would hap- 
pen. A repetition of the scene that occurred when Blaine and Edmunds met at the 
funeral of President Arthur was expected, but it did not occur. Justice Lamar is too 
much of a gentleman. The two men shook hands as cordially as ever, and chatted 
for a while in the best of temper. A few moments after, a friend who met the Senator 
remarked: " I'd like to know what you said to Lamar and what he said to you when 
you met over there." " There was nothing of extraordinary brilliancy or interest 
said on either side," answered the Senator. " But what was it? " persisted the friend. 
" Well, if you insist upon knowing, I remarked to him, 'how d'ye do?' he replied, 
' how d'ye do? ' and that was about all the conversation." As Lamar expected all the 
time that Edmunds would oppose him, he has no feeling on the suliject, and said the 
other day that he could forgive every one of his enemies with a full heart. 'Mr. Ed- 
munds has spent a good deal of time in the Supreme Court room lately, having had 
several cases to argue. 

The gossiping reporters who witnessed that little scene and found 
material in it for a telling little " Capital Note " knew nothing of the 
imdercurrents of it. The reader is aware that only three years before 
that had passed between those two men — clasped hands across a new- 
made grave — which made it forever irajjossible for Mr. Lamar to cherish 
a resentment against Mr. Edmunds, whatever he might do against him- 
self. Still it is also true that Mr. Lamar laid up no grudges against any 
of the Senators because of their course in the case. Certainly there are 
no evidences of such sentimeuts in any of his papers. 



540 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

Of the final result and its secondary consequences Senator Stewart, in 
Lis memorial address after Mr. Lamar's death, said this: 

. . . The Senate by its voice recognized the equal rights of all citizens of this Re- 
puljlic. The beneficial results of that action of the Senate were immediately felt both 
North and South. Confidence, respect, and good-fellowship were increased in every 
section of our common country. It was an object lesson for the world. It marked 
the contrast between the methods of despotic governments, which never forgive a 
fallen foe, and our own free government, which, entertaining malice toward none, 
has charity for all. 

On the 18th Mr. Lamar was formally installed. He repaired to the 
capitol shortly after 11 o'clock, and jjroceeded to the Justices' room of the 
court, where the ordinary oath of office was administered to him in pri- 
vate. Within the court room the space set apart for the general public 
was crowded with spectators, but the area within tlie iuclosuro reserved 
for the members of the bar contained only the iisual number of lawyers. 
The Justices, in their black silk robes, filed into the chamber in solemn 
procession at 12 o'clock; and the assemblage, at the tap of the gavel, arose 
respectfitlly, and remained standing until the members of the court had 
taken their seats. Mr. Lamar, clad in a well-fitting suit of black, followed 
the court, and took his seat beside Clerk McKenney, at the right of 
the bench. The Chief Justice announced that the first proceeding of the 
court would be the reading of the commission of Mr. Lamar and the ad- 
ministration of the oath. The commission was thereupon handed to the 
clerk, who read it; after which Mr. Lamar read impressively, from a 
manuscript, the judicial oath. Mr. Lamar took the Bible as he uttered 
the last sentence, and at the end solemnly kissed the book. He was 
then escorted behind the screen in the rear of the beneli, and after a 
minute's delay reappeared clad in a new flowing robe of glossy black 
silk. The court and the spectators arose. The new Justice bowed to 
his associates, and then to the bar and the piiblic, and took his seat in 
tlie chair of the junior Justice at the extreme left of the bench. The 
court then proceeded with its ordinary routine business, having a full 
Bench for the first time since the 4th of May, 1885. 

Mr. Lamar did not ascend the bench rashly or vaiugloriously. He 
was, on the contrary, deeply impressed with a sense of the weight of 
the obligations assumed, and gravely and humbly doubtful of his power 
to meet the burden cast upon him so fully as it should be met. It was 
characteristic of him to distrust his qualifications for new fields of la- 
bor, and it was only when experience had justified him to himself that 
he took courage and rose to the confidence which also characterized him 
in familiar walks. Something of his diffidence in this regard has been 
shown in the letttn-s heretofore quoted from; and further expression of 
it is found in a letter, written on the 13th of December previous, to his 
son-in-law, Mr. Mayes: 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 541 

As to the Judgeship of the Supreme Couit. It lias cost me a straggle to accept it 
whit'h I hope you will never have. I have always acted on the prhiciple that a man 
should not undertake the duties of any position to which he is not consciously 
equal, until this matter came up. I had no more idea of it than I had of the duke- 
dom of Argyle. The suggestion originated with the President, and w-as seconded by 
my associates in the Cabinet. I do not feel qualilied for the place. I have been too 
long out of the atmosphere of practical jurisprudence, and my misgivings are so pain- 
ful that I have sleepless nights. ... As it is, the position was too exalted for me 
to resist the temptation to accept it, when it was tendered by those who did not share 
my doubts as to my competency. 

Mr. Lamar entered upon his new vrork full of zeal and inflexibly 
determined to d > his entire jjart of the court's business from the begin- 
ning. On the iirst allotment of decided cases for the writing of opin- 
ions, after he was inducted, the Chief Justice was so considerate as to 
manifest an inclination, on account of his newness, to assign to him 
only a small number by comparison with the other Justices; but, detect- 
ing this, he insisted that he should have at once his full quota. From 
this time forth his labors were incessant and arduous. It was nothing 
uncommon for him to spend the entire night working on his opinions, 
and to all remonstrances from his family and friends on his overwork 
his response was that he would rather die than fail in the discharge of 
his full duty. Indeed, there is but little doubt that his labors did short- 
en his life. 

On this subject Mr. Vilas sjDoke in the memorial meeting held Ijy the 
members of the bar of the Supreme Court after Mr. Lamar's decease. 
He said: 

Being honored with his intimacy, it has been mine to know — nor should I with- 
hold the testimony— how faithfully, how fervidly tliat ardor of duty to his country 
glowed in his breast to his latestdays. It drove him, after his accession to this Bench, 
to such extremes of toil — he witli his feeble, disease-struck, and shattered frame — as 
few mou in the prime of natural vigor will submit to. It took from him, beyond all 
question, and piled upon the altar of self-sacrilice, days, months, years, it is even prob- 
able, of life. For what to him was life when in the path of duty — to him who had 
many a time and oft proffered it to fate unflinchingly, who cared for nothing on earth 
as for his friends, his country, and his honor? He seemed even to spurn the measures 
which prudence commended for his safety, not less than those for his comfort, with a 
seeming priiie that he could thus mark more clearly to himself his devoted discharge 
of the high duties intrusted to him. 

Mr. Lamar was sworn in, as has been shown, on the 18th of January, 
1888, having been commissioned two days before. The first case argued 
after he took his seat was Porter r.?. Beard, 124 U. S., on the 19th. 
The first opinion delivered by him was in Hannibal and St. Joseph Eail- 
road Co. rs. Missouri Eiver Packet Co., 125 U. S., decided on March 19. 

Mr. Lamar's labors were not without their reward. He at once took 
a high position among the members of the court. In the " History of 
the Supreme Court of the United States," a sumptuous and excellent 



542 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

work prepared uuder the direction of tlie Judiciary Ceuteuuial Commit- 
tee, by Hampton L. Carson, an eminent lawyer of Philadelphia, pub- 
lished in 1891, it is said of Mr. Lamar that 

As a jurist he has taken high rank, liis opinions being marked by scholarship and 
careful studj' of principles and of cases. One of his colleagues, upon being asked 
whether he had met the expectation of his friends, replied: "Fully. Mr. Cleveland 
made no mistake in aijpointing him. AVliatever doubts existed as to his fitness for 
the Supreme Bench, growing out of his long political and parliamentary career and 
absence from the active practice of his profession, have wholly disappeared. This will 
be conceded liy all who have read his opinions. He has sound judgment, a calm tem- 
perament, and a strong sense of justice. He possesses the judicial faculty in a very 
high degree. He takes broad, comprehensive views of legal and constitutional ques- 
tions, and states his conclusions with unusual i-learness and force, and in language most 
aptly chosen to express the precise idea of his mind. His brethren are greatly at- 
tached to him." Upon another occasion one of his judicial associates remarked : 
" Your differentiation of cases where a State may and may not be sued is the best tl lat 
I have seen. The case * seemed to me a difficult one, and I should not have suspected 
that you did not enjoy writing opinions. This is excellent." Of the same case the 
oldest Justice now on tlie Bench f wrote as follows: " I flunk that your summary of 
the constitutional principles applicable to the reciprocal relations of Article I., Section 
10, and the Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution, is so clear that it would suffer 
from abridgment ; " while of a recent case,t involving the question of contingent oi' pro- 
spective profits, it was said: "Your annunciation of the principles, applicable to the 
Ciuestion of profits is unusually clear and concise." 

The logical power of Mr. Justice Lamar, his striking talents as a rhetorician, his 
clearness of vision in detecting the true point in controversy, and his tenacious grasp 
upon it through all the involutions of argument, his familiarity with adjudged cases, 
Ills well-defined conception of the nature of the general government and the distri- 
bution of its powers under the constitution, are best displayed in his dissenting opin- 
ion in re Neagle, in which, unswayed by horror or resentment at the atrocious at- 
tempt to assassinate Mr. Justice Field, he insisted that, before jurisdiction of thecrime 
of murder could be withdrawn from the tribunals of the State where the act was per- 
petrated into tlie Federal Courts, it was necessary to show some law, some statute, 
some Act of Congress, which could be pleaded as an authoritative justification for the 
prisoner's act; and that no implied power existed in the President or one of his sub- 
ordinates to substitute an order or direction of his own, no matter how lofty the mo- 
tive or commendable the result. 

The Neagle case alluded to in the foregoing extract arose on this 
state of facts: Judge Terry, of California, liad conceived a bitter hos- 
tility to Mr. Justice Field because of certain decisions rendered by the 
Justice, and it was known that he contemijlated a violent, if not a dead- 
ly, assault upon the Justice. The Attorney-General of the United 
States had ordered that tlie Justice should be protected, and Deputy 
Marshal Neagle had be<^n detailed as a bodyguard for that purpose. 
Judge Terry did make an assault of a most dangerous nature ttpon 
Judge Field, in an eating house in California; and Neagle killed the as- 
sailant. Neagle was arrested under a warrant from the State court, 

* Pennoyer et al. vs. McConnatigfliy, April i!0, ISiU. 

t Mr. .Justice Field. 

IHoward et al. vs. The Slillwi-ll .V Tliorce ManlUai'tiirin^^ Conip.any. I\I:irch 16, 1891. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. . fjilJ 

and he obtained bis release from the sheriff's custody by a writ of iiubcus 
corpus issuing from the Federal Court, on the groimd that he was ar- 
raigned for the performance of a duty imposed on him by the lairs of 
the United States; and the question was on the propriety of that re- 
lease. There was no -statute imposing such a duty upon a marshal 
or authorizing the Attorney-General to make such an order. The ma- 
jority of the Supreme Court held that the power was necessarily im- 
plied for the protection of the court and the maintenance of its dignity; 
but the Chief Justice and Mr. Lamar dissented, the latter delivering 
the dissenting opinion. ■■■ 

Naturally this case, with all its dramatic and tragical circumstances, 
attracted much attention; and the principal and dissenting opinions 
were much discussed and criticised. The Southern press was quite 
unanimous in expressions of approbation of the dissenting opinion and 
of the ability manifested in its delivery, while the Northern press was 
divided upon the subject. The attack npon the opinion was mainly to 
the effect that it was the product of political bias and Confederate rec- 
ord. That this attack was captious and irrational is manifest from a 
very few considerations: First, the Chief Justice united in the dissent, 
and he of course had no such bias or record as was attributed to Mr. 
Lamar, further than the mere fact that he was a Democrat; secondly, 
it was not a question of States' rights in any sense, since the dissent 
was not based upon any denial of implied power in the Federal Govern- 
ment, but only upon a denial of certain implied powers in the Depart- 
ment of Justice as distinguished from the Legislative Deijartmeut. Mr. 
Lamar's opinion expressly concedes that all of the authority claimed 
could have been conferred by Congress, and only held that Congress 
had not in fact so conferred it, and that it was not implied to the Depart- 
ment of Justice by the constitution. 

Of these criticisms Judge E. S. Hammond, United States District 
Judge for the AVestern District of Tennessee, wrote Mr. Lamar, under 
date of April 23d: 

This is very shabby nonsense. I repeat that in a very important view of the case 
there is no (Question of Federal and State conflict in it; possibly not in any proper 
view does such a conflict necessarily jiresent itself. The result of Xeagle's release on 
habeas corinis is that he is not amenable mviwhere, according to our laws, to any form 
of trial before a jury, which is the essential thing. In England, possibly, where jury 
trial may be suspended, such power may be exercised by a judge alone, if Parliament 
shall authorize it; but not in a State where the constitution guarantees jury trinl. 
So, if a Slate should grant such a power to a judge, would it not be void ? No State se- 
cures the right of trial by jury so thoroughly as our Federal Constitution. . . . 

Hon. Don. A. Pardee, the United States Circuit Judge for the Fifth 
Circuit, wrote Mr. Lamar, from Savannah, Ga., on the 22d of April : 

I have only seen what the newspapers report of the decision of the Supreme Court 

♦Cnnningham vs. Neagle, 135 U. S. 1; decided April 14, 1890. 



544 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

in the Neagle case; and, so far as I understand the grounds of your dissent, I agree 
■witli you and the Chief Justice. The power of the Government of the United States 
to protect its officers in the execution of its laws is undoubted; but in tlie matter of 
protection, extent, mode, and manner, the government talks, if at all, by statutes, and 
not by orders of any jierson or department. 

W. H. Wasliingtou, Esq., of Nashville, wrote: "I have heard high 
«ncomiuriis ou your uow famous opinion in the Neagle case; " and Hon. 
(now Senator) A. O. Bacon, from Macon, Ga., wrote: "It has been the 
subject of most general commendation both among lawyers and laymen, 
in which I most heartily join." Ou Juno 3d, Hon. lioger A. Pryor, of 
New York, wrote: 

Will you suffer me to avow the admiration with which I read your opinion in the 
J^eagle case, and more generally my gratification at the ability and learning j'ou dis- 
play in the discharge of the duties of your high office? 

There were other opinions delivered by Mr. Lamar of interest to the 
student of his career. One of his earliest, and one iu which he felt 
more thau the usual interest and some pride, was in the case of Clem- 
ent rs. Parker, 125 U. S. 309, which involved some troublesome ques- 
tions about the Pennsylvania law iu reference to surveys of land and 
evidence of boundaries. 

On November 3, 1888, Hou. Wiley P. Harris, of Jackson, that ac- 
complished lawyer, whom all Mississippians will perhaps acknowledge 
to have been the most competent critic ever in the State, wrote of the 
opinion in Kidd rs. Pearson, 128 U. S., that 

It is a very good specimen of sound judicial tliought, portrayed with a clearness of 
exposition that is charming to the legal mind, and an almost faultless grace of dic- 
tion. I read it with genuine pleasure. Our courts are not, ordinarily, schools of 
heUes-lettres. I must confess, however, that this piece of composition from a young 
judge is encouraging. 

Henry Craft, Esq., whose authority as a legal critic few Tennessee- 
aus will question, wrote, ou December 18, from Memphis, of the same 
opinion: 

I stop in the jireparation of a brief for your court to express the pleasure that I 
have found in reading tliat opinion. I can confess now, since it has been dispelled, 
the apprehension which I felt, from your long disuse, that you would not be alile to 
attain courtly phrase— technical judicial diction. I did not fear as to your discrimina- 
tion or your judicial capacity, for I felt sure that you would hold your own, in some 
departments rise to superiority, among your colleagues in the essentials of judging, 
in diagnosis, and in statement and application of legal principles. This Iowa case 
convinces me that there is "nothing the matter with Lamar," or, still more slangily, 
" Lamar is all right " in the matter of acting tlie part of Aaron for the court. 

In the Supreme Court it is customary for a Justice who has prepared 
an opinion, before its delivery to submit it to each of his associates for 
their criticism. These criticisms are frequently noted upon the printed 
<lraft of the proposed opinion, over the critic's signature. Mr. Lamar's 
opinion in Bullitt County y.s-. Washer, 130 U. S., delivered in March, 



mS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 545 

1889, was thus indorsed by Mr. Justice Bradley: "I have read tliis 
carefully, and cannot see groiiiid for your scruples; you prove the con- 
clusion, it seems to me, almost demonstratively." His opinion in the 
case of Howard ct al. vs. Stillwell & Bierce Manufacturing Co., 139 U. 
S., delivered in March, 1891, was thus characterized by Mr. Justice 
Bradley: "This is an admirable oijinion, and a lucid review of the law 
on the subject of it." His opinion in St. Paul, etc., Eailway Co., vs. 
Phelps, 137 U. S., decided in December, 1890, was thus indorsed by 
Mr. Justice Brewer: "I back down; you are too much for me. Your 
argument I cannot answer; and so, though I think it ought to be other- 
wise, I am convinced against my wish, and must concur." 

Of his opinion in Dent vs. Ferguson, 132 U. S., delivered in October, 
1889, Edmund H. Bennett, Dean of the Boston University School of 
Law, wrote, under date of March 27, 1890: 

I have read with great satisfaction the opinion in Dent vs. Ferguson. I do not 
wonder that the Court were unanimous. It is strong as " proofs of Holy Writ." I 
must also say that I fail to recognize a single phrase or word in it." 

On the 11th of July, 1895, Hon. George F. Hoar wrote from Worces- 
ter, Mass., to Mr. Mayes, in respect to Mr. Lamar, saying, among 
other things, that 

I did not expect, when Mr. Lamar went upon the Bench, that he would succeed, 
although I had then a very high opinion of his intellectual power. I supposed that 
his life had been so far from the experience and training of the judge that he would 
find it impossible to fill that character to his own satisfaction or that of the public. 
But I was most agreeably disappointed. I think some of his judgments models, both 
in matter and manner. 

An undated note among Mr. Lamar's papers, from William A. Mau- 
ry, Esq., Assistant Attorney-General, says: 

After you had finished reading your opinion this morning, Senator Hoar turned to 
me and said: " That was a beautiful opinion." I hope that I am not presuming in 
communicating this incident, which I do with the hope that it may be as pleasing to 
you as it was to myself. 

A letter from Grover Cleveland, dated March 28, 1891, runs: 

My Dear Friend: I am, for some reason, thinking much of you to-night. Though 
this is not uncommon, I believe that you are specially vivid in my thoughts liecause 
I have just returned from a dinner at Mr. Fairchild's, where you were somewhat dis- 
cussed. 

Mr. Vilaa showed me some opinions, with the indorsements thereon of your 
brethren on the Bench, a few days ago ; and you must allow me the satisfaction of 
telling you how much they pleased me, though they did not inspire a new confidence, 
nor disclose any new or unexpected condition. 

While the question of Mr. Lamar's confirmation was pending, Mr. 
Vilas, who is himself an accomplished lawyer, said: 

Lamar is a man of magnificent surprises. I did not know him until we met in the 
Cabinet, and during the past two years T have been very intimate with him. I think 
that I have never met any man whose intellect has grown upon me so overwhelming- 
35 



546 LUCIUS Q. V. LAMAR. 

ly as has Lamar's. At times he has consnlteil wilh me aljout matters of jmbhc policy 
which only tlie decision of a question of law could settle. 

Once he had a most important decision to make. He had not -written it — for I be- 
lieve that he does not write his decisions until tlie last minute — but he had the whole 
matter revolving in his mind. He began at the beginning and stated the facts. Such 
a faculty of clear, limpid statement is seldom met. I think that in my time no man 
that I have known has jjossessed it so well as INIr. Lamar, unless it was the late Matt. 
Carpenter of AVisconsin. Then he began to unfold the principles of law which he 
thought applicable. As his mind rolled on from position to position it was with a 
ponderous, majestic, yet ever delicate and sensitive, movement that was simply won- 
derful. 

I said to myself: " This man may not be able to quote the exact section of the law, 
or the particular page of the reported decision ; but he has a mind thoroughly imbued 
with legal principles, and njagnificently disciplined." Without making invidious 
compai'isons, it is my judgment that Mr. Lamar will add strength and adornment to 
the Supreme Bench. I believe that he possesses some qualifii'ations that the Bench 
needs, and as the years go on the wisdom of his appointment will establish itself far 
above the reach of criticism. 

After Mr. Lamar's death, Chief Justice Fuller said of him that 

He rendered few decisions, but he was invaluable in consultation. His was the 
most suggestive mind that I ever knew, and not one of us but has di-a wn from its inex- 
haustible store. 



The foregoing testimony -will probably suffice to satisfy the layman 
in respect to Mr. Lamar's ability as a judge; for the lawyer, the tiual 
appeal on that question must be to his reported opinions, beginning 
with his first —Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad Co. rs. Missouri Eiver 
Packet Co., 125 U. S., 260 — and ending with his last: The People, etc., 
of New York, (\s. Squire, 145 IT. S., decided May 2, 1892. Those opin- 
ions must bear witness to his qualities as a judge, and justify or con- 
demn those critics who pronounced him itnable to fill the measure of 
that exalted office, and those who called him a cipher ou the Bench. 

The expression used by the Chief Justice, that Mr. Lamar "did not 
deliver many opinions," will be noted; but it mast not be understood 
therefrom that the Chief Justice meant that he fell notably behind the 
other Justices in this respect. His exact meaning, and also the full 
scope of Mr. Lamar's work, will be disclosed by the following table of 
opinions delivered l)y the several Justices while he was on the Bench. 

It is proper to say, in connection with this table, that there are opin- 
ions and opinions — in other words, that from every bench there are a 
number of utterances called opinions, which are in truth not opinions 
at all, but only judgments. They do not give the reasoning of the 
court or the authorities relied itpon, but are only short announcements, 
generally but eight or ten lines in length, tersely stating the "court's 
conclusion; and of them, any lawyer could easily prepare scores in a 
day. A large number of such announcements are to be foTind in the 
Supreme Court Reports, and thi^y ate excluded from the computation, 




THE SUPREME COURT, 1891. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 547 

whether delivered by Justice Lamar or other Jiistices. Nor were the 
oijinions couuted which were delivered after he was seated, in cases 
which had been submitted before his installation, and iu the hearing 
of which he did uot jmrticipate. With this explanation, then, the ta- 
bles are given. 

During the first four years of Mr. Lamar's incumbency — /. r., from 
January 18, 18.S8, to January 18, 18!}'2, inclusive— the Supreme Court de- 
livered nine hundred and eighty priiicimd opinions, of which the sever- 
al Justices are credited as follows: 

:Mr. Justice lUatchlbra 105 

Chief Justice ^Vaite, 8 ; Chief Justice Fuller, his successor, 155 163 

Mr. Justice Harlan 120 

Mr. Justice Miller, 64; Mr. Justice Brown, his successor, 42 106 

Mr. Justice Lamar 94 

Mr. Justice Gray 94 

Mr. Justice Mattiiews, 1(3 ; Mr. Justice Brewer, his successor, 71 87 

Mr. Justice Field §( 

Mr. Justice Bradley 5^ 

Total 9S0 

Including the dissenting and individual concurring opinions delivered 
during the same period, the statement is this: 



Blatcliford, Justice 

Waite, Chief Justice, and Fuller, Chief Justice . 

Harlan, Justice 

Miller, Justice, and Brown, Justice 

Lamar, Justice 

Matthews, Justice, and Brewer, Justice 

Gray, Justice 

Field, Justice 

Bradley, Justice 



Total. 



165 

163 
126 
100 
<J4 
87 
94 
8' 
58 



980 



39 



165 

164 

131 

115 

97 

97 

95 

94 

01 



1,019 



It will thus be seen that, although Mr. Lamar did not possess the re- 
markable facility in the preparation of opinions which characterized 
the Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Blatchford, and in a less degree Mr. 
Justice Harlan, he was still, notwithstanding his long disuse of legal 
practice and his want of judicial experience, and notwithstanding the 
fact that when sworn in he was by six years the junior member of the 
court, enabled from the beginning to keep up with the labors of Jus- 
tices Matthews and Brewer in succession, and to forge ahead of tlu-oeof 
his associates.* 



*Comp.-irison!i ;ire sometimes justlj' s.Tid to 1>c odious, and tlio one m.tde .above is distastelul to 
me; but it is, to .1 certain extent, forced by the unfavor.able comparisons made by liostile and 
prominent papei-s against Mr. Lamar. It is due to Mr. .Tustice Bradley to say that during the pe- 
riod considered he had a severe and long illness, which presumably threw him behind in work.— 
E.M. 



548 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

During the last year of Mr. Lamar's life he was sufPering from mor- 
tal illness, aud delivered only two other opinions, making a total of 
ninety-nine. 

After all, however, it is but a poor method of estimating the value of 
a judge to his bench to count his oi^inions, esiaecially where, as in the 
Supreme Court of the United States, each case is considered in the 
consultation room and discussed by all the judges. It might very well 
happen in such case that the most able and valuable member should de- 
liver few opinions; while, on the other hand, a very poor judge, if only 
his perceptive faculties are quick and his power of expression good, 
may write many opinions rich in wisdom and great in justice, all ab- 
sorl)ed from his brethren. The supreme qualities of a judge must be 
wisdom, moderation, and caution in council, patience aud industry in 
investigation, unswerving and uncalculating devotion to justice, respect 
for authority of law with iudifl'erence to authority of jjei'sons, exjjeri- 
ence in affairs and knowledge of human nature, coupled with clear and 
strong reasoning power. All of these qualities Mr. Lamar had to a high 
degree, and in them consisted his chief value. Still, the preceding tables 
are given for what they are worth. 

Mr. Lamar greatly enjoyed his life upon the Supreme Bench before 
his last prostrating illness. He often talked with his friends about the 
congeniality and affection which he found among the able men who 
were his associates, about their labors, and especially their work in the 
consultation room. He described with much vividness and animation 
their discussions over cases, and declared that lie often heard interesting 
causes argued there with more zeal, eagerness, and persistency than they 
had been argued at the bar. He could hardly speak of a consultation 
of the Justices without delight, and nearly always with a degree of hu- 
mor. Dropping into familiar Southern expression, he would say: "I 
tell you, they are the smartest old fellows I ever saw; and they take 
each other up pretty sharply sometimes." 

He greatly admired Judge Bradley, aud thought much of his ability. 
The following little anecdote, which he frequently told with much glee^ 
is a good exanqjle of the lighter incidents which he would relate. The 
story ran somewhat this way, although it suffers here for want of Mr. 
Lamar's unsurpassed style of narration : 

I had been upon the Benoh but a Httle while before I lieard a keen, sharp, ghb- 
tongued patent lawyer hold forth upon a case of an extended patent, which he claimed 
to have been infringed by the defendant. It seems that the reissued patent differed in 
gome way from the oiiginal patent ; and so theargument was made that, although the re- 
issued patent might have been infringed, the original had not been. I sat there listen- 
ing to the shrill whir of the attorney's talk, conscientiously doing my best, but with the 
convictit)n tliat if I sat thereuntil the world melted into its original elements I would 
never be able to understand the ins and outs of patent law. Still, as tlie case went on 



HIS LIFIC, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 549 

I liegau to feel that, though there might be, and was, a verbal difference in the origi- 
nal and reissued patent, the two really covered the same matter, when suddenly Jus- 
tice Bradley broke in : 

" Doesn't this reissue drawing show a tin spout some where at the bottom of the ma- 
chine [whatever it was] ? " 

" Yes, sir." 

"And it isn't shown in the original?" 

" No— no, sir — that is, this is a simple mechanical device, and nothing is claimed 
upon it." 

I felt somewhat alarmed, but in spite of doubts held pretty firmly to my own opin- 
ion that there was an infringement. Afterwards, in conclave of the Justices, I was 
called upon to give my opinion first. It was a great trial to me, as I was then the jun- 
ior Justice upon the Bench; but I gathered myself together and expressed my convic- 
tion, with considerable courage, that the two letters patent covered the same matter. 
The next Justice in order was called upon, and this was Justice Blatchford; and he 
promptly said: "O, reverse, of course" (which was an agreement with my vote, re- 
versing the decision of Judge ). And so they all fell into line after me. I was 

somewhat elateil at this result, but the unforgetable tin spout was heavy upon my 
mind, and my conscience troubled me. Could there be anything of obscure but 
weighty import in that tin spout? I took Justice Bradley aside and said to him: 

" See here ; what did you mean by asking that question about the tin spout? " 

And he said: "0, to tdl the truth, I Imd been asleep Jot ten minutes, and I didn't want 
the counsel to know it." 

On one occasion Mr. Lamar used tliis language in addressing a law 
class: 

I shall not close these remarks without saying something to you about the impres- 
sions made ui^on me by personal contact and intercourse with the members of the 
Supreme Court. Those imjjressions were a profound respect, growing into admiration 
and culminating in reverence and love. IMy acquaintance with them constitutes the 
most impressive incident in my entire intellectual and moral life. The character of 
each of those men has exalted my ideal of a wise, pure, and great judicial magistrate. 
What I have seen and know of their self-oblivious devotion to right, the moral cour- 
age, the Roman firmness, and the simple, loving hearts, with which those grand old 
jurists obey the mandates of duty, as though they were the voice of God, reminds me 
of Webster's matchless tribute to justice, when he declared that, "Whoever ministers 
at its altars with honest purpose, or labors upon its edifice, or clears its foundations, 
strengthens its pillars, adorns its entablatures, or contributes to raise its august dome 
still higher in the skies, commits himself in name and fame and character with that 
which is and must be as durable as the frame of society." 



In common with his associates, Mr. Lamar did not limit his labors to 
tlie sessions of the Supreme Court, but during the summer vacations 
traveled his circuit, more or less, holding terms of the Circuit Court. 
He was thus employed ditring parts of the summers of 1888, 1889, 1890, 
and 1891. His papers contain much evidence that his visits were much 
enjoyed by the members of the bars visited, and were remembered with 
pleasure. Let one letter, from Hon. William T. Newman, District 
Judge, suffice as an example: 



550 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

Atlanta, Ga., June 1, 1891. 
I shall always regard your visit here as one of the pleaeantest events in my 
experience not only officially, l)Ut ijersonally; and I know tluit the bar and your 
friends here regard it in the same way. 

lu February, 1889, just before the close of Mr. Cleveland's first term, 
Mr. Lamar was interviewed by a reporter of the Baltimore Sun, the sub- 
jects of the interview being the results of the Cleveland administration, 
its relation to the Southern question, the practical outcome of its poli- 
cy toward the Southern States, and the effort then making to commit 
the incoming administration of Mr. Harrison to a revival of sectional 
and race antagonisms. The manuscript of the interview was submit- 
ted to Mr. Lamar. He approved of it, but doubted the propriety of his 
giving expression to his views while occupying a seat on the Bench. 
For that reason the matter was not given to the public. On the 28th 
of September, 1895, however, the Sun published the document. It is 
here reproduced: 

In weighing the results of tlie Cleveland administration, its relation to the so-called 
"Southern question," and the practical outcome of its policy toward the Southern 
States, are of peculiar interest, especially now that an attempt is being made to com- 
mit the incoming (Harrison) administration to the revival of sectional and raceantag- 
onisuis, which have been st) happily allayed during the past four years. As a former 
member of the Caliinet and a representative Southern man Justice Lamar is especially 
qualified to speak of the feeling of the Southern p.-ople on this point; and his views 
will carry great weight even with Mi'. Cleveland's most prominent oi>ponents, because 
of the universal respect for the Justice's integrity, foirness, and moderation. Justice 
Lamar naturally hesitates, because of his position on the Supreme Bench, to give ex- 
pression to any opinions which might even seem to be tinged with political feeling; 
but in conversation with the Sun correspondent he bore cheerful and unqualifled tes- 
timony to the beneficial eftects of the four years of peace and quiet which the South 
has enjoyed during ^Ir. Cleveland's occupancy of the White House. 

" Ut. Cleveland's administration," said the Justice, "has been a providence to the 
Southern people. It has secured them rest from the disturbing conditions from whicli 
they had been suffering ever since the war. It has permitted the development, un- 
vexed and unfri-tted, of the material resom-ces of the South; and I regard the freedom 
from hostile interference witli llie natural and orderly working of local institutions 
anil the ordinary avocations of the people, and the perfect feeling of security and 
rest, as among the important causes of the industrial development in the Southern 
States, which has become so apparent durini,' the past four years. Nothing interferes 
more seriously with the growth of any country than the constant apprehension on 
the iiart of the people that they will not be permitted to enjoy without molestation 
the fruits of their lalwrs. This apprehension may proceed from obscure and almost 
intangible causes; but if it exists at all, the etfect is the same. It paralyzes individual 
effort, and plunges the whole community into a state of despondency and indifference. 
Under previous administrations the Southern people had been led to look only for such 
treatment as might proceed from a spirit of hostility and mistrust. They were con- 
stiinlly harassed by a policy which regarded them, not as a component part n{ the 
AmericJin people, but as a community apart, which was to be viewed with constant 
suspicion and to be treated only with repression. They felt that their patriotism was 
questioned, that they were i)eiiuittcd to participate in public affairs only on sufferance. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 551 

Under Mr. Cleveland's administration this humiliating distinction has been unknown. 
They are profoundly grateful to the President, not for any special marks of favor, but 
because he has given them i)eace. 

"The Southern jieople also cherish a high regard for Mr. Cleveland on broader and 
thoroughly jjatriotic grounds. It is often said that sentiment has been eliminated 
from politics, but this is not the case at the South. The i)eople of the South have al- 
ways been accustomed to regard tlieir chosen leaders with enthusiastic devotion, and 
to follow them with implicit confidence. They do not believe in the leveling tenden- 
cy which insists that a man who has been elevated to an important public trust shall 
not be invested with the dignity which his selection implies. On the contrary, exact- 
ing a high standard of fitness, of personal rectitude, and broad conceptions of public 
duty in the men to whom they confide such position, they give them their fullest con- 
fidence, and delight in honoring them with respect and esteem. A public official is in 
their eyes something more than a mere functionary ; he has in his keeping their own 
honor and dignity, and the manner in which he executes his trust is the measure of 
their esteem for the individual. It is because the South feels that Mr. Cleveland has 
fully satisfied these requirements that it regards him with such peculiar affection and 
esteem. He is the object of the same enthusiastic admiration as was given in former 
times by the Southern "Whigs to Mr. Clay, and by all the people of the South, without 
distinction of party, to Mr. Calhoun. The South is solid for Cleveland. 

"There are but two things that can make a people solid: the presence of a great 
danger and the thrill of j^opular emotion in admiration of some noble quality or 
achievement. Both these considerations enter into the feelings of the Southern peo- 
ple for the President. They are deeply sensible of the fact that his administration has 
relieved them, for the time being, of a serious menace to their peace and prosperity, 
and are proud of him as the Chief Executive because he has realized their highest 
conceptions of the dignity of his office. They bear in mind that he has lifted the 
conduct of public affairs to a higher plane; that he has purified the government serv- 
ice, and put a stop to corruption and peculation in office and to favoritism and intrigue 
in the military and naval establishments. They are especially impressed by the at- 
mosphere of social purity that has prevailed at the White House, and by the fact that 
not even the spray of the outer currents of corruption has reached its lintels. They 
recognize in Mr. Cleveland's administration, in other words, a rigid devotion to the 
public good, an elevated conception of official duty, a wise and capable leadership in 
public affairs, and a spotless integrity of personal character." 

Justice Lamar spoke witli strong deprecation, in the interest of both races at the 
South, of any attempt to reverse the policy which has been so fruitful of good results 
in that section. " The negro question," he said, " is not yet settled. Many thoughtful 
men at the North do not yet see their way very clear to a satisfactory solution. It 
will certainly not be settled by measures which would have the effect of exciting the 
political ambition of the colored people, and encouraging tliem to regard themselves 
as the ruling class. To stimulate the negroes to assert themselves at the expense of the 
whites would be to fix a gulf between the two races, to establish a color line more 
absolute and more eftective than if it were a formal provision in the constitution." 

The Justice warmly indorsed the statements as to the substantial harmony and 
unanimity of ilr. Cleveland's Cabinet. As one of its former members he added his 
testimony in contradiction of the theory that the Cabinet officers have been mere sub- 
ordinates of the President. " Every member of the Cabinet," he said, " is a man of 
pronounced individuality; and it is quite likely that they would not have been able 
to agree on many points but for the fact that they discovered almost immediately that 
the President was a man of singular moderation and capacity, with the firmness and 
tact which were requisite to insure concert of action, while giving to each individual 
his proper share of influence and responsibility. They realized also that he was ani- 



552 LCCIi'S Q. a L AM. lit: 

mated by a very high sense of public duty; and, infused witli this spirit, they were 
knit tofrether in a sympathetic union, in the earnest and loyal effort to realize the 
President's conceptions of the aims and scope of his administration." 



Oq tlie 24th of June, 1890, Mr. Lamar delivered an address to the 
Society of the Alumni at Emory College, on the occasion of the annual 
Commencement. This speech is presented in the Ai^pendix. It is in- 
dicated, rather than reproduced, partly from Mr. Lamar's manuscript 
and partly, where the manuscript is defective, from a meager report 
of it given contemjjoraueously, and very accurately for a mere abstract, 
by the Atlanta Journal. The reader will have no difficulty in discrimi- 
nating between the one and the other. At the liest the reproduction is 
itusatisfactory, being only a fragment. Mr. Lamar never wrote out the 
address in full, and many of the few notes made by him have evidently 
been lost. Still, the speech, as presented in part, is interesting; and it 
will be found to be one of the most valuable biographically, since it 
gives beyond any other an insight into the inner life and the traditions 
of the orator. It also gives a most striking example of his power of re- 
producing from memory in minutest detail sermons and speeches which 
he heard many years before.* After his death. Dr. Candler, the Presi- 
dent of Emory College, said in his memorial address at the interment: 

He possessed a marvelously retentive memory. In the course of the address at 
Emory College, to which allusion has been made, he reproduced with almost literal 
accuracy sermons and addresses delivered in his hearing during his college days, from 
1841 to IS-l.j. A debate between two distinguished Georgians who were students with 
him at Emory, which he heard when they and he were sophomores, was reproduced 
with microscopic fidelity. This uncommon recollection was a prime factor in the tri- 
umphs of his political life. 

A letter from a Georgia schoolmate, a minister, says: 

The vividness with which he did this overwhelmed the older citizens, many of 
whom had heard the sermons that he quoted. It was not merely the thoughts of 
these sermons that he called up, clothing them in his own language; but he uttered 
the very words that the lips long since sealed in death had spoken. 

The letter from wliich the following extract is taken was written by 
Mr. Lamar to Walter Barker, Esq., of Mississippi, in the year 1891: 

You are right in supposing that I still feel an interest in "dear old ]Mississippi " 
and all that concerns my old and well-loved friends. I have watched the recent po- 
litical developments among her people with deep, intense, and almost tremulous so- 
licitude, mixed with painful regrets at the wonderful change which has been going on 
in the character, spirit, and purpose of the farmers of Mississippi, indeed of the whole 
South. Up to a very late period the planting and farming classes of the South con- 
stituted the most conservative and the most patriotic electoral body in this or any 
other country. Broad in their love of country, elevated in principle, and proud in the 
consciousness of their individual independence, they exercised the elective franchise 

♦Apjiendix, No. 24. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 553 

and cast their votes without any motive of personal advantage or profit to themselves^ 
without even a glancing thought of selfish ambition, but regardful alone of what con- 
cerned the public weal through the track of coming years. 

It was this spirit of the agricultural people of the South which enabled her to con- 
tribute to the nation those great men whose names even now our national history 
will not let die, and who, in every development of public achievement, have done so 
much for the prosperity and greatness of our common country. What are those 
classes now ? They are, in some measure— too much, I fear— what the new spirit, born 
of Northern alliance.", has wrought into their character. AlHances organized in secret, 
and acting in concert to convert the elective franchise into an enginery for the ascend- 
ency in government, and for making it minister to their own recently awakened cu- 
jiidity and lust for office. I do not refer so much to their subtreasury scheme, though 
I regard tliat as gnissly unconstitutional, and a delusion, but to their deliberate ac- 
ceptance, as the motive of political conduct, of the selfish, ignoble idea of government 
—namely, a means of their own self-enrichment and aggrandizement; their turning 
their backs on all tliat we are proud of in the history of the South, and all that her 
people have hitherto esteemed as honorable, sacred, precious, and beyond all price. 

Look at the spectacle of South Carolina ejecting from his seat in the United States 
Senate and trampling under foot the heroic, wise, and patriotic Hampton, and put- 
ting in his place one whom I shall not attempt to characterize. The bitterest word 
that the vocabulary of sarcasm can aflbrd is not so severe as the single statement : " I 
was willing to take his seat in the Senate upon the immolation of Wade Hampton." . . . 

As to myself, the lengthening shadows of three-score years and more remind me 
that my political work is done, and the leadership in shaping the political future of 
our country has pa.ssed from me forever. My hopes and afiections and ambitions are 
now concentrated upon my friends and associates in Mississippi. 

The influence of tlie United States upon the world is growing every day. Its mag- 
nificent territory, its spreading population, its boundless wealth, the inventive gen- 
ius of its people, and the present methods and power of our constitutional govern- 
ment, are concentrating into such a national power as the world has never seen. The 
South should not forget her right to be potent, to be at least an equal factor in such 
history. The greatness of this ciiuntry in the past has been with the South. 
What it will be in the future should not, and must not, be without the South; but 
to be such a factor the South must hold on to, and retain in the national life, her great 
and shining men. She must hurl contempt upon the miserable alternative of substi- 
tuting them by the shallow, ignorant, self-seeking, upstart creatures of the hour. 

Mississippi ought not to tolerate for a moment the idea of acquiescing in the retire- 
ment of Senator Walthall.* Of all the splendid men that she has ever presented to 
the nation. General Walthall is the one beyond all competition in moral purity, 
strength of mind, heroism of soul, and commanding influence among men. 

The last public address of his life Mr. Lamar delivered at Center 
College, in Kentucky, on the 10th of June, 1891. Center College never 
had a more brilliant commencement, and the different exercises of the 
week ended with an array of orators and a flow of oratory such as even 
Kentucky soil has rarely witnessed. The audience included a larger 
number of illustrious visitors and alumni than had ever before visited 
Danville. Among the distinguished gentlemen occupying places on the 
platform were Justices Lamar and Harlan, Hon. John Young Brown, 

" The Scnatoi- had announced tliat lie expected not to stand for reelection. 



554 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

Chief Justice Holt of Kentucky, Hou. A. P. McCormick of Texas, 
Col. Elliott F. Sliepard of tlie Neiv York Mall and Express, Hou. W. 
C P. Breckinridge, ex-Gov. Pro tor Knott, Hon. Adlai E. Stevenson, 
and others. The opening address of the occasion was that of Mr. La- 
mar. He was introduced by President W. C. Young, with a reference 
to the Sumner eulogy. He spoke for a little more than an hour, deliv- 
ering an oration said to have been " of great power and interest." He 
" was frequently applauded, and at the conclusion of his address was 
cheered enthusiastically." '■'■ The speech is not given here, however, be- 
cause the newspaper report of it is too much like that at Emory College, 
the year previous, to entertain the reader. 

Early in the year 1892 Hon. David B. Hill, of New York, by invita- 
tion of the Legislature, visited Jackson, Miss., and there made a speech 
in the interest of his avowed candidacy for the Presidency. Shortly aft- 
er that a movement was started at the University to persuade Mr. Cleve- 
land to visit that institution during its approaching Commencement and 
make the annual address. Mr. Lamar wrote to Mr. Cleveland, in re- 
spect to the matter, a letter, of which the first part has been lost, the 
remainder running thus: 

. . . people of the South to you, ami their enthusiastic admiration of your char- 
acter, I confess that for a time I had gloomy apprehensions as to tlie effect of the 
machinations of these cabals. Our pi'ople are wretchedly poor. Their condition is 
not like that of Northern communities >vhen a great financial disaster sweeps over 
them. It is individual poverty and distress which liroud over plantations and fields 
and households, and consume their daily means of subsistence. They hear with al- 
most despair that their must trusted Democratic leaders oppose tlie measures that are 
offered for tlicir relief. The free coinage of silver and tarifl" reform have been regard- 
ed by them as the only measures of relief which the Democratic party has to projiose. 
Your firm, and, as I think, wise, stand against the free coinage of silver saddened 
their hearts and frustrated their expectations. Just then Hill's Elniira speech came 
out, and was circulated under flaming capitals. Then followed his election to the Sen- 
ate, and what was claimed to be his act in fixing Xew York permanently in the Dem- 
ocratic column. An invitation was gotten up to him to address the Legislature of 
Jlississippi — and the Southern tour. 

With all this to back him, Jlr. Hill was not strong with the people of the South, 
especially of Mississippi. Tliey did not like his character, and tliey reprobated the 
methods with which his name was associated. Irrespective of their own preferences 
as to men, they have insuperable repugnance to the manner in which the late con- 
vention at Albany was constituted. They thought that such a convention should 
have been so constituted as to utter fully and clearly the voice of the people, and not 
that of political managers and office seekers and mere officeholders. They believed 
that if it went unrebnked, or should be repeated in other States, the Chicago Conven- 
tion, instead of coming fresh from the people, would be a scheme to annihilate the 
control of the people over tlie Presidential nomination and vest it in those who make 
politics a trade, and who live, or expect to live, on the government. 

^■'Cintrier-Jnitntaf^ of .Tune 11. 1891, 



HLS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 555 

But notwitlistanding all this, when he went South as the one man who could give 
us New York, uiid thus insure us tlie election of a Democratic President, and as he 
banked higli ui)on the assertion, " I am a Democrat," they went in some numT)ers to 
Jackson to listen to liim, with no disposition to (Titicise unfavorably his eflbrt. While 
tliey did not expect anything extraordinary from him, the occasion and his willing- 
ness to meet it certainly justified the anticipation of something respectable as an ef- 
fort of publi<^ oratory or statesmanship; but in both respects it was a perfect flat and 
a disappointment. The deliberate plan or scheme to capture the State not only met 
with a cold reception; Hill diil not throw warmth enough into it to prevent its freez- 
ing. There are editors in the State wlio have autograph letters from Hill expressing 
his thanks for the support given him by their papers. He is now given uji, ami all 
that the managers now hope to achieve is the nomination of some other man outside 
of New York. All over the State the popular sentiment of the people is for y(iU. If 
other States are like Mississippi, the result will be a signal proof of the stability of a 
people against any machinery, who have confidence in the intellectual and moral su- 
periority of their leader. In all our towns, when the votes of the residents are enu- 
merated, your majorities run up to three-fourths and four-fifths. When meetings 
have been called for Hill or any one else, the speaker does not call the name of 
Cleveland for fear of the applause. The avoidance of that name has got to be a joke. 

I am too weak to scribble more. Tlie University of Mississippi is the pride of the 
State; and if it will be convenient for you to accept the invitation to deliver the 
Commencement address, they will all be deliglite<l. I need not say that I shall. 

I am .sorry not to be able to give you a good account of my health. Have lieen 
down eleven days with frequent and copious hemorrhages, with no signs of an early 
recovery. I spend many of the silent and tedious hours of the night on my sick couch 
in thoughts of you, and in earnest aspirations for your happiness. 

I send my warmest regards to Mrs. Cleveland, and love to the little miss. 

Y'our grateful and devoted friend, L. Q. C. Lam.-ir. 

My pencilings are so illegible that I must have them copied. 

Tlie following interesting letter was written on June 6, 1892, to Capt. 
R. E. Park, a son-in-law of Mrs. Lamar: 

Sitting in the library of my house, the most dismal place in the world in the ab- 
sence of one who has made it a home of joy, my eye by chance falls upon a volume 
that your mother said she intended to send to you. I will therefore send it by to- 
morrow's express. It is the " History of the United States Supreme Court." The 
book is written with great ability, and contains a graphic account of most of the inci- 
dents connected with the organization of the court and its constitutional adjudica- 
tions, together with sketches of the different Chief Justices and Associate Justices 
who have sat upon that Bench. You will find my own biographical sketch among 
them. I am told that it was prepared by the distinguished jurist, George Ticknor 
Curtis. 

While I have a high opinion of the book itself, as well its literary as its historical 
merit, I ought to say that I think there is much to be read between the lines of its 
imposing records. The judiciary act of ISOl was enacted in the last year of Federal 
power, which was swept away from the national Legislature and all the executive of- 
fices of the national government by the triumph of States' rights principles, in the 
election of Mr. Jefferson to the Presidency. That act was intended to counteract the 
principles of States' rights Democracy and to weaken the State judiciaries and to el- 
evate the national judiciary at their expense until the Federal Courts could draw to 
themselves all litigation of importance, leaving the State Courts witliout character or 
credit. The object and effect of the legislation was the multiplication of Federal 



55G LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

Judges (sixteen United States Circuit Judges). The elder Adams, in order to perpet- 
uate the principle of Federal power and to intrench it in the judiciary (the only de- 
partment of the government from which it had not been extirpated by the election 
of Jefferson), by his last act, after Jefferson had been elected and l)eforo his inaugura- 
tion, appointed these sixteen Circuit Judges for life. Chief Justice Marshall, only 
six weeks before Mr. Jefferson was sworn in, was made Chief Justice of the Supreme 
Court while serving Adams as Secretary of State. 

I confess, since I have served as a member of that court, that much of my reverence 
for Marshall as a great jurist and an impartial judicial magistrate has disappeared. 
He was a violent and a malignant political zealot, who more than once desecrated 
the altars of justice and soiled the judicial ermine liy using his power as a judge to 
jjromote partisan interests, and to obstruct and embarrass the Democratic and States' 
rights policy of Jefferson's adnunistration — whom lie detested ^vith an unrelenting 
bitterness of political and pers<iiud hostility. Jefferson, referring to him in a letter to 
Gallatin, thus describes him: " The Judge's inveteracy is profound, and his mind is 
of that gloomy malignity wliich will never let him forego the opportunity of satiating 
it on his victim." I see, however, that I must stop these notes, lest they shall go on 
growing with their growth without strengthening with their strength. 

An interesting reminiscence of this period is given hy Mr. Frank 
C. McGeheo, in a letter to tlie Clarion-Ledger, dated February 5, 1893: 

Lamar was a truly great and good man, a thinker, a philosopher, whose mind 
was cast in that mold from which only grand conceptions issue. . . . How he 
clung to Mississippi and Mississippians in his last days of suffering it was my privi- 
lege to oljserve and appreciate. Early last summer, after an absence of tliree ami a 
half years from the country, I had the opportunity of being with him, and of pain- 
fully observing the wreck which disease had made of his once powerful frame. His 
mind was as bright as ever. The body which held it had dwindled away, but in that 
shrinking the grand brain from which had come bo many wise and brilliant thoughts 
had no part. 

After a short visit to Mississippi in June last, I called at Col. Lamar's home, and 
told him of my visit and of tlie many inquiries about him in the State that he loved 
so well. "Ah I" he said, as a tinge of sadness swept across his features; "I am so 
glad to hear it. I was afraid, since I have been away from them so long, that they 
were l)eginning to forget me." It seemed to cheer him greatly to feel that the people 
whom he had served so lung and so well still remembered and loved him. 

I found him deeply concerned over the financial condition of the people. It dis- 
tressed him greatly; and as the subtreasury question was at that time agitating tlie 
country, he gave it much thought. It is almost unnecessary to say that he did not 
approve of the measure as it was then understood, yet he fully apjireciated the situa- 
tion, and recognized the right of tlie people torelief of some kind. He felt that there 
ought to be legislation to meet the difficulties arising from the scarcity of the circu- 
lating mediums; and, as tlie peojile who felt the pinch demanded free coinage of sil- 
ver, he felt that if that matter could be so adjusted as not to debase or cheapen the 
currency the situation sliould be met and tlieir demands heeded. He was unaltera- 
bly opposed, however, to any system which \\ould put in circulation a single dollar 
which would not have equal purchasing power with any other dollar. 

He then began in his entert;iining and forceful way to outline the real objections 
to legislation in the direction of the subtreasury scheme, and to express his views as 
to what would, in a measure, relieve the situation, when other visitors came, and the 
subject was changed. . . . This circumstance is mentioned as an illustra- 
tion, to some extent, of his great sympathy with the people who were suffering, and 
his deep-seated anxiety to see them relieved. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 557 

It troubled him greatly to think that any MississipiMan felt unkindly toward him ; 
and as he harbored no reHeutment, and felt that he had never consciously wronged 
any one, the thought tliat here and tliere he had been nnsundcrstood and misjudged 
annoyed and pained him. He referred especially to one of our brightest and most 
impulsive public men, who, he felt, misunderstood him, and had misconstrued his 
actions. He expressed the kindest sentiments for the gentleman in question, and 
paid a high tribute to his ability and character, and said, with that deep feeling 
which came from a heart conscious of the rectitude of his motives, that he admired 
him and appreciated his talents, and hoped that any feeling that he might cherish 
would pass away. 

In the year 1891 Mr. Lamar again and finally united himself with the 
Church. Any consideration of his religious experience has been pre- 
termitted until now, for the reason that it was thought better to pre- 
sent that most important and sacred chapter in a single and connected 
sketch. Indeed, when one is deeply engaged in the active and distract- 
ing affairs of the temporal life, the life spiritual is so much a thing 
apart that any attempt to tell the two stories together can only result 
in disturbance and confusion. 

Through all of the eventful and varied career of Mr. Lamar ran an 
unbroken golden cord of precious memories intertwined with deep re- 
ligious feeling, which connected each day and almost each hour with the 
sweet, fresh, and hallowing dawn of his life. Rev. Charles B. Gallo- 
way, Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, kindly con- 
sented to narrate that phase of Mr. Lamar's history. What follows, to 
the end of this chapter, is from his pen. 

One of the most striking characteristics of Mr. Lamar was his strong 
religious susceptibility. His spiritual sensibilities were strangely acute ./ 
and very easily impressed. He had the natural temperament of a seer, 
and in his thinking dwelt much in the realm of the unseen. His eye 
was ever open for a vision of the invisible, and everj' perspective 
reached into eternity. Born of devout parents, reared in a Christian 
home, early and thoroughly imbued with the s^jirit of the Christian re- 
ligion, he carried through life the simple faith and unquestioning guile- 
lessness of innocent childhood. All his after critical studies into the 
philosoi^hy and theology of Christianity seemed but to strengthen faith 
and establish him in what he himself declared to be, " a firm and un- 
wavering believer." It is not often that a nati^re so calmly philosojjh- 
ical and a mind so trained to analytical methods should unite such deli- 
cate spiritual faculties and sensibilities so affectionate and impressible. 
In this readiness to respond to spiritual impressions Cardinal Newman's 
beautiful tribute to St. Paul is recalled: "His mind was like some in- 
strument of music, harp or viol, the strings of which vibrate, though 
untouched, with the notes which other instruments give forth." 

And in these spiritual characteristics may be discovered the secret of 



558 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

his 2^ower. They gave ardor to his attachments, and made his friend- 
ships a sacred passion. They invested position with solemnity, his con- 
victions with sanctity, and put an impressive fervor in his eloquent ut- 
terances that thrilled like the uuctiou of an inspiration. A vivid ilUis- 
tration of this we have in the following words uttered by himself in the 
course of a personal explanation which he felt called upon to make iu 
the halls of Congress, March 9, 187G: 

I have all my life cultivated a deep and abiding sense of the importance, sanctity, 
and authority of truth. If I could reach my ideal, it would bo an absolute surrender 
to it as the law of my life, to be severed from it by neither temptation, interest, pas- 
sion, nor ambition. 

Bishop Fitzgerald, in his eloquent funeral address, spoke to the same 
effect, and correctly characterized him in these words: 

It was his religious faith that, more than anything else, gave unity, right direction, 
power, and success to his life. This was the mighty irndercurrent that bore him on- 
ward in his course. 

But with this clear intellectual apprehension of the great Christian 
verities, much of his life was silent in spiritual unrest. He had doubts 
deep and dreadful, but they were doubts and distrust of himself rather 
than of the God whose conscious pardon and constant fellowship were 
his pathetic yearning for years. There were mysteries he could not 
fathom, but above these minor keys of sadness and fear rose his simple 
but sublime faith in essential trirth. His mental attitude to the myste- 
rious and sujjer natural is thus described in his own words: 

The union of divinity with humanity in the person of Jesus Christ we cannot ex- 
plain or comprehend ; at least I cannot. Tlie incomprehensibility of a fact, however, 
is, to a philosophical mind, no proof of its nonexistence. There are a thousand facts 
around us whose existence is undoubted and indubitable, and yet whose natures are 
utterly incomprehensible. 

And this proposition he felicitously illustrated by references to the 
vegetable kingdom and the constitution of the human mind. His al- 
most lifelong difficulty was to transmute Cliristian truth into spiritual 
consciousness, to attain unto such an experience as would give perfect 
serenity to faith and rapturous assurance to the soul. This was the eager 
search of years; and his great heart never rested until he, like the hum- 
blest sinner, foand i^eace iu the Sou of God. Amid the exactions of 
private life and the excitements of a long and conspicuous public ca- 
reer this was his meditation day and night; and though he wandered 
far from duty; as Bisliop Fitzgerald said: "Thougli chilled by the 
frost of doubt, the roots of his faith never died, and at length rebloomed 
with the fragrance of early springtime, and bore fruit unto life eternal." 

At times he was so stirred by sjjiritiral convictions and so overpow- 
ered by religious emotion as to feel like committing himself to the 
work of the gospel ministry; and through life there were recurrences 
of the fear that after all he had jirobably mistaken the path of duty. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 559 

His intimate and iionorecl friend, ex-Cliaucellor J. N. Waddell, of the 
University of Mississippi, iu his "Academic Memorials," relates this in- 
cident: 

I remember a casual conversation I held with him during his first years in Oxford, 
in which, as we spoke of his future, lie remarked tliat he sliould not be surprised if 
lie sliould end his life in the ministry of the Methodist Church. 

In July, 1870, he delivered an address before Emory College, Georgia, 
and thus refers to the religious influence of collegiate life iipon his 
character and career: 

No spot on earth has so helped to form and make me what I am as this town of 
Oxford. It was here, iu the church which stands a little farther down the street, that 
I became fully impress^ed with the value and peril of my soul, and was led to pour out 
my contrite confessions. 

Btit it was not until July, 1862, that he gained his fall consent to for- 
mally assume the vows of membershix) in the Methodist Church. He 
was on a visit to friends and relatives in Macon, Ga., whither his family 
had gone from Oxford, Miss., to join him. The solemn and important 
event is thus described by Mrs. Lamar iu a letter to her mother, Mrs. 
Longstreet: 

On Commencement Sunday at Wesleyan Female College, after an excellent sermon 
from Rev. Dr. Houston, of Nashville, the doors of the Church were opened, and my hus- 
band joined. You know his mind was fully made up, before he left Oxfonl, to join at 
the earliest opportunity. I am so rejoiced that he has united himself with the Church, 
and believe that he will be a consistent and devout Christian. He has purchased a 
number of religious liooks, and reads, studies, and prays a great deal. 

His correspondence running through years, which was very volumi- 
nous, reveals the earnestness of a great soul inquiring after the true 
light. He indulged maeh in self -depreciation, but from every source 
sought guidance into the right way. AVhat could be more transparent 
and beatitif ul than these sentences in a letter to his young wife, written 
from Washington in December, 1858, when just entering tipon a bril- 
liant Congressional career? 

I have nothing to write alii->ut this morning: for yesterday was Sunday, and that 
day is naturally one destitute of incident. I regret to say this, for I would be glad to 
lay before you tlie record of holy thoughts and fervent aspirations and prayers. I 
want to lie a Christian, but I fear that as long as I am in jiublic life my mind will be 
too much bound up in the aifairs of this world. 

In another letter written to his wife from Richmond, in 1861, whither 
he had gone to command a regiment on the liattlefield, the sentiments 
expressed can only be equaled in exquisite tenderness by their delicacy 
of spiritual discrimination: 

My heart is still sinful. It does not love God as a reconciled parent. ... It 
does not thrill under a sense of gratitude for redemption, as I feel it should; but 1 
shall continue to pray on for grace to do so. I often unite you in my broken and 
humble petitions, and pray that ouis may be a liousehold of faith. 



560 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

A few weeks later he thus refers to the joy of being reunited to that 
sacred home circle: 

May God grant me the privilege of once more meeting my family and of gathering 
them around tlie domestic altar to h^end uji to his throne thanks for his mercies and 
prayers for his favor and grace 1 

From Alexandria, La., ttnder date of December 20, 1862, he wrote to 
his wife. He was oi route to some port in Texas or Mexico, from which 
he was to sail to Europe, bearing the credentials of a Minister to Russia 
from the Confederate States of America. Though burdened with the 
thoughts of his dangerous mission and a long separation from his fam- 
ily, with a possibility of never returning, he girded up the strength of 
his great soul and wrote in a strain of almost joyous hope: 

Since leaving you I have been more prayerful. I read the Scriptures more every 
day. When I was with you I was so troubled by our unexpected losses and the pros- 
pect of soon being parted from you that my mind was not tranquil; but now I feel 
more hopeful, and trust implicitly in God. Don't give way to despondency. 
All will be right yet. 

And after his safe return he writes in the same gentle strain from 
" Headquarters, Department of Kichmoud, December 15, 1864," to her 
from whom no secrets of his noble heart were hid: 

I am still trying to subordinate all worldly things to the considerations associated 
with eternity, . . . the favor of God, and the well-being of my soul hereafter. 
, . . Pray to God, my darling, that we may all lie his children. 

In the early years after the war, while filling a jirofessorship in the 
University of Mississippi, Mr. Lamar had charge of a large class in the 
Methodist Sunday school. So popular were his lectures (for he taught by 
lecture) that persons from all Christian denominations were attracted 
thither, and often the room was crowded with eager listeners. These lec- 
tures were prepared with great care, and delivered with the superb elo- 
quence of the great orator. Every Sabbath, while the glow of his words 
lingered in the heart, scores of persons were heard to remark: "What a 
wonderful preacher he would make!" A fragment of one of these stud- 
ies, "The Temptation of Christ," was found among his papers. Some 
closing paragraphs here produced indicate the clear exegesis of a trained 
theologian and the fervid spirit of an earnest evangelist: 

Such, gentlemen, are my views on the tempation of Christ; but they by no means 
complete the subject. The effects of that temptation were as indelibly impressed 
upon liis spirit as were the jirint of the nails and spear upon his body after he had 
risen from the tomb. Let me recall the last temptsition of the tliree. Bear in mind 
that it came to him when his heart was glowing under the revelation that he was the 
promised Messiah, the Deliverer of his people groaning under oppression, the King 
whom Judea was looking for to break her chains and wear the crown of universal 
empire. He knew the difficulties that lay in the way of that universal empire of 
peace and love, that kingdom of God that cometh not with observation. He saw the 
lofty citadel of paganism intrenched behind the prejudices of centuries, and flanked by 
the batteries of the philosophies of the ages; he saw the disajipointments and bitter 
execrations of hi< own people; he saw persecutions unto the cross, the long array of 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 561 

martyrs, and the bands and dungeons of torture and death. One word, and all this 
would disappear. Omnipotence is his, and by the mere assent of his will all the king- 
doms of earth were his possession. Had he yielded, the higher will would have suc- 
cumbed to the lower wish— would have done an act of homage to tlio si)irit of evil; 
but in this act of mastery the Saviour of the world suffered, not, it is true, by tlie reluc- 
tancy of sinful sentiment, but by the quivering and anguish of natural feeling tram- 
pled upon by a lofty will. 

From this scene he goes forth to his work, to his people awaiting with eager expec- 
tation his coming; and when he utters the summons, " Repent ye, for the kingdom 
of heaven is at hand," he is thronged by a multitude which no building could contain. 
He repairs to a mountain, the crowd surrounding eager to drink every word that falls 
from liis lips. What he said was read by you at our Lost meeting, and what did you 
hear? Not one word of Judea, of Rome, of conquest, of the tlironging of all nations. 
Almost every word was like the chill of death to the hopes and feelings wliich 
glowed in the hearts of the people, and which were consecrated nnder the name of 
religion. There are the Roman legions in the country, Roman guards at the door of 
the temple, and Roman taxgatherers extorting taxes to support the unholy supersti- 
tions of paganism. Now what does their promised King tell them? Instead of war 
and victory, he commends his impatient disciples to be obedient citizens of his king- 
dom of peace, to have faith in him; and they will not only be " free indeed," but will 
inherit incorruptible kingdoms, and themselves be kings and priests and sit upon 
thrones. 

• 

But still, Mr. Lamar carried a burdened s})irit, burdened tinder a 
sense of his unworthiuess, and seeking such a cloudless comfort of 
soul as he had witnessed in his saintly mother and other devout Chris- 
tians. Writing to his best-loved friend, Gen. Walthall, from Memphis, 
in 1873, after having suffered from a severe stroke of paralysis, he thus 
pours out his anxious fears: 

I am a very sick man; suffer more than anybody thinks. I do not honestly expect 
to live twelve months. I believe that I shall go off like Yancey and Alex. Pegues — 
before anybody suspects that much is the matter; and after all my studying about re- 
ligion and striving to avail myself of its promises, I am not ready to go. I don't know 
what I would give for old Judge Longstreet's faith and courage. I can't say: " There 
is not a cloud." It is all clouds and darkness to me. I see less of God's providence, 
^nd more of evil and the supremacy of evil in this world, than I ever did in my life. 

His spirits seemed to sympathize with his broken body, and for the 
moment allowed his faith to pass into partial eclipse. A little later, to 
his old friend, Rev. Dr. John N. Waddell, then Chancellor of the South- 
western Presbyterian University, at Clarksville,Tenn., he wrote in a more 
hopeful tone: " I am exi^ecting a nnich sterner summons, and Jiojm' to be 
jjrepa red for if." 

Col. Lamar was especially fond of the society of good men, and among 
his most ardent and cherished friends were ministers of the gospel. 
They were his confidential correspondents and intimate associates. He 
could talk by the hour of the great preachers he had heard, and espe- 
cially of those whose words and life had influenced his character and 
career. His old college classmate, Eev. Dr. J. C. Simmons, who spent 
36 



5G'2 LUCIUS Q. V. LAMAR: 

a week in his Washington home dnring the Ecumenical Methodist Con- 
ference iu 1891, speaks thus happily of that cliaracteristic: 

He could call up sermons and sentences that he had heard fall from the lips of the 
sainted Bishops Andrew, Capers, and Pierce, an<l from Revs. Anthony, Glenn, Parks, 
and others. These saving truths he had never lost sight of amid the turmoils of the 
bloody strife that called out all the powers of his great heart, and amid the swirl of 
political strife, when his fellow-men were, unasked, lifting him to the front rank of 
the greatest men of the nation. 

He delighted to make acknowledgment of his indebtedness to such 
influences. The following extract from a letter to Rev. Edward Thomp- 
son, Vice President of the University of Southern California, and son of 
the late Bishop Edward Thompson, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
is only one of many found among his papers: 

Much of my practical success in life among men is due to the principles imliibed 
from the speeches of your father when he was President of a Western College that I 
read during the formation of my intellect and character. Those speeches were pub- 
lished in a magazine entitled "The Ladies Repository; " and my attention was called 
to them by my widowed mother, who was at a IMethodist college in the South educat- 
ing her sons. 

Reverence was the solid basis of his character. His mind was cast iu 
a large and serious mold. So thoroughly was he rooted and grounded 
iu the principles of Christianity, and so profound was his reverence for 
the verities of the gospel, that he never spoke lightly of sacred things, 
and never sufPered an attack upon them to go unrebuked. In 1886 tlie 
newspapers gave the following account of an interview with Col. Inger- 
soll: 

While in Washington recently, the infidel called upon the Secretary at the Interior 
Department; and Ingersoll, in tlie course of half an hour's conversation, said scores 
of witty things, which Lamar is said to have enjoyed immensely. Ingersoll finally 
made some remark in ridicule of orthodox Christianity ; and the Secretary jumped to 
his feet, throwing his long hair, with an impatient gesture, back from his forehead. 
" Ingersoll," he exclaimed, " I hope to live to see the day when you will come to the 
capital city and preach to the world Christ, and him crucified. With your magnificent 
abilities and sjilendid oratory, you could work a revival such as the world has never 
seen. I hoi)e, Bob, to see the day when this will come to pass; and you could not en- 
gage in any grander or more noble work." 

A friend in Mississippi sent him the clipping, to whom he replied as 
follows: 

The interview reported in the papers is set forth very inadequately. I will give 
you the particulars some of these times when we meet and I have the leisiu-e to repeat 
it. Bob Ingersoll is a queer man. His head is infidel. He has no intellectual organ 
which gives him any avenue to the infinite or the supernatural, but his heai-t is full 
of a sort of piety ; and his life, so far as I know it, is one of moral rectitude, humanity, 
and tender love. 

He was a mau of prayer. Daily communion with God he called the 
"cherished habit" of his life. However neglectful of duty or errant of 



ins LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 563 

spirit or absorbed in the ambitious plans of a public career, tlie liourof 
daily devotion brought a seuso of humiliatiou and humble coufossiou. 
A glimpse at his inner life is had in a letter written to a member of his 
family while he was Secretary of the Interior. He said: 

I eat my breakfast, Jinnfi-, and t^upper always in the presence of some two or three 
eager applicants for office; go to bed witli their importnnities in my ears; and, what is 
of niuoh greater inconvenience to nie, and one that I fuel more than any other, I 
hardly have time to say my prayers. You know that breaks uii a cherished habit of 
mine. 

Few men so fond of public life, so full of ambition, and so apprecia- 
tive of the high honors and esteem of his countrymen, have ever been 
so constantly and seriously concerned about that other life "iinmeas- 
ured by the flight of years; " but to him it seems to have been an ever- 
present and dominant thought. He wanted to kiioiv that his faith 
was well-founded. Amid the burdens of a Cabinet office, he thus wrote 
to his lifelong friend, Chief Justice James Jackson, of Georgia: 

That is a terrible (juestion of yours about the "roll call." Xo; I am not read}-. I 
have tried to " tote fair" in this world, and have done my duty toward men honestly 
and bravely, and to my country; but to my God I am one of the most remiss, and 
could not stand liefore him and say that I have done my duty to him. 

At length, however, the clouds floated away, and his skies were filled 
with stars. They gave a sweet serenity to his last laborious years, and 
at eventide it was light. 

In April, 1890, then on the Supreme Bench of the United States, he 
delivered an address before the Young Men's Christian Association of 
Washington City. With an unusual eloquence and marvelous persua- 
siveness of speech, his tone and manner borrowing a chastened exjores- 
sion from the sacredness of his theme and the evident progress of dis- 
ease upon his magnificent frame, he stirred to rapture his great audience 
of young men. In the course of that splendid address, he made this 
luminous and positive declaration of his religioiis faith: 

Summoned, as I am, to speak to this Christian association, it is proper to show my 
colors and avow my sentiments. I give them witliout figure of rhetoric or form of 
argument, and simply declare that I believe that there is a God — a personal, infi- 
nitely gracious Creator and Father of all; a God of goodness, justice, and holiness; 
the God of the Bible. I also declare my belief that the Bible is the Word of God, 
and that the central idea of his inspired revelation is Christ. "God, who at sundry 
times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the projiliets, 
hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of 
all things, by whom also he made the worlds ; who being the brightness of his glory, 
and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his 
power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right-hand of the 
Majesty on high." 

He indulged much in reminiscences, and protrayed for their emula- 
tion manv of the noble characters, most of them minister,?, with whom 



564 LUCJW Q. a LAMAR: 

his early life was intimately associated. These concluding words have 
the quiver of spiritual power: 

In the engrossing engagements of an active public position, I liave lagged behind 
the modern developments of Christian thought and life; but I beg to assure you that 
in all the vicissitudes of that career, and in all my intercourse with the leaders of 
nations and peoples, authors, thinkers, statesmen, and jurists, generals of armies, 
courtly and classic rhetoricians, and the brilliant expounders in our American 
Churches, I have found no richer treasures of thought or nobler incentives than the 
fearless simplicity of faith I found, in my young manhood, among those men, some 
of whom I ha\e inadequately tried to reproduce to you this day. Indeed, I owed to 
them some such tribute as a debt of gratitude; for they were, and in a sense are, my 
nearest of friends, whose grand countenances, looking down on me from the portrait 
gallery of sacred memories, never fail to inspire me with a firmer faith in the immu- 
tability of truth and the invincibility of right. 

And now, gentlemen, if I have let fall a single suggestion which will keep alive the 
aspiration and hope of any ardent young soul before me to join that noble brother- 
hood which lives in this life so as to live again in other minds made nobler and bet- 
ter by his influence, I shall deem myself most happy. 

In June of the same year he delivered a memorable address before 
the Society of the Alumni at Emory College. He took occasion to re- 
view the history of the foundation of his alma inatcr, and in so doing 
declared with great force and eloquence his own apprehension of the 
true attitude of culture to Christianity. He insisted that education it- 
self should be saturated and safeguarded with genuine religion. Bead 
this vigorous paragraph: 

The mightiest impulse, however, which aroused the Methodistsof Georgia to the sa- 
cred duty of providing for the literary trainingof their youths under the direction and 
hallowing influences of their own Church sprang from a dissatisfaction with the ten- 
dency and character of modern intellectual culture, its lack of the element of religious 
belief, and its separation from Christian faith. Along with the i-apid advance of liter- 
ature and scientific discoveries, scientific materialism, irreverent speculations of phi- 
losophy, and the flippant skepticism of letters, were gaining ground. Unbelief was 
growing more imposing to men of culture, and their minds were becoming less im- 
bued w-ith homage to the solemn majesty of the eternal life which broods over the 
scenes of their present 1 irief existence. Along with this dissatisfaction was a profound 
conviction of the worthlessness and moral inadequacy of all science, literature, .art, 
historic knowledge, and intellectual culture, unaccompanied by faith in duty and im- 
mortality, in God and Chi-ist, as springs of motive and the inspiration of life. To meet 
this felt want of a place for education, iihtTepiet;/ should bisplre scimce, and culture should 
confirm and strnirithcn pittii, the ]\Iethodist Conference and membership founded Em- 
ory College, and dedicated it as a temple to science and religion, with devout aspira- 
tion that the two, thus united, should lift each the other upward, and aid each other 
onward in blessing the people of Georgia. 

The circumstances attending his connecting himself with the Mount 
Vernon Methodist Church, South, in Washington City, m 1891, were 
quite characteristic. The pastor. Rev. Dr. J. T. Wightman, asked if 
he desired the simple entry of his name on the church register, as he 
had been a member elsewhere. The great jurist answered: "No; I 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 5G5 

have been too far astray, and have too long neglected duty, to claim a 
place in the Church on au early confession of faith. I want to join 
(/(' novo:' ""Well, Judge," said the pastor, " would you prefer to be re- 
ceived in the (luiet of your own home?" "No," said he; "1 want to 
take the vows before the congregation as any other humble sinner, 
hoping thereby to encourage those who, like myself, have too long post- 
poned this most important matter. I only ask that the reporters be not 
informed, aud that we have no newspaper sensation." And with the 
humility and simple faith of a little child the renowned statesman and 
jurist avouched the Lord to be his God. 

In October, 1891, the Ecumenical Conference of Methodism was held 
in the City of Washington, composed of representatives from every 
branch of the Church and from every part of the world. Judge Lamar 
was a delegate to that body, and no member watched more eagerly its 
proceedings or entered more heartily into the spirit of the great occa- 
sion. 

On to the close of his splendid career he walked with a steady step 
and a joyous hope, fearing no evil, with a divine rod and staff to com- 
fort him. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

Failins; Health— Diagnosis— Illness, April, 1892— Visit to Macon, Ga.— Death— Action 
of SupremeCourt — Congress — Interior Department — Reception of the News in Mis- 
sissippi— In Otlier States— In Georgia— Proceedings in Macon, Ga.— The Ol^sequies 
—Dr. Candler's Sermon — Bishop Fitzgerald's Discourse— Bar Meeting of tlie Su- 
preme Court of the United States— Mr. Vilas' Remarks— Senator Walthall's Tribute 
—Hon. J. Randolph Tucker's Remarks— In the Supreme Court— The Remarks of 
the Attorney-General— The Response of the Chief Justice— Resolutions of Illinois 
State Bar Association— The Removal of Jlr. Lamar's Remains to Oxford, Miss.— 
Conclusion. 

NOTWITHSTANDING Mr. Lamar's great physical strength and 
the ruggedness of his general health, for the last thirty-one years 
of his life he was more or less seriously troubled with organic weak- 
nesses. 

He was never free from this embarrassment after his attack of vertigo, 
in Virginia, shortly subsequent to the battle of Williamsburg. In the 
course of this biography mention has been made in several places of this 
affliction, but only in the most severe instances. The less dangerous cases 
have been ignored, but they were frequent; and his work was all done 
under the consciousness that at almost any time the sudden rupture of 
a blood vessel in the brain might bring practically instantaneous death. 
However, the gravity of those attacks diminished as Mr. Lamar grew 
older. That of 1880 was the last of the graver sort. Still, he had a 
slight illness of this nature even after he was in the Cabinet, which he 
kept a secret; for he intensely disliked sensational reports in the papers 
about his health. 

In 1873 he wrote to Gen. Walthall that he was troubled with a renal 
disorder; and it is doubtful if he was ever afterwards entirely free from 
trouble of that nature, although there were long periods wher* he con- 
sidered himself well, and felt so. In spite of those maladies, so great 
were his strength and vitality that he retained his activity until quite 
late in life; and it is said of him that after he was in the Cabinet, irri- 
tated one day by a newspaper statement about his failing strength, and 
in order to disprove the statement to a friend, he stood under his chan- 
dalier, and, leaping up straight, kicked it, being then about sixty years 
of age and weighing two hundred pounds. 

Had he taken care of himself, he would perhaps have lived several 
years longer than he did; but that he never would do. His devotion to 
his work made him prodigal of his labor and strength, and consequent- 
ly of his health. It was no uncommon thing for him to work all night. 

When he was raised to the Supreme Bench his ambition to bear his 
(56fi) 



LIFE, TlMEti, AND tSPEKCllES. 5(J7 

full share of the court's burdens aud to make his producdons equal in 
quality, as well as in (juantity, with those of his associates intensified 
his natural inclination. After two years his strength began to fail, in 
the winter of 1889-90. On the '28th of February, 181)0, he wrote lo Mrs. 
Eoss: 

I am sorry to tell you that I am not improving as rapidly as I could wisli. Do not 
mention it, for such things grow in report. But I want you to know tliat my health 
does not grow better fast. I am very weak, and find my breath very short after even 
the most moderate exercise; am subject to a constant dull headache and pains in the 
back of my neck and through my shoulders. Two doctors say, upon consultation, that 
oneof the valves of my heart has ceased to act (I don't believe that) ; and another says 
that I have muscular rheumatism and a general nervous prostration. My own opin- 
ion is that I am under the lingering etfects of a \ery obstinate and severe case of la 
grippe, from which I shall slowly recover. I do not feel that there is any cause to think 
that there is anything seriously and permanently the matter with me. 

Through the years 1890 aud 1891 Mr. Lamar gradually lost strength, 
although there were periods of improvement. In the summer of 1891 he 
made a visit to Oxford, Miss., holding a short term of the Circuit Court, 
and going thence to Danville, Ky., to make the address at Center College. 
In September he wrote to Mrs. Eoss that "My debility is extreme, and 
seems to be lasting. The work of the court next month appalls me." 
In October, however, he was better, aud used to walk home from the 
Capitol after the adjournment of court. Then there was another pe- 
riod of depression, which caused him to plan a trip to the Mississippi 
coast to recuperate; but on the 5th of January, 1892, he wrote to Mrs. 
Eoss that 

During the last preceding four days my health has been sensibly improving. Ev- 
ery one has said all the time that I was looking better, but now I fed such a decided 
improvement that I have postponed my trip South until the 1st of February. Of course 
there is a very general protest among all my friends against this conclusion, but the 
work that is ujxin this court is not a mere matter of sentimental duty; it is a hard re- 
ality; and if I, to give myself a respite and relief, should suspend my share of it, I 
would be throwing upon my associates — some of whom are older and weaker than 
myself, and otiiers more prostrated by sickness, who aie staying here bravely at their 
post — an increase of the labor with which they are already burdened. 

In February Mr. Lamar did make a short trip to Macon, Ga., and 
Pass C'hristiau, Miss. From the latter place he wrote to Mrs. Eoss on 
the 17th: 

I want to thank you, and tell you how much solace, comfort, and gratification your 
love for your brother gives him. My separation from you and my children is a sore 
trial to me, and becomes harder and harder to bear. Jennie's visits, with her two 
little cherubs, bring light into my household. She and they are treasures which ought 
to make any man grateful to God, and I am ; but I feel the absence of the rest keen- 
ly. ... I wish I could accept your invitation to stop with you. In all my life I 
never wanted so much to see you. With no special reason for it, my thoughts fre- 
quently—yes, more than frequently— dwell upon the time when we shall cease to be 
with one another in life, and the time left me is increasing in preciousness with re- 



568 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

spect to my intercourse with those dear to 1113' heart; but my duties as Judge leave 
me no respite, and I must go back without seeing any of you. 

Mr. Lamar's visits to Macou and Puss Christian did not materially 
improve liim. While at the latter place he began to feel better, but the 
morning after he left for Washington he was attacked by acute pain in 
the back near the left kidney. On the 8th of jMarch he consulted Dr. 
William Pepper, of Philadelphia, who fotind evidences of general arferio- 
schlerosis of moderate extent, and of some degree of renal trouble. In 
a long analysis of the case the doctor said: 

I strongly incline to the opinion that for several years, five or six at least, there has 
been slight progi-essive change in the arterial system and in the kidneys; that on go- 
ing on the Supreme Bench the excessive pressure of mental work overtaxed his nutri- 
tive power, and there was a rapid decline. Unfortunately at that time a severe attat-k 
of influenza occurred, and I believe that this left greatly increased irritation of the 
sensitive kidneys. I am not disposed to take an unfavorable view of the case, and for 
the following reasons: The changes have been of long standing and of slow progres- 
sion ; there has been an intercurrent and accidental cause of increase in the trouble — 
namely, the influenza. He has lately shown marked power of recuperation Ijy recov- 
ering fifteen out of the thirty pounds of lost flesh; his digestion is unusually good, 
considering the circumstances; the term of couit aiiproaches its end, and he will then 
be enabled to go abroad and to get complete rest and change, and to undergo a strict 
course of treatment at a carefully selected resort. This may be made a matter of sub- 
sequent duty. For the present, I would advise a continuance of his judicial duties, 
with, however, the strictest regard for rest and the avoidance of all overtaxing. I am 
entirely opposed to his resignation. I think that he is as well ofl'at AVashington, dis- 
charging with less than usual effort a less than usual portion of his judicial duties, as 
he would be elsewhere at this season. 

In April the collapse came. While seated upon the bench he was 
seized with a fit of coughing, and hemorrhages followed which were 
frequent and profuse and alarming for many hours. For a number 
of days he was confined to his bed, regarded as dangerously ill, and un- 
der active and vigilant treatment. It was during this illness that he 
wrote the letter to Mr. Cleveland given in the previous chapter. 

However, Mr. Lamar was not to be taken just yet. He rallied and 
resumed his place upon the Bench. He was not able to work much, and 
did but little more. In the summer he went to Bethlehem, in the White 
Mountains, a favorite resort of his wife's. From thence he wrote to 
Mrs. Pioss, on September 9, 1892: 

I have not realized the sanguine hopes of restored health with which I came to 
these mountains. I liegan at once to take walks and horseback rides, but had to give 
them up on account of the pains in my breast which they brought on. The attacks 
of hemorrhages, which were at the time painless and, as I then thought, harmless, left 
my breast sore and weak, so nmch so that I have to guard against any exertion, 
either bodily or mental. I look to the approaching October with dread, lest it find me 
unable to buckle on the harness for the resumption of judicial labors. I am in doubt 
whether I ought to undertake that work, or to resign a position the duties of which I 



Ills LIFIC, TIMES, ASV Sl'lCECHES. 56& 

do not feel able to discharge witli credit to myself and those I love, or in :i manner 
due to the public interests concerneil. . . . God liless j'ou all ! 1 wish yi in knew 
the insignitic-ance of official rank and honors compared to the value to me of your af- 
fections. 

On the 16th of November he wrote to his sou: 

I know tliat the time is fast approaching wlien I can no longer lie of much service 
to tlie I'hildren I love ; that tlu- horizon of my life stands still and awaits my approach, 
and that I shall soon pass beneath it from the sight of those for whom I wish to live. 
I do notshrink from it, and the only thing necessary to make me happy in the brief time 
that I have left me will be the happiness of knowing tliat you are resolute, happy, and 
possessed of a self-sustaining mind. iMay God bless you! 

lu December Mr. Lamar, with his wife, left Washington, intending^ 
to visit again tlie Mississippi coast. On tlie day of his departure he 
was attacked on the train with an acute pain of the heart, and was 
forced to lie over dnring two days in Atlanta, where he was entertained 
by Hoke Smith, Esq. He then went on to Macon, where were his 
wife's residence, great numbers of loving friends, and many reminis- 
cences of his early manhood. There he remained until the end came. 

On the lOtli of January, 1893, he wrote to Hon. William H. Hardy, 
of Meridian, Miss. : 

The accounts in the newspapers of my attack of sickness in Washington and At- 
lanta were somewhat exaggerated. The nature of the malady ascribed to me is, I 
think, a mistake. Jly case was pronounced some time ago, by one doctor, as Bright's 
disease of the kidneys; but Dr. Pepper, of Philadelphia, in his diagnosis of the case, 
states that, while my kidneys are affected to a certain extent, it is not a case of diabetes 
or Bright's disease. He thinks that it is a disorder of the arterial system. ... I 
do not wish much to be said of my failing health at this time, Ijut I tell you that I am 
quite a sick man, and am lying up Iiere in Macon waiting for the cold weather to sub- 
side befoie starting for a more southern and balmy climate. ... I now think of 
going to St. Augustine. 

Later Mr. Lamar seemed to be improving and gathering strength. 
His friends thought he was on a sure road to recovery, and that within 
a few weeks he would be able to resume his pilace on the Bench. He 
and Mrs. Lamar were not staying at Mrs. Lamar's residence in Macon, 
but were visiting Gapt. W. H. Virgin, a son-in-law of Mrs. Lamar's, in 
Yineville, a suburb of the city. He made occasional visits into the city 
on the electric cars. On Monday, the 23d of January, 1893, he called 
at the office of Capt. E. E. Park, in company with Dr. Flewellen, a 
cousin of Mrs. Lamar's. 

" They sat for perhaps a half hour with Capt. Park, discussing various 
to[)ics, and when they left he carried with him several magazines to 
read that night. He conversed freely with Dr. Flewellen while return- 
ing home on the car, and said that his exercise made him feel like eat- 
ing a good dinner. He dined with the family shortly after six o'clock, 
and partook of his accustomed dishes with every indication of a good 
appetite and general good feelings. 



570 LUCrUS Q. C. LA MA J!: 

"After dinner he walked with the family into the sitting room, and 
during the course of conversation extended Dr. Flewellen a very cordial 
invitation to visit him at Washington next summer. 

" Dr. Flewellen left the house about 7 : 30, remarking the improvement 
noticeable in Justice Lamar's general health. In perliai:)s about fifteen 
minutes after this the Justice complained of symptoms of his old at- 
tack, also saying that his arms felt benumbed. It was soon necessary 
for him to retire, which he did without any very unusual trouble; and 
the family were disposed to attribute his condition to exhaustion from 
the trip to the city. After lying down he complained of suffocation, 
and it then became impossible for him to breathe freely until he was 
placed in a comfortable chair near the fire. This condition, however, 
rapidly grew worse, and soon it was evident that he was sinking. Mr. 
Virgin boarded a street car and went at once for Dr. Parker, returning 
with the physician at about 8 : 40. 

" He was found to be speechless and unconscious, and to the physi- 
cian evidently beyond the reach of help. His head hung almost limp 
in the hands of one of the attendants, who was relieved by Mr. Virgin. 
" In this position his life passed out without a struggle, and so quiet- 
ly and peacefully that those about him did not know the exact moment 
at which the soul took its flight. 

"All the physician's efforts to revive him after his arrival were of no 
avail, and the life of the distinguished statesman and jurist slowly ebbed 
for a time, then flowed out as softly as when the little babe is gently called 
back from earth to heaven. 

" He had passed away suddenly and unexpectedly, and those about 
him felt shocked when it was known that life was extinct. Although 
his serious condition had been a matter of daily concern, the quiet, quick 
taking away of a life full of such greatness carried with it unusual 
awe. 

" In frequent conversations he alluded to his condition, but said that 
he was not afraid of death. His chief wish was to visit his father's 
grave and some of the scenes of his younger years before death claimed 
him for its own; but this was denied him, and he died with a trip whicli 
he had planned several days ago unaccomplished. 

" His statement to his wife on Sunday night thai ho was afraid to 
sleep lest he should never wake expressed his firm conviction that his 
life hung in a sensitive balance which at a very early day was sure to 
succumb to the inevitable weight of age and disease. 

"Although sad and deplorable in every respect, his death carries some 
consolation in the thought that fame and public achievements had not 
alone occupied his life. The thought of his Creator was his great con- 
solation, and he died enjoying the full appreciation of the revealed truth. 
He was a member, with his good wife, of the Mount Vernon Methodist 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 571 

Churc-li, of Washington, the church of nearly all prominent Southern 
Methodists at the nation's capital."* 

The moi'ning papers of the 2-ith announced Mr. Lamar's death to all 
the country, and numerous telegrams of condolence and sympathy were 
sent to the family. Among them this came from Oxford, Miss.: 

Oxford, the houie of Justice Lamar for so many years, is overwhelmed. Bells in 
the courthouse, churches, and colleges are tolling. Business houses, residences, and 
tlie university chapel are draped in mourning. Expressions of deepest grief from all 
classes are universal. The profoundest statesman of the South, the noblest of gen- 
tlemen, the truest of patriots! Mississippi, whose fame has been so largely the prod- 
uct of his splendid services, is inconsolably stricken. John F. Brown, Maijor. 

In Washington, on the 24th, when the Supreme Court assembled as 
usual at noou, the chair between Justices Gray and Brown was draped 
in mourning, again signifying the sad fact that since the last meeting 
one of its members had passed away. 

" The death of Justice Lamar was not startling to his associates, for 
they had realized when he left the city for the South that in all proba- 
bility he would not resume his seat on the bench; yet it was unexpected 
and a shock to them, for the last news that they had had from him was 
to the effect that he was improving and getting along quite nicely. 

" The bar and audience quarters of the court were filled this morning 
when the Justices filed into their places and the court opened. Justice 
Fuller announced Justice Lamar's death in a few words, and adjourned 
the court." 

The fact of Mr. Lamar's decease was communicated by the Chief Jus- 
tice to the Senate and the House; and those bodies at once adjourned 
as a mark of respect, after short addresses; in the former by Senators 
Walthall and Gordon, and in the latter by Mr. Allen, of Mississippi. 

At the Interior Department Secretary Noble issued the following or- 
der, announcing the death of Justice Lamar: 

Department of the Interior, 
Washington, D. C, January 24, 189.3. 

It becomes my painful duty to announce the death on yesterday, at Vineville, 
Macon, Ga., of Lucius Quintus C. Lamar, Secretary of the Interior from March 6, 
1885, to January 10, 1888, when he resigned to take the ])lace as Associate Justice 
of the Supreme Court of the United States. It belongs to others with whom he served 
in Congress, on the Bench, and in other relations in private and official life, to speak 
of his merits there. It is with pleasure that testimony is here borne to his valuable 
labors in this department, which were faithfully performed with that clearness of ap- 
prehension, sense of justice, and goodness of heart for which he was distinguished. In 
token of appreciation of his services and respect for his memory the department will 
be draped in mourning for twenty days on and from this date, the flag carried at half- 
mast, and the department closed on the day of his funeral. 

In Mississippi, on the receipt of the news of Mr. Lamar's death, the 



/ 



*The Macon Telegraph, January 2!), 1893. 



572 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR. 

State Capitol was draped iu mouruing. In many of the towns were 
held mass meetings of the citizens and bar meetings, at which resolu- 
tions of respect and sorrow and condolence were adopted. In Oxford, 
the United States Court being in session, Prof. A. H. Whitfield, of the 
Law Department of the University, called the court's attention to the 
death of Justice Lamar, and moved that the court "adjourn in honor 
of the greatest statesman of the South. Judge Niles fittingly respond- 
ed, and the court adji-urned for the day." 

The meeting at Oxford was held at two o'clock in the afternoon of the 
24th of January, at the courthouse, Mayor John F. Brown, of the city, 
and Chancellor Eobert B. Fulton, of the university, jointly presiding. 
The Committee on Eesolutions was composed of Hon. Charles B. Howry, 
ex-United States Attorney; Hon. M. A. Montgomery, United States At- 
torney; H(ins. Eobert A. Hill and Henry C. Niles, United States Dis- 
trict Judges; Hon. B. T. Kimln-ough, State Chancellor; W. A. Eoane, 
District Attorney; A. H. Whitfield, Esq., Law Professor; and Messrs. 
W. V. Sullivan, H. A. Barr, A. T. Owens, and Dr. T. D. Isom— all prom- 
inent citizens. In reporting the resolutions for the committee, Hon. C. 
B. Howry addressed the meeting; and he was followed by Prof. Whit- 
field and Chancellor Kimbrough. The speeches are described as being 
" beautiful tributes U > the life and character of our truly great and honored 
fellow-citizen," and the resolutions were adopted by a rising vote. 

Like proceedings were had in Aberdeen, Corinth, Holly Springs, 
Grenada, Meridian, Brandon, and very jnany other places throughout the 
State; and perhaps every newsimper in the State contained editorials 
of the mt)st laudatory and sorrowful nature. It would take a large vol- 
ume to contain them and the proceedings of the bar meetings and of 
the town mass meetings which were held in honor of Mr. Lamar. 

Nor were those demonstrations confined to ^tlississippi. Similar ac- 
tion was taken iu New Orleans, Memphis, Birmingham, and other prom- 
inent centers outside the State; and several State Legislatures then in 
session passed resolutions of sorrow and sympathy, even far-away North 
Dakota joining. 

In Georgia the United States Courts sitting in Savannah and Atlanta 
adjourned, and memorial services were held; and on the day of the in- 
terment the exercises of Emory College were suspended, and a memo- 
rial meeting was conducted in the college chapel. 

At all of those meetings, besides the adoption of appropriate resolu- 
tions, beautiful and tender eulogies were pronounced by leading citi- 
zens, many of which were reported more or less fully by the papers. In 
addition, numerous appreciative and exquisite voluntary personal trib- 
utes were i)ublished. 

The writer has before him nearly a thousand obituary notices, gath- 
ered from the press of every State in the Union; and it was originally 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 573 

hie intention to present a collection of tlieir comments, but space is 
wanting, so voluminous has this work already become. Let it suffice to 
say that they show all shades of (jpiuion about Mr. Lamar's liabits, abil- 
ities, services, qualiiications, genius. The overwhelming verdict, how- 
ever, is of the very highest praise in all of those particulars. The voice 
of the South is without a dissent. The Northern Democratic press and 
a great majority of the Northern Kepublican papers unite in that ver- 
dict, witli somewhat less warmth of expi-ession; while some of the last 
class are depreciatory in varying degree, and a few quite spiteful and 
bitter. In the entire collection, however, it is to be noted that there is 
not one which challenges his moral courage, or his personal honesty 
and integrity, or his absolute disinterestedness and purity of motive. 

A small number of examples, impartially chosen, are given in the sup- 
plementary chapter following; necessarily but a few.* 

In Macon, Ga., the first oiEcial notice taken of Mr. Lamar's decease was 
at the assembling of the Superior Court on the next morning. The court 
was immediately adjourned, and a committeee of seven members of the 
bar was appointed to wait upon the family and ascertain their wishes as 
to the part which the Ivar should take in the obsequies. Then Washing- 
ton Dessau, Esq., President of the Georgia State Bar Association, sent 
a telegram to Hon. Hoke Smith, at Atlanta, informing him of the ap- 
pointment of a large committee from the membership of that associa- 
tion to attend the funeral. 

The Macon Board of Trade and the Town Council met, passed appro- 
priate and tender resolutions about the great Georgian, and took steps 
to assist in the interment, which was fixed for Friday, the 27th. 

The following full and graphic account of Mr. Lamar's obsequies is 
taken from the Macon (Ga.) TeJe/imph, of January 28, one or two short 
passages from other jjapers being inserted: 

" The funeral of L. Q. C. Lamar, which took place at Riverside Cem- 
etery yesterday, was without doiibt one of the notable events in the his- 
tory of this city. 

" The crowds that lined the streets and bared their heads when the 
flower-covered casket passed on its way to the grave were not there out 
of careless curiosity, nor were their tokens of resjiect merely formal ob- 
servances of decency. The mourners' faces were honest, earnest reflec- 
tions of the heart; and Macon, in common with the whole country, was 
sincere in her desire to pay homage and tribute to a man whose life's 
history is one of her proudest boasts. 

" It was perhaps the largest funeral ever seen in Macon. At the 

*See pages (lOS-fiOT. 



574 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAJi: 

house in Vineville, at the church, and at the grave, some new tribute 
was paid, and fresh crowds gathered. 

" Never before have so many distinguished men come so far to sliow 
their respect; and never before miglit it bo said were the respect, tlie 
homage, or tributes paid more sincere. 

"Macon listened yesterday to the silver-tongued orators and orator- 
preachers, whose words came welling from hearts full of love and of 
sincerity. 

"A touching incident was told yesterday, and is of interest to every 
American who knew the dead man. 

"Justice Lamar liad for many years carried in his inside vest jjocket 
a small copy of the Constitution of the United States. Next to his Bi- 
ble it was the book that he loved best, and he referred to it often. Those 
who knew him well also knew of this little book. In life he was never 
without it, and yesterday the little book was buried with him. Held in 
his right hand, it lies close to the heart that loved its teachings and 
iipheld its rights at all times. 

"The funeral ceremonies lasted from 9: oOa.M. until about 3:30 r.ii., 
when the last word was read over the open graA'e. 

"The exercises at the Academy commenced at 9:30 a.m., those at the 
church at 12 M., and at the grave about 2:30 p.m. 

"The members of the l)ar of Macon and visiting lawyers from every 
part of the State, who had come to pay a last tribute to Justice Lamar, 
assembled at the Academj' of Music at 9:30. 

" The Academy was filled with lawyers and citizens. Ushers showed 
the members of the bar to seats near the stage, and jn'ominent lawj-ers 
were given seats on the stage. The gathering was most respectful and 
attentive, the manner of the people showing clearly that they had come 
through a feeling of respect to a great man's memory. 

" On the stage were Senator Gordon, Gen. A. Pi. Lawton of Savan- 
nah, Attorney-General J. M. Terrell, Judge C. L. Bartlett, Hon. A. L. 
Miller, Hon. G. W. Gustin, Hon. E. W. Patterson, Hon. Washington 
Dessau, and a number of other prominent members of the State bar." 

["It was expected that Chief Justice Fuller and Associate Justices 
Blatchford, Brewer, and Brown would be on the stage and make re- 
murks; but they were not present, as they did not think that it would be 
altogether approjjriate for them to participate in the exercises, as they 
had come as moiirners to be with Mrs. Lamar in her sorrow, and as late 
associates of the deceased. They felt more as members of the grief- 
stricken household. It was also expected that the memliers of the Su- 
preme Court of Georgia and other prominent gentlemen of Atlanta 
would deliver eulogies ; but the East Tennessee train bearing these par- 
ties, that should have reached Macon at 10:10 a.m., did not get here un- 
til nearly 1 p.m."] 



HIS LIFE, TIMKS, A.XD SI'EKCHES. 575 

" There was no drapery about the stage or at any point in the audito- 
rium. The signs of respect were too prominent on the faces of all that 
anything else should be necessary' to tell the cause of their coming to- 
gether. 

" Hon. G. W. Gustiu, as chairman of the Bar Committee, called the 
meeting to order. Jiidge Gustiu stated the object of the meeting to be 
the hearing of the report of the committee appointed by the bar to draft 
resolutions of respect to the memory of the late Justice Lamar. After 
the presentation of the report he said that the bar would proceed in a 
body to the Methodist church, to attend the funeral services." 

Hon. E. W. Patterson, chairman of the Committee on Resolutions, 
then read the report and moved its adoption. Hon. A. L. Miller seconded 
the motion in an eloquent, short address; and so did Attorney-General 
Terrell, Judge Charles I.. Bartlett, Judge Emory Spcer of the United 
States Court, James H. Blount, Jr., Esq., Senator John B. Gordon, and 
Gen. A. E. Lawton of Savannah; all of whom spoke most feelingly and 
eloquently of the deceased Justice. 

"When Gen. Lawton had concluded, Hon. E. AV. Patterson moved 
that a vote be taken ou the adoption of the resolutions. In doing so he 
paid to the memory of the departed Justice a tribute worthy of the one 
to whom it was accorded. Always eloquent, he seemed to surpass him- 
self. 

" The resolutions were unanimously adopted by a rising vote, and the 
meeting was dismissed to allow those present to attend the services at 
the charch." 



"A Last View op The Well-loved Fe.vtures. 

"At the residence of Mr. W. H. Virgin, in Vineville, where the dead 
patriot lay in state, the sadness spoke of death. 

"At an early hour visitors and relatives began to arrive; and, although 
all of the spacious rooms of the lower portion of the house were filled 
by the near relatives and friends of the deceased, a stillness that was 
almost oppressive pervaded the entire house. In the main parlor the 
remains of the dead Justice lay in state; and there they were viewed 
by many, nearly all of whom had been warm personal friends of the 
deceased. 

"As the lid of the casket was removed, a full view of the features 
could be seen. The dead Justice looked as if he were only sleeping, and 
would readily answer if called. Indeed, so natural were the features 
that those who were most iutimately associated with him and knew him 
in his everyday life could not see the least perceptible change." 

["The casket was of the finest red cedar, covered with black liroad- 
cloth, with mountings of massive silver, each corner being supported 



576 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

by a silver column. The plate was of beautiful design, ami bore only 
the inscription: 'Justice L. Q. C. Lamar, Aged 67 years.'"] 

"On tiie casket were two beautiful floral offerings, one composed of 
palm leaves, Marechal Niel roses, and abutilons, from Mrs. Chief Jus- 
tice Fuller; and the other, an anchor of Marechal NieLroses, lilies of the 
valley, and abutilons, from Mrs. C. A. L. Lamar ; while around the room at 
random were various designs of roses and other flowers, together with a 
number of sheafs of wheat with the ripe grain, symbolic of the life of 
Justice Lamar. 

"Chief among the floral offerings sent to the house was one from the 
' members of the S. A. E. Fraternity in the city, composed of roses and 
;hyacinths, forming a diamond, in the center of which were the Greek 
letters 2. A. E., the whole representing tlie badge of the fraternity, of 
vrhich Justice Lamar was a member. Another beautiful design was a 
cross of roses sent by Mr. and Mrs. Yirgil Powers. 

"The room in which the remains were lying in state was on the right 
of the entrance, while the spacious room on the left was set aside for 
the relatives and immediate friends of the family. Shortly before 
eleven o'clock Senator "Walthall, Chief Justice Fuller, the Associate 
Justices of the United States Supreme Court, with other distinguished 
persoiaages, arrived, and eacli viinved the remains in silence. They 
afterwards congregated in the front hall iiutil the remains were re- 
moved from the house. 

" On the wall, opposite the door leading into the room where the 
casket lay was a life-size portrait of the dead Justice; and, ])erhaps un- 
consciously, Chief Justice Fuller stood beneath it during all the time 
he remained at the house. 

" Mrs. Lamar took a last farewell of lier dead husband on the night 
previous, and did not see the body yesterday. Mr. L. Q. C. Lamar, Jr., 
and a few of the immediate relatives of the deceased remained with the 
remains until they were carried to the hearse. 

"At half jjast ten o'clock the members of the Supreme Court went to 
the residence of Mr. Virgin, and took a last fond look at the familiar 
face of their late friend and fellow-Justice. They also spent a short 
while in the comj^any of Mrs. Lamar, mingling their tears with hers and 
expressing words of sympathy. 

" When the remains were taken from the house, thej' were followed 
by Mrs. Lamar leaning on the arms of L. Q. C. Lamar, Jr., and Sena- 
tor Walthall, of Mississippi. Then came other relatives, followed by 
the personal friends of the family. In a short while the house was 
emptied, and the procession began the march ti> the church." 

["The funeral, after everything was put into perfect shape, was, ac- 
cording to the custom, delivered into the cliarge of Marshal Wright, of 
the Supreme Court, as chief marshal."] 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 577 

"Arouud the Virgin residence and all along the march to the church 
were thousands ol: peojDle on the streets, eager to get a glimpse of the 
casket containing the form of one whom every Georgian loved, and ev- 
ery American was proiul to claim as a fellow-citizen. Noticeable among 
those congregated on the streets and about the residence were many 
colored i^eople, and their subdued voices as the procession passed told 
plainer than words of the reverence they had for Justice Lamar. Many 
of the old-time negroes took off their hats and stood in breathless si- 
lence as they watched the procession. 

" Impressive Sehvices at the Church. 

" Mulberry Street Church, where the services were held, was heavily 
draped, the domes, arches, and doorways being covered with white and 
black bunting. 

" The interior of the church was also lavishly dressed in tbe vestments 
of sorrow. The chandeliers were covered in whitf and black, while the 
walls bore drajjings of the same. 

" The altar and chancel were covered with black and white cloths, 
ornamented with more than a score of lai-ge ferns and floral offerings. 
The choir loft and the immense organ were also covered in mourning 
emblems. "Within the chancel were the floral offerings, some of the 
most beautiful ever designed for such an occasion. 

" One was a lovely rack made of white hyacinths resting on a bed of 
ferns, evidently intended to represent the book racks used on the desks 
of the Supreme Court. It bore the single word, 'Asleep,' designed in 
white hyacinths and forget-me-nots. This was the offering of the Ma- 
con liar. 

" Directly in front of the altar was a beautiful pillow made of Mare- 
chal Niel roses, white hyacinths, and pinks, resting on a bed of smilax. 
Over it hovered a white dove with wings spread. This was from Mr. 
and Mrs. H. J. Lamar, relatives of the dead Justice. 

"On the side of this was the ofi'eriug of the city council: a large ea- 
sel made of white hyacinths, Marechal Niel roses, and poppies, resting 
on smilax. On it rested an open book of law, made of massive white 
pinks. 

"As early as ten o'clock, and over an hour before the church doors 
were opened, a large crowd of ladies and men had congregated in front 
of the building. As soon as the doors were opened all that portion of 
the church not reserved for members of the family, relatives, pallbear- 
ers. Justices of the Supreme Court, distinguished visitors, and the bar, 
was soon filled. 

" The pallbearers, Messrs. A. O. Bacon, Washington Dessau, K. H. 
Smith, Sam Pearson, T. D. Tinsley, K. H. Plant, W. E. Rogers, and E. 
S. Wilson, occupied seats to the right of the altar; and on the opposite 
37 



578 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR; 

bide of the cliurch sat Mayor Price, Judge Bartlett, Judge Speer, Dr. 
Flewellen, and the members of the State Supreme Court and Atlanta 
bar, who came iu shortly before one o'clock, having been delayed by a 
railroad accident. On the front seat, to the right of the altar, sat Chief 
Justice Fuller, Avith Justices Blatchford, Brown, and Brewer. On the 
ojjjjosite front seat sat Senator Walthall, with Mrs. Chief Justice Ful- 
ler. Back of them sat Mrs. Justice Lamar, with Mr. L. Q. C. Lamar, Jr. ; 
tlieu other members of the family aud relatives. The rear end of the 
seats on the center aisle was occupied by the Macon bar, visiting mem- 
bers of the State bar, and the ulumni of Emory College, together with 
ministers of the city. 

" The ushers were Messrs. W. G. S^ilomon, E. F. Burden, G. F. Glenn, 
and C. T. King. Outside of the reserved seats the ushers managed 
to very comfortably seat more than one thousand people. Besides this, 
chairs were placed in the aisle; and the entire rear end of the chtirch, 
including the entrance, was filled by gentlemen who stood during the 
entire service. 

" Just as the city clock struck the hour of eleven, the church bell be- 
gan to toll; and as its sadly solemn notes were wafted out u^jou the air, 
the other churches of the city took it up, aud funeral knells were then 
ringing in every part of the city." 

[All places of lousiness and public ofiices were closed, and the flags on 
all were placed at half-mast. ] 

"In the choir loft sat some of the finest singers in Macon: the regu- 
lar choir of ^Mulbeny Church, with Prof. Guttenberger at the organ, 
assisted by Miss Lachlison and Miss Bichardson, sojjrauos; Mrs. An- 
derson iind Mrs. Harley, altos; Messrs. Beeves and B. L. McKenney, 
tenors; Messrs. Morgan and Charles Is. Woodruff, bass. 

"At twenty-two minutes after twelve o'clock the j^rocession from the 
residence arrived at the church. The coffin was borne into the house of 
God by the jiallbearers, all wearing suits of solemn black and exactly 
alike. 

" The magnificent casket was carried down the center aisle and jslaced 
on massive rests covered with black broadcloth and mounted with sil- 
ver. On the casket rested beautiful floral designs, one of which was 
fashioned after the badge of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, from 
students of Mercer College. Another was a heart, another an anchor, 
and then three large sago palm leaves. 

" Dr. Candler preceded the pallbearers, reading the order of the 
burial of the dead: 

" 'I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believethin me, though 
he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in 
me shall never die.' 

"The words fell solemnly on tlie hushcil assemblage. 



ins LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 579 

" While the procession was filing into the church, Prof. Guttenberg- 
er played a beautiful funeral march of his own composition, which was 
followed, as soon as all had been seated, by an anthem rendered by the 
choir: 'One Sweetly Solemn Thought.' 

" Eev. W. C. Black, pastor of Mulberry Church, lately removed thith- 
er from Jackson, Miss., and a personal friend of the Justice, was the 
first to deliver a eulogy. It was a beautiful and feeling tribute to the 
. memory of the dead man. The choir followed Dr. Black's eulogy with 
the beautiful hymn, 'It is Well with My Soul.' Its tender, soothing 
words and soft, musical harmony seemed to console. 

"Dr. Candler, President of Emory College, the dead jurist's uliua 
mater, then arose and met the fullest expectations in his grand trilrate 
to the. memory of the distinguished dead. His eulogy is here jiriuted 
almost in full:" 

Dr. Candler's Address. 

From the home of his boyhood, from the academic groves where Ids youth was 
passed and wliere in after years he loved to wander, from among those who eai liest 
honored him and who loved him to the last, I have come to pay a tribute to the mem- 
ory of the illustrious dead, and to voice on this sad occasion the love and esteem that 
liis alma maUr felt for him. 

Emory Ccillege proudly and tenderly held him the most honored of her sons, and 
mourns him to-day with the anguish of a doting mother's grief AVlien lie was sixteen 
years of age he came to her adoption, and was matriculated asamember of the Fresh- 
man Class of 1841. Four years he worshiped at her altars and learned at her feet; and 
when, in the class of 1845, he went forth from her halls with Pierce and Hardeman 
and Flewellen and Jones and the rest of his comrades, he went forth as a strong man 
prepared to run the race of honor and usefulness, which closed when he fell asleep in 
this goodly city last jMondiiy night. 

This, in brief outline, is the story of the distinguished career he has run; and now 
at its close, speaking as one wlio loved him and for the Christian institution which 
nourished him, I am not extravagant when I say that in his character there is no fault 
which to-day it is necessary to minimize, in his utterances no speech for which to 
apologize, in his life no act that requires explanation or defense. 

Beyond the brief outline which I have given, it does not become me to recount in this 
presence the record of his long and conspicuous public labors. Of his distinguished 
services in peace and in war, at home and abroad,. in the lecture room of the univer- 
sity and in legislative halls, in the Cabinet and on the Bench, there are many here who 
have more perfect knowledge than I have. With the details of that stainless record 
which he made between his graduation in 1845 and his coronation in 189:3 you are 
familiar. Many of you were actors with him in the history of that dramatic period. 

Speaking for his alma mater, who loved him with a mother's love, and whose love he 
returned with all the ardor of his fervent nature, it is my ofiice to recall the traits of 
his wonderful character by whii'h he won and held theadniirationoftliis great nation, 
and by which he endeared himself to the people of the section to which he peculiarly 
belonged. From his youth up Judge Lamar was a man of courage. He had the cour- 
age of his convictions, because he had convictions. All the traditions of his college 
life (and the village of Oxford is full of them) represent him as an honest seeker aft- 
er truth and a fearless defender of it. 

Very profound are tlie words of Jesus : ",\nd ye shall know tlie truth, and the truth 



580 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: 

shall make you free." There is no freedom worth the name which is not freedom by 
the truth, and for him who seeks and finds and loves and liolds the truth there is 
nothing of fear or l_)ondage. 

For a public man, living under a constitutional government by the people, there can 
be no worse fall nor dire disaster than the loss of faith in the feasibility of the truth. 
When he loses this faith he instantly becomes the unhappy victim of tormenting fears, 
which paralyze manhood and iiiii)el him to the adoption of all manner of unworthy 
and bflittling expedients to maintain his place and power. Then follows incapacity 
to discover the truth. His eye is no longer single. The light which was in liim be- 
comes darkness; and how great is that darkness! Fightings without and fears with- 
in subvert the heroic repose of manhood, and devices of the temporizer displace the 
methods of straightforward independence. Such was not Mr. Lamar. With Em- 
erson, his whole life seemed to say: "I look upon the simple and childish vir- 
tues of veracity and honesty as the root of all that is sublime in character." 
This high foith simplified all questions which he was called to consider, disen- 
tangled all issues from the influence of personal interest and political policies, 
and left him free to determine the line of his action by great principles of right 
from which with him there was no appeal. This faith was the basis of his unfalter- 
ing courage in the discliarge of public duty. He believed in the power of the truth 
with the people, and with almost reckless self-abandon dared to follow the truth 
as it was given to him to see it. For this cause he more than once took positions and 
made public utterances which imperiled his popularity— as, for example, when he re- 
sisted certain theories of the national cun-ency, which were at one time widely prev- 
alent, but with which he could not agree. When assailed, he took his appeal to the 
people, not with the methods of a skillful manager, but with the daring of an honest 
man moved by the impulses of conscious rectitude ; and the people rendered him the 
verdicts of approval winch he asked. 

It is not necessary, and perhaps not proper, to discuss on this occasion the correct- 
ness or incorrectness of the views that he lield of matters of public ijolicy; but it is 
surely allowable to call attention to the manly and brave manner in which he main- 
tained them, and commend his example as one worthy of all acceptation. 

That he was animated by the spirit which I describe, none who knew him well, 
none who are familiar with his record, will question. I recall with great vividness 
his eloquent commendation of this faith to the young men of the country when, in the 
summer of 1890, he delivered the annual address before the Aluuuii Association of Em- 
ory College. He alluded to his long experience in public life at the national capital 
and to the prevalent opinion that other influences than those of right and truth oft- 
times control there, and said substantially this: "After all is allowed that can be justly 
said about the influence of money and management upon the determination of national 
affairs, I have always observed that, when great questionsare up for solution, and high 
interest at stake, manhood and truth and right outweighed all else. Devotion to prin- 
ciple is not yet a vain thing in the Republic; virtue is not obsolete in the councils of 
the nation." Such an utterance from such a man should rebuke the unmanly despair 
to which many are so strongly tempted, and should (juicken the courage of all the 
young men in our land. If the eloquent lips upon which rests the seal of death to-day 
could speak to us, would they not again proclaim this high and simj)le creed of polit- 
ical faith: " Truth is better than falsehood, honesty better than policy, courage better 
than cowardice. Truth is omnipotent, and public justice certain? " 

Judge Lamar was a wonderful orator, cogent in argument, elevated in sentiment, 
elegant in diction, fervent in appeal, graceful in manner, and impressive in bearing; 
but I cannot help thinking that much of his wondrous eloquence was the efiiores- 
cence of his heroic devotion to the truth. 

Eloquence is far more dependent upon moral conditions than upon any other. An 



Ills LIFE, TI.UKS, AND SPEECHES. 581 

unworthy nature cannot rise to the higliest }ieights of oratory. If it ventures to employ 
the form of such noble utterance, there is instantly observed such a manifest discrep- 
ancy between the speaker and the speecli as to destroy even the semblance of sin- 
cerity and bring confusion and humiliation. Elocjuence is the soaring of the eagle, 
and not the fluttering of a ground binl. 

I do not underestimate the mental powers of Justice Lamar. They were extraordi- 
nary, amounting to r, al genius. Few men in our day have comlnned such varied in- 
tellectual excellencies and in such marked degree. 

He possessed a marvelously retentive memory. In tlic course of the address at 
Emory College, to yliich allusion has been made, he reproduced with almost perfect 
accuracy sermons and addresses delivered in his hearing during his college days 
from 1S41 to 1S45. A debate between two distinguished Georgians, who were students 
with him at Emory, wliich he heai'd when they and he were sophomores, was re- 
produced with microscopic fidelity. This uncommon recollection was a prime factor 
in the triumphs of his public life. 

Along with his j-ctentive memory he possessed phenomenal powers of reasoning 
and imagination. In their combined flame tlie most intricate matters were dissolved 
and analyzed, and api)arent!y dull themes glowed with the luster of the most precious 
metals as if purified from the dross of commonplace by the heat of an osyhydrogen 
blow-pipe. 

With all he had the habits of a student and an investigator. It is quite possible 
that some of his most intimate friends did not appreciate his powers in this direc- 
tion until he was called to a place in the Cabinet. It is certain that some had mis- 
givings as to his adaptation for the mass of details whicli falls upon the Secretary 
of the Interior in our systeni of government, but the whole country is witnei-s to 
the fact that he discharged the duties of that high oflice with unusual efliciency and 
success. And despite the physical disabilities inider which he has labored almost 
from the beginning of his work as a member of the highest court in the Republic, I 
am told that he has exercised the same habits of sustained application which char- 
acterized his career r.s a Cabinet officer. 

But while fullest recognition is to be made of this rare combination of mental 
traits, the crowning glory of this truly great man was his moral characteristics of un- 
faltering courage and invincible integrity. For nearly a half century, during stormy 
days, when passion was fierce and partisanism was bitter, he served his country in 
high public station; and to-day we lay him to i-est in the soil of his native State, and 
no one can say as he lies down to his long sleep that he was ever charged with the 
slightest dishonor. Through the fiery furnace of a long jmblic life, during which the 
country was convulsed and corrupted by a civil war unjiaralleled in the history of 
nations, he walked and came forth without the smell of any unworthy deed upon his 
garments. 

What persistent force of virtue worked in this strong man's life to bring to pass so 
lofty an achievement of character? Was it subjection to a potential public ojiinion? 
Kay, verily. His virtues ofttimes outran and defied public opinion. Xo conventional 
powerof a weak conformity was his, but rather all around him he gave forth a trans- 
forming influence which made for righteousness. He jiourcd forth no ambiguous 
voices in the marketplace that he might catch the fleeting plaudits of a day. He was 
strong enough to be a voice crying in the wilderness, unblessed of popular power, in 
order to prepare the way of a higher life and a more enduring prosperity for his 
country. 

Was he controlled by a farseeing worldly wisdom? He was a man of foresight, 
and could on occasion, when his action seemed to meet with popular disapprobation, 
say: "I know that the time is not far Uistimt when they will recognize m)' action to- 
daj' as wise and just; and, armed in the In mest convictions of my duty, I shall calmly 



/ 



582 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

await results." But even in such expressions of liis foresight ve catc-h the tones of 
his uncalculating fidelity to principle. 

Was he a man of cold, stoical nature, jiroud of the power and glad of the oppor- 
tunity to show his contempt for jjopular jjraise or censure? Xo. He was an affection- 
ate, tender, sensitive natui'e, who loved to love, and be beloved by, his people. It 
grieved him to differ ■s\'ith them ; it would have killed him to surrender truth to win 
their applause. It was not one nor all of these (jualities combined which controlled 
him. In early life, dwelling in the atmosjihcre of a Christian home and a Christian 
institution of learning— an atmosphere saturated with heavenly influences — his open, 
manly nature imbibed principles of right and truth which were dearer to him than 
all earthly good, dearer than life itself. These tonic influences were incarnated in a 
robust manhood that teaches the world once more the lesson, so hard for some to 
learn, that virtue does not need to stoop to conquer. Toward thes^e sacred influences 
his heart turned more and moi-e with un^^jieakable tenderness as the years went by. 
The memory of his boyhood's home and its religious impressions were more and more 
dear to him. His heart in later years turned toward the religious experiences of his 
college days as a thirsty flower opens to the dew of the morning. The pure heights of 
these early experiences were the sources of the artesian streams which irrigateil all of 
his career and made it to bloom with unfading virtues when scorching temptations 
withered the honor and blighted the fame of less faithful men. 

And now, at last, this stainless gentleman, this astute statesman, this incorruptible 
judge, this humble Christian, has gone to his long home, and the mourners go about 
the streets. IMultiplied thousands in every walk of life and in every section of his 
country bless his name to-day with tearful benedictions. ^Mississippi, the State of his 
adoption, mourns for him as her Chevalier Bayard, the idol of her heart; Georgia, 
his native State, who in his long absence has never ceased to love him and wish him 
back liome, presses her dead son to her bosom with unutterable sorrow, disconsolate 
as Rachel, refusing to be comforted, because he is not; all the nation mourns this 
knightly man, who lived without fear and died without reproach. 

Over the river they rejoice as they welcome the weary pilgrim home. Longstreet, 
his friend and teacher and almost father, greets him there. The patient Christian 
mother has found again the li lyal son for whom she has waited these years, and the 
sen has found the mother wliose sweet face was enshrined in heart and memory 
throu;.'h all the days he has walked without her in the earth. 

Thank God that he has lived and labored among us ! Thank God for the triumph 
he has won, and that at last, when he could do no more, he was permitted to come 
home to die! 

Sweet be his sleep in his scpulcher on the banks of the Ocnnilgee, singing sadl>- to 
the sea, until the earth and the sea shall give up their dead, and God shall wipe away 
all tears from our eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, 
nor any more piin! 

"The choir then sang a hymn. 'Ijcad, Kindly Light,' that beautiful 
compositicni of Cardiual Newmau's. 

" Bishop Fitzgerald's Eulogy. 

" With tears but ])oorly restrained, Bishop Fitzgerald arose from his 
seat aud paid his tribute to his dead friend: a most eloquent aud feel- 
ing discourse. 

[After the conclusion of Bishop Fitzgerald's address the choir saug 
" Greeting." The congregation then cjianted the Lord's Prayer, after 
which the remains \vere borne away to the cemetery.] 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 583 

"The Grave. 

"Long before the funeral processiou arrived at the grave Riverside 
Cemetery was fairly alive with people, many of whom, not being able to 
gain admission to the church, had gone to the cemetery to await the 
arrival of the procession. 

" The grave is situated on the north side of the redoubt built for the 
protection of the city during the late war, and is on a high elevation 
overlooking the Ocmulgee Kiver. The location is a beautiful one, and 
presents a fine view of the surrounding country and the river; and the 
river comes in a graceful curve around the bend near the water wo I'ks 
power station. It is within a few feet of the redoubt, which was offered 
as a location for the burial of e.\-President Davis. 

" The walls of the vault were heavily banked with Marechal Niel roses, 
abutilons, ferns, and various kinds of evergreens, making a perfect 
bower of loveliness that i^resented a beautiful and attractive apj^ear- 
ance. Around the vault for a distance of ten or fifteen feet had been 
Xjlaced a carpet made of buffalo robes for the pallbearers and distin- 
guished visitors to stand upon. At the head rested the easel of roses 
and hyacinths presented by the city council, and the pillow on which 
was woven in lilies of the valley and hyacinths the word 'Asleep,' pre- 
sented by the local bar. 

"On the right side of the vault stood the choir of Mulberry Street 
Church, who sang, as the casket was placed on the supports, ' Safe in 
the Arms of Jesus ' in a touching and pathetic manner. Dr. Warren 
A. Candler, President of Emory College, read the Methodist burial 
service, and closed with a short prayer. Bishop Fitzgerald, of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, then offered a short prayer; after 
which those forming the procession returned to their carriages, and the 
vast multitude who had assembled dispersed. 

" I'nder the sod in the Southland he loved so well another good man 
is lying. Under the shadow of an old redoubt, where once the heart 
now stilled in death beat high with a soldier's joy, another soldier rests. 

"The Georgia pines sigh a lullaby over their dead. Tlie rijjpling 
waters whisper as they go onward — like the life that is over— through 
sunshine and shadow to the great ocean, where all waters meet; and 
over the grave of the patriot, soldier, statesman, gentleman, Georgia 
bows her head in sorrow, and great men bend in silent acknowledgment 
of a superior. 

"Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar's l)ody has been called back to 
the bosom of mother earth; but the spirit lives; it sweeps throughout 
the land with the same grand power for good; and for all time men 
will feel its infiuence whenever memory seeks an example of purity, un- 
selfishness, or unassuming power." 



584 LUCIV.S Q. C. LAMAR: 

On the 13tli of March the bar of the Supreme Court of the 
United States and the oiEcers of the court met iu the court room at the 
oapitol. The meeting was called to order by Mr. Adlai E. Stevenson. 
Hon. William F. Vilas was elected chairman, and Mr. James H. Mc- 
Kenuey, secretary. On motion of Senator J. Z. George a committee was 
ordered to draft suitable resolutions iu respect to the death of Justice 
Lamar; and the chairman appointed E. C. Walthall, chairman; J. Z. 
George, Adlai E. Stevenson, A. H. Garland, J. B. Gordon, William M. 
Stewart, James L. Pugh, J. C. Bancroft Davis, Thomas C. Catchings, 
J. Randolph Tucker, William E. Earle, and Jeremiah M. Wilson. The 
meeting then adjourned until the ISth of March. 

On the day named the meeting was called to order at the same place 
by Mr. Vilas, who delivered an eloquent and tender address upon the 
nature of the occasion and the character of Mr. Lamar. An extract 
from this discourse was used iu the preceding chapter, in which Mr. 
Lamar's absolute devotion to duty was set forth. The reader will ap- 
preciate the strength of the temptation to make one more short quota- 
tion. Said Mr. Vilas: 

It was given to him to see, witli a clearness which few besides him sliared, the 
true relations between his conquered people and the triumphant North; and there 
were added wisdom to guide tlieir course, eloquence to win their hearts to follow it, 
patience and fortitude to liear its personal trials, and the manful spiiit still to stand 
for what was their riirhtful due. 

Thus, in Lamar, to a degree unsurpassed, was displayed the magnanimity of the 
conquered which can nobly inspire and receive that other magnanimity which the 
conqueror may nobly show. It was he who could be tolerated, while yet the passions 
of civil war were still uncooled, to defend in Congress from reproach whicli he 
deemed unjust even Jeflerson Davis himself, because it was he also who coul<l, in 
the same body, reach to a just comprehension of the greatness of Charles Sumner, 
and dare to do his memory noble honor, reckless of the frowns of embittered critics 
behind him. 

And so it is that to none more upon his side is to be ascribed the achievement of 
that conconl which has at last come to bless our land with such beneficence that lie 
is now recognized its enemy who will touch the chord of remembrance for a single 
discordant tone to mar the harmony of our common love for our common country. 

Mr. George then, in the absence of Mr. Walthall, caused by sickness, 
presented the resolutions submitted by the committee, and read the fol- 
lowing masterly, discriminating, and noble tribute offered liy Senator 
Walthall to the memory of his deceased friend. This tribute is given 
iu full, not because of its exquisite literary and analytical merit, but 
for its weighty and valuable testimony to the character of his friend's 
life, mind, and soul: 

Sen.vtor Walthall's Tribute. 

The late .Justice Lamar must be ranked among the most noticeable figures of the 
generation in which he lived; and, according to my estimate, intended to be impar- 
tial, he was the strongest man that I ever knew. 

He was strong in tlie power of concentrated thought and of accurate, vigorous. 



mS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 585 

and graceful expression ; strong in force of will and continuity of purpose an<l of ef- 
fort; but strongest in searciiing for the essential truth of every (juestion witli wliich 
he had to ileal, and in standing by it fearlessly when he found it. 

His researches were exhaustive in their thoroughness; his conclusions were tested 
by his own most critical analysis; and, until disease fell lieavily upon him, there 
seemed no Hmit to his will to work nor to his capacity to perform it. 

In preparation, neither drudgery nor details, though repugnant to his taste, de- 
terred him or discouraged him; and in presentation, he neglected nothing which 
either justice or policy required should be considered. 

When he met a point of ditiiculty lie tried his strength upon it; and if he could not 
go through it, he halted and focalized all his forces on it; but he would neither 
shrink fioiii it nor shun it. And when he met an adversary, he faced him squarely 
and fought him feirly, but very fiercely if assailed or detied. 

His attainments were varied and extensive; and the range of his constant reading 
embraced as well story and song as the BiVile and books of the law, philosopln-, his- 
tory, science, and literature in evei-y branch that could enrich his mind. 

His knowledge was gained rapidly and accurately, and stored in such order and 
completeness that in emergency it a\-ailed him instantly. His mind rejected any 
crude conception, and retained nothing which was mystified or clouded. The fruits 
that he gathered were mature before he lodged them in the storehouse of his marvel- 
ous memory, and tins never failed to answer to his summons. 

What he saw he saw clearly, what he knew he knew perfectly, and what he said 
was clear as light. 

There was no imperfect arrow in Ins quiver to fall short when he sped it, and he 
never drew a weapon in conflict which he had not tested in advance. 

He accepted nothing that his reason ilid not sanction; and, though tolerant of 
other men's opinions, no man's unsui>ported -ipse dixit could be the law to such a 
mind as his. 

He loved books for the intellectual food that they furnished him ; he loved his 
fellow-men, and found some good in every living creature ; he loved the mountains 
for their majesty and strength ; he loved brooks and fields and flowers for their sim- 
ple beauty ; and he loved all nature because it was the work of God. 

He loved his country with the fervor of a pure and ardent patriot; lie loved his 
section for her history and traditions and the manly virtues of her people and their 
woes; and he loved his friends far better than himself. 

He was proud of the power and influence of his government and of the achieve- 
ments of the great men of his country, and he had faith whicli was abiding in the in- 
stincts and judgment and justice of the masses of the people. 

He was proud of any great deed or good deed of any of his countrymen, and espe- 
cially if a younger man performed it, who had come witliin the influence of his own 
teachings or example. 

He was proud of his lineage, because those of his l:)lood who had gone before him 
had wrought well for their feflow-men, and left a good impress on the history of their 
day and time; and when Ijrought to see that by pacific speech he had contributed 
to the subsidence of prejudice and passion, and the growth of fraternity where there 
had been strife, he was proud of himself as the champion of peace, good will, and 
justice. 

The world observed his action, its influence and results; but the motive of his con- 
duct was not always rightly judged. He sometimes oflended in what was called his 
" moods ; " but when men thought that he was dreaming, he was working with his 
brain. 

It is no marvel tliat such a man with such endowments and equipment and such 
lofty aims and instincts— combining strength and power with an imposing presence 



58G LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

and gentleness and every chariii and winning grace that conlil attract — was an orator, 
peerless in jiower and persuasion. 

There is not one of his published speeches upon any of the grave questions to 
which the late war gave rise — questions such as never confronted the illusti'ious 
statesmen who went before him — that would not have established the reputation of a 
public speaker previously unknown; and the greatest of all his efforts were made be- 
fore the people of his own Stale which, to the world's great loss, must be transmitted 
only Ijy tradition. Notably among these was a speech denying the right of a State 
Legislature by instruction to compel a Senator of the United States to vote in viola- 
tion of his ileliberate convictions and settled views of public duty or oflicial obliga- 
tion; and this masterpiece of elocjuence and logic has probably forever put that (jues- 
tion at rest with the people of ^Mississippi, whose pride it was to honor him and trust 
him and follow him. 

Entering the service of his section as a volunteer soldier, he would have belied 
his nature if he had not proved, as he di<l, eager, gallant, and efficient in the gigantic 
conflict of arms which grew out of the teachings that he sanctioned and the insti- 
tutions that he approved. 

Called to sit in the highest court, such a man could not be other than a just and 
able judge, patient, diligent, incorruptible, and firm. 

As a Cabinet Minister, though the field was new to him, no man like this could 
fail, whether in council, in administration, or execution, to meet the most exacting 
requirements, as well in the lesser as in the highest functions of his exalted station. 

To say that such a man witli such a nature — considerate, affectionate, sentimental, 
winning in manner and in speech — was to family and friends the embodiment of gen- 
tleness and kindness and love, is but a faint expression of what has been so toucliing- 
Iv and tenderly attested since his death Ijy those most directly and severely afflicted 
by that calamity. 

Of all the spheres of usefulness in wliich lie served the public, the United States 
Senate was so much the best adapted to his talents and his taste that his State was 
reluctant to see him leave that high arena, and the strongest protests against his re- 
tirement came from the closest of his friends. If he had heeded their entreaties and 
not the call of duty which summoned him, as he conceived, to the councils of the first 
President of his party chosen since the dawn of peace, the life which was worn away 
in the triumphant effort to meet public expectation in the new fields which he en- 
tered would probably have been spared for further usefiilness and increased hon- 
ors in the Senate. That of all others was the proper theater for the play of his pe- 
culiar powers to l)est advantage for his country and himself; and, although he was 
equal to any public responsibility or charge, however weighty or exacting, it was as 
a statesman that he most excelled. 

He had added to the store i of learning which he gathered from the teacliings of 
the fathers the fruits of his own experience and careful observation. He was in full 
sympathy with the great body of the people in all their interests and their needs, 
but he would no more yield his convictions to the clamor of the multitude than to 
the <leraands of power. He was lieyond the reach of either flatter y or fear. He scorned 
to scheme for honors or for office, for power or ffir place ; he looked down on all time- 
servers and intriguers; and he never shrank from any duty, liowever difficult or dan- 
gerous. 

Imperfect as this brief tribute is, it is the offering of one whose constant privilege 
it was to look in through the open windows of his inner nature and witness the in- 
spirations of the action and the secret of the strength which wrought his great 
achievements for his people and his country. 

After the reading of Senator Wulthairs tribute,' Hon. T. C. Catchiugs, 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 587 

the Mississippi Eepresentative from the Vicksburg district, addressed 
the Qieeting. The biographical value of his remarks caused the use of 
several extracts from the address in previous chapters, embracing its 
jDrincipal points. The entire address is not only u tinished and appre- 
ciative memorial offering, but also a testimony of the highest value to 
the student of Mr. Lamar's life. 

Following Mr. Catchihgs, Senators John H. Mitchell and William 
M. Stewart spoke iu appreciative and kindest strains. Then Mr. Le- 
Eoy F. Youmans, "in compliance with the request of the members of 
the Lamar family in South Carolina," delivered a most elaborate, fin- 
ished, and thoughtful eulogy. Hon. J. Kandolph Tucker, of Yirginia, 
spoke next, saying, amt)ng other things, that 

His gifts were many, and each was of large capability. His imagination made iiim 
fertile, inventive, and wonderfully suggestive. His mind was acute in analysis, yet 
comprehensive in generalization. It was not content unless it reached the founda- 
tion principles involved in a problem, nor until it had built a 8U))erstructure capacious 
for use, as well as adorned for the taste of the observer. It was this which made his 
reasoning so eloquent and his oratory so impressively convincing. His analysis detect- 
ed the germ of thought, which his imagination discerned as the source of wide and 
general applications; and thus his discussions were at once scientitic in accuracy and 
precision, and philosophic in their generalizations. He was intense in his habits of 
thought, which made him abstracted in manner, because absorbed in the solution of 
abstruse problems on which his mind was intent. 

He carried the laboratory of his fine intellect into every department of work on 
which he entered. In the legislative halls, in an executive department, or on the 
Bench, the same )irocesses were observable. Time only was needed to adjust his men- 
tal machinery to the new objects upon which it was to operate. When experience 
was gained, the triumph of his powers was assured in every field where they were 
called into exorcise. 

This profound thinker, this master of abstract thought, was in social life genial and 
flill of humor, loving and making pleasantry with the merriest in the circle. Who 
can forget his wonderful powers as a raconteur, or his merriment over those of others? 
Like so many other men of large achievement in the aflairs of the world, the capacity 
whiih fitted him for these was allied to that which made him the lover of jest, and 
of playfulness with childhood, wlien relaxation made it proper and right. He could 
wield the battle-ax of Richard and the scimeter of Saladin, but could cheer the social 
circle with his anecdotes and play games for the delight of infancy. 

After Mr. Tucker, Hon. Charles E. Hooker made some interesting and 
felicitous remarks, from which quotation was made in one of the pre- 
ceding chapters; and the occasion was closed by a short speech from 
Mr. A. H. Garland, and the adoption of the resolutions. These resolu- 
tions were as follows: 

Hesohed, Tliat by the death of Mr. Justice Lamar the country loses a judge whose 
career on the Bench, though brief, siiowed that he had a rare judicial mind and tem- 
perament, with a great power of legal analysis and a faculty of expressing himself in 
nervous English which left no room for misunderstanding. His long service in public 
life fitted hitu to deal with the great questions of constitutional law which make a 
seat upon the Bench of the Supreme Court so important and so responsible. He en- 
tered early into the public service, and suon became prominent. When the war closed, 



5S8 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR. 

no one was more conspicnons tlian he in efforts to allay distrust, to do away with di- 
vision and coldness, and to produce thi-oughout the Union a feeling of confidence 
and good will. For this lie labored and spoke in the Senate; and, with this ever be- 
fore his eyes, he administered the Department of the Interior. AVe offer tliis tribute 
to his memory with no wisli to perform a mere perfunctory duty. Over and above 
liis intellect, his trained faculties, his knowledge, his wit, and his power, he was an 
affectionate, loving, and lovable man, dear to all who knew him. He is mourned, not 
only by his friends, but by many who had no personal acquaintance with him. 

Resolved, That the Attorney-General be requested to lay these resolutions before 
the court, and to ask that they be spread upon the record. 

Eenolivd, That the chairman be requested to transmit a copy of them to the family 
of Mr. Justice Lamar. 

On the 24:tli of April Attorney-General Oluey presented the bar res- 
olutions to the Supreme Court, saying, among other things: 

I have no hesitation in saying that the resolutions, which I shall presently read, 
do but simple justice to the character of your late associate, and in no way exaggerate 
either the great loss of the whole community or the profound affliction of a very 
large circle of friends and acquaintances. 

With Mr. Justice Lamar has passed away, not merely a lawyer and a judge, but a 
notalile historical figure. It may have been his misfortune as a lawyer, though cer- 
tainly his good fortune as a man, that his lot was cast in tempestuous times— in times 
which, however adverse to the acquisition of technical knowdedge and technical skill, 
always and inevitably develop whatever there is in a man of intellectnal and moral 
greatness. He was born when the echoes of the sectional contest over the admission 
of Missouri into the Union— that issue which startled Jefferson " like a fire bell in the 
night "—were still resounding throughout the lanil. He was a mere youth when the 
Missouri Compromise was succeeded by another, and the specter of disunion was laid 
for a time by the mingled firmness and moderation of General Jackson. 

He liad hardly entered upon the practice of the law when the North and South again 
came into violent collision over the fugitive slave law and the extension of slavery 
into the Territories. He went with his section and his State in the civil war that 
followed only ten years later, and supported their cause with eciual devotion on the 
battlefield and in the forum. Always and under all circumstances he was a leader, 
not merely followed and olieyed, but implicitly trusted and sincerely loved, file con- 
tinued to lead, even more decisively and on a larger field, when arms were laid down; 
and to him more than to any other one man. North or South, is due the adoption by 
both victors and vanquished" of those counsels of moderation and magnanimity and 
wisdom which have made the edifice of our constitutional Union more impregnable 
to all assault than ever liefore^' But this eventful and stormy career, these engrossing 
and exciting occupations and achievements of the soldier and statesman and patriot, 
necessarily interruptel and jirevented that exclusive devotion to the science of juris- 
prudence ami that constant (iiniiliarity with its practical application in the adminis- 
tration cjf justice which that jealous mistress, the law, inexorably exacts of all her 
followers. 

I do not believe that Mr. Justice Lamar ever practiced law, as his sole or chief oc- 
cupation, for any one term of five consecutive years. I am unable to discover that lie 
could have made the practice of law his sole or princij-ial pursuit for more than ten 
or twelve years in all; and it is the highest possible tribute to his natural genius, to 
his legal instincts, and extraordinary intellectual gifts that, in spite of all the disad- 
vantages under which he labored, :Nir. Justice Lamar performed liis part as a member 
nf this high court of judicature, not only to the acceptance of the bench and the bar, 
but witli such intelligent, well-directed zeal and devotion that only failing health and 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 589 

strength could have jnevcuteil liiiu rmin nltiiiiutely attaining ilcciileii judicial ciu- 
inence. 

The Chief Justice resx^outled: 

The court receives with appreciation the tribute of the liar throngli the Attorney- 
General to the memory of the en)inent man who so recentlj- passed from its mem- 
bership. 

Although he was not spared to give many years to its labors, Mr. Justice Lamar 
wa.s long enough wpon tliis Bench to exhiliit, on a comparatively new field, his un- 
doubted intellectual power, and to demonstrate the possession of marked judicial 
qualities. The remarkable career which preceded liis appointment, crowded with 
varied incident and filled with distinguished service in public station, while it witli- 
drew him from that active participation in professional practice which assures the habit 
of prompt decision in ordinary litigation, nevertheless well jirepared liim for the con- 
sideration of those grave public questions that so often press for solution before this 
tribunal., Experience in affairs had made him sage; and the wisdom thus acquired 
was aided liy that "desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness 
to assert, readiness to reconsider," which the great pliilosopher declared fitted him 
for nothing so well as for the study of the truth. Such was indeed his nature; and 
leadership came to him, not merely by reason of his courage, his eloquence, his states- 
manlike views, and general ability, but largely, perhaps chiefly, because of his sim- 
plicity and singlemindedness, his integrity of thought as well as honesty inaction, 
and that unobtrusive and unselfish devotion to duty which gives entrance to the 
kingdom that " cometh without observation." 

There can be r.o better qualification for a great magistrate than, in addition to suf- 
ficient learning, to possess keen love of justice, earnest desire for truth, absolute sin- 
cerity, and the highest conception of the responsibilities of public ofiice, coupled with 
an intimate knowledge of the workings of government obtained through practical 
experience. 

Mr. Justice Lamar always underrated himself. This tendency jilainly sprang 
from a vivid imagination. With him the splendid visions attendant upon youth 
never faded into the light of common day ; but they kept before him an ideal, the im- 
possibility of whose realization, as borne in upon him from time to time, oppressed 
him with a sense of failure. Yet the conscientiousness of his work was not lessened, 
nor was the acuteness of his intellect obscured by these natural causes of his discon- 
tent; nor did a certain Oriental dreaminess of temperament ever lure him to aban- 
don the effort to accomplish something that would last after his lips were dumb. 

We fully recognize the fitness of the reference to the loving disposition of our de- 
parted colleague. This especially endeared him to us, and it was this which enabled 
him to bear with cheerfulness the trials of a long illness and to find in the consola- 
tions of religion the peace which passeth all understanding. 

Sincere in his support of a cause to which his early education and the training of 
opening manhood, his surroundings and personal attachments, committed him, his 
acceptance of the result of the arbitrament of arms was genuine and unqualified; and 
the singular felicity was his, he having returned to die at home at last, to apprecia- 
bly contribute to the restoration of tlie ties of common interest and aflc'ction of a 
united people, of pride in common institutions and love for a common country, and 
to pass his closing days in assisting in the authoritative exposition of the wonderful 
instrument which binds together "the great contexture of this mysterious whole." 

The resolutions and accompanying remarks will be spread upon our records, and 
the commemorative expressions of the bars of the State of Georgia, of the State of 
Mississippi, and of the State of Illinois, and such other similar testimonials as may be 
transmitted to us, will be placeil on file. 



590 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAK: 

One of the memorials placed on tile, in accordance with the order of 
tlie Cliief Justice conveyed in the last preceding paragraph, was that 
of the Illinois State Bar Association, adopted in February. Omitting 
formal parts, it is as follows: 

As a statesman, an orator, a scholar, and a judge, he is justly regarded as a truly 
great American, and we desire to place on record in this public manner our apprecia- 
tion of his sterling worth and public services. 

We consider it becoming on this occasion to give expression to the high esteem 
that we entertain for the character, learning, and ability of the deceased judge.* 

In tlie fall of the year 1894 the remains of Mr. Lamar were removed 
to MississipjDi and laid at rest by the side of the wife of his youth and 
middle age, the mother of his childi-en. The Memphis Coiinnerrial-Ap- 

pivl gave this account of the ceremony: 

OxFoiui, Miss., October 26. 
There was laid to rest to-day in the beautiful St. Peter's Cemetery, among a solid 
bank of flowers, all that was mortal of the late Justice L. Q. C. Lamar, the South's 
U greatest orator and statesman. The funeral services were in the Methodist church, 

and wei-e conducted by Re\-. J. E. Thomas. The procession to the cemetery was then 
formed on Depot Street, and was fully a mile long, over two thousand people taking 
part, and some of the most distinguished men in the State being pi-esent. 

All business houses and residences were dra]ied, and all the schools (including the 
University) suspended and formed a large part of the procession, showing that the 
memory of this great man is ever near to the hearts of the people of Oxford, who 
knew and loved him Ijest. 

The story of Mr. Lamar's life is now told. In one respect it was an 
easy story to tell: there were no doubtful dealings to explain, no dis- 
\J creet silences to observe about things that needed forgetting, no un- 

sightly corners that wanted concealing. Tiie life was as pure and clean 
as it was earnest and noble. 

It is useless to recapitulate in conclusion his many shining virtues. 
The reader will have gathered those qualities from the narrative, how- 
ever inadequately tlie author's work may have been done. Mi\ Lamar's 
beautiful and fruitful life is the unquestionable exponent of a great 
soul; and the abundant testimony of those who knew him best proves 
that his was one of those rare characters which inspire still profounder 
sentiments of admiration, of affection, of honor, by closer knowledge. 

Few men have Ijeen loved as he was loved by his friends. There 
'' was about him an indescribable and almost incomprehensible charm. 

To those who were admitted into the circle of his regard his friendship 
was a delight and a blessing. Contact with him went far to shame the 
ignoble into better feeling and to inspire the good with still loftier aj^pira- 
tion; for Mr. Lamar's most impressive power lay in his moral force, and 
his stnnigest leadership was of the moral sense. Conscience ruled his 

*"In Muin(iri;iiii: Lucius Q. C. Lamar." I'ublisheilby the Supreme Court. I>:imphlet. 



ins LIFE, TIMES, AM) sJ'i:i:rHES. 591 

public as well as his private life, and politics witli liiiu was a phase of 
religiou. He himself epitomised his political faith when, in his thrilling 
speech of refusal to obey legislative instructions, which his conscience 
forbade his folloNving, he said: "Truth is better than falsehood, hon- 
esty better than policy, courage better than cowardice;" and "truth is 
omnipotent, and public justice certain." 

The specific and inspiring lesson of Mr. Lamar's public life is its 
complete illustration of the sustaining and compelling power of a strong 
and brave sjjirit self-devoted to a lofty purpose of pure jjatriotism. 
One who ponders over it cannot but be reminded of him who "built 
his house upon a rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, 
and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it 
was founded upon a rock." His career teaches the priceless lessons to 
the young: that what a man is is of moi"e importance than the particu- 
lar form of his political opinions; that, while the ignoble may rise to 
power and place, still honor will crown the worthy; and that a public 
man may cleanly and unselfishly win his way to the highest success 
and the noblest. Which is but a result of another inspii-iting fact that 
constitutes at once the crowning glory of ox;r American life and its 
best assurance of future honor and happiness. That fact Mr. Lamar, 
manifestly speaking out of the fullness of his own experience and con- 
victions, expressed in one of his last addresses — that at Emory College, 
in 1890 —when he said: 

The people in tlieir innermost consciousness are ever open to the power of truth 
and goodness and the beantiful t^overeignty of right. Beneatli all the ruggedness of ^^/ 

their manners and the prosaii' foims of their speech lie always the broad foundations 
of native insight, of manly instinct, of potential nobilities, which enable tliem on oc- 
casion to rise to a comprehension of, and sympathy \\ ith, the finest mental and mor- 
al achievements of statesmen and philosophers. 

Here, indeed, is the secret of American history, and doleful will be 
the day (which may God avert!) when it shall be no longer true; for 
then will have been lost the ])alladium of our liberty, which now, be- 
cause of that truth, is s;ife in the stronghold of the intelligent virtue of 
the people. 

In the world's history, as it is commonly written and commonly read, 
it is natural and inevital)le that the figitres which most attract atten- 
tion and dazzle the imagination should he those which form the cen- 
ters of events more or less dramatic — great soldiers, whose genius and 
valor decide the fate of empires on stricken fields; great explorers, 
whose enterprise gives new realms to civilization; great inventors, 
whose arts revolutionize the social life of mankind; great physicians, 
whose discoveries go far to dull the scythe of death. It is not with 
them, or such as they are, that Mr. Lamar's place must be found. But 
there is another, and even a more valuable historic field; one which is. 



592 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR. 

in effect, the spirit, as distiugiiished from the body, of all history. It 
is the story of the great uudercurrents of the mighty moral movements 
which create nations, and ju-ofoundly modify their destinies for weal 
or woe, and lead them on to increasing glory or to ruin. In this do- 
main is Mr. Lamar's i^lace. It must be remembered of him that, with 
other noble and true men, he greatly contributed to the I'estoration of 
hope and vital force to the stricken half of a great iDeople, torn and dis- 
heartened by civil strife; and that, j^erhaps more than any other, at 
the peril of his personal reputation and fortunes, he rose on stepipiug- 
stones of his dead self to better things, and inspired his jjeople with his 
own high resolve to cast away resentful sectionalism and to enter into 
a broader and more wholesome life with the renewed sjjirit of a nation. 



THE END. 



SUPPLEMEXTARY CHAPTEll. 

Tributes to, and Comments on, the Life and Chakacter of 

Mr. Lamar. 

Tribute of IHanclie K. Bruce, cx-Seiiutor, a colored Republican, taken J'roiii the Boston Her- 
ald, of January SS, 1S9S. 

ONE of the most remarkable tributes tu the late Justice Lamar is that of the only 
colored ex-Senator, Blanche K. Bruce, who was the colleague of Justice Lamar 
while in the Senate, and between whom and the deceased jurist there has always been 
a strong personal friendshiii. Jlr. Bruce said to-day : " Yes, I have known Justice Lamar 
for a quarter of a century, during which time I have been brought almost constantly into 
close personal relations with him, and have been as intimate with him, probably, as 
a man could be who helil different jjolitical opinions. 

" lie was always my friend. He was a large-souled, kind-hearted, generous man, as 
simple in his manners as a child, and heartily beloved by all who knew him. 

" He was not always understood. Some who knew little of the man regarded hiuv 
as a dreauier, but this was a mistiike. He was really one of the most practical men 
of our times. On this i»int, jMr. Blaine, in his ' Twenty Years in Congress,' gives a 
true portraiture of Mr. Lamar, substantially in these words: ' He is a remarkable man, 
full of reflection and imagination, seemingly careless, yet always closely observant; 
apparently dreamy, yet thoroughly practical in everything.' 

" I once heard Matt. Carpenter say, after listening to one of Mr. Lamar's great 
speeches in the Senate: 'He never touches a subject that he does not exhaust.' 

" He was not only a great legislator, but eminently a man of afl'airs, as evinceil by 
his able management of the diflicult and delicate duties devolving upon him as Sec- 
retary of the Interior. 

" His elevation to the Bench of the Supreme Court came late in life, and jiartl)- on 
this account was at first slightly criticised; but tlie verdict of the bar and the country 
to-day is that the appointment was a wise and judicious one. In fact, I was tolil liy 
one of the Associate Justices recently that Mr. Lamar was one of the ablest and most 
clear-headed members of that august coui't. 

" He was a very charitable man, giving to the poor and needy often more tlian his 
income warranted. 

"As I sai<l before, he was a kind-hearted man. As I i-emembcr, during Mr. Cleve- 
land's administration, that I was frequently appealeil to by colored employees in the 
Interior Department, as well as in other departments of the government, to use my 
influence with Mr. Lamar to have them retained in the places they then held. I 
never hesitated to approach him in behalf of these worthy people; and he never 
failed to respond, going so far sometimes as to make personal visits to his brother 
Cabinet officers, urging them to retain the parties in their departments in whose in- 
terest I had called ujion him. I recall many instances of his generosity. 

" When, after the election of Mr. Cleveland, it was announced through the newspa- 
pers that Mr. Lamar would bo called into the Cabinet of the new President, a colored 
clerk employed in one of the bureaus of the Interior Department openly denounced 
theproi^osed aiipointment,and referred to Mr. Lamar, then a Senator from Mississippi, 
in terms not at all comi)limentary to that gentleman. When a few weeks afterwards 
he became Secretary of the Interior, the aforesaid clerk felt that he would soon lose 
his place, and urged me to do what I could to mollify the Secretary. 

38 (593) 



594 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

" I presented the case with great earnestness, and after exhausting all the arguments 
at my command I said : ' Colonel (this being tlie familiar title by which we Mississippi- 
ans usually addressed him), this man has wronged you. Justice says, " Cut him down ;" 
but mercy says, "Si:iare him." He has an invalid wife and two or three helpless chil- 
dren, and his dismissal would mean starvation to them.' 

" Raising lioth bands to his head, as was bis custom when in deep thought, he 
said, after a moment's pause : ' This man's language has been reported upon Senator, and 
not upon Secretary, Lamar, and my knowledge of the Senator is such as to justify the 
belief that he can take care of liimself ; but if he can't, I am sure that the Secretary will 
not help him out of his difficulty.' The result was that the clerk was not disturbed. 

"On another oc<'asion a i>oor old colored woman who held a minor position in the 
department — charwoman, sweeper, or something of this sort, I do not remember 
which — was dismissed witliout his knowledge, and her j)lace was given to another. 
She apjiealed to me, and I early tlie next morning called at the Secretary's residence 
and urged her restoration. He said: ' Bruce, tell tlie woman to come to me twice each 
month, and she shall receive her salary ' I learned afterwards that her salary came 
out of the pocket of the kind-hearted Secretary, and not out of the public treasury. 

"A profound scholar, an experienced legislator, an able jurist, his loss will lie 
moui-ned by the American people generally." 

Washington, D. C, January 29, 1893. 

My Dear Madam : I was kept in bed, under the orders of my physician, the day the 
death of your lamented liusliand was announced to the Senate. I regret exceedingly 
that I could not be in my place to have expressed my sense of the great public loss 
and my warm personal admiration for his great qualities of intellect and of heart. I 
served with him in the House of Itepresentatives for more than four years, and in the 
Senate for more than eight years. It was a stormy and exciting time. We differed 
widely on very grave (juestions, and this difl'erence was more than once very sharply 
manifested in pulilic; but the more I knew him, the more satisfied I became of the 
sincerity of liis patriotism, of his profound and far-sighted wisdom, of the deej) foun- 
dation of tenderness in his affectionate and simple heart, and of his brave and chiv- 
alrous quality of soul. I was more than once indebted to him for very great kind- 
ness indeed, under circumstances when I do not think he supposed it would ever 
come to my knowledge. 

Some of his judgments on the Supreme Bench are characterized by marvelous 
beauty and felicity of style. He maintained his place on that great tribunal to the 
satisfaction of his friends and the admiration of his countrymen, in spite of failing 
health and of the fact that the best years of bis life had been given to other studies 
than that <jf the law. 

It is a good omen for our counti-y that the friends and disciples of Charles Sumner 
unite with the people of Mississippi in their reverence for this noble and manly char- 
acter. 

I am fiiithfully yours, George F. Hoar. 

Mrs. Lamar. 

Tribute of Rrr. Charles B. Galloway, Bisliop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. 

There is sorrow tliroughout Jlississippi to-day. Our harps are hanging silently 
upon the willows. Eyes unaccustomed to weep are filled with tears. In every home 
where the sad message has flown there is a sense of personal bereavement, the dread 
presence and loneliness of a vacant chair. A life dear to our hearts, and one of the 
brightest in our history, has fallen on sleep. A voice that thrilled with eloquence al- 
most divine is silent in death. The grave opens to receive an eminent Christian 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 595 

statesman and jurist, and Mississippi loses her most distinguislied citizen; the nation, 
one of her truest i)atriots and most faithful public servants. It was the dying boast 
of Pericles that he had never made an Atlieuian weep, and surely no Mississippian 
has ever had occiusion to blush for any ignoble word or deed of Lucius (I. C. 1-amar. 
But his splendid genius has comuiande<l our admiration, his maiinilicent achieve- 
ments have challenged our patriotic devotion, ami his radiant virtues have won the 
homage of our affections. We sorrow to-day only that his sun has gone down while 
it is yet day, that he fi\lls when we seem to need him most and when able to serve 
his country best ; Ijut 

The man remains, and whatso'er 
He wrought of good or brave 

Will mold him through the cycle year 
That dawns behind tlie grave. 

Born and educated in the State of Georgia, he came to Mississippi in the morning 
of his brilliant young manhood, and generously gave to his adopted Commonwealth 
all the ardor of his love, the fruit of his tireless toil, and the powers of his almost 
peerless genius. So conspicuous were his public services, so arilent his devotion to 
the people who loved and honored him, and so world-wide the fame of his achieve- 
ments as her representative, tliat bis name was linked in undying wedlock to the 
proud name of the State that welcomed and crowned him. He followed her fortunes 
in peace and war, in victory and defeat; and when the night was darkest, he pro- 
claimed with loudest voice his patriotic love for her stainless honor and his unshaken 
fciith in her glorious destiny. As professor in our Stuate University, Representative in 
Congress, Minister to Russia daring the dark day's of war, member of the United 
States Senate, Cabinet officer, and a .Justice on the Supreme Bench of the nation, he 
was everywhere conspicuous and always distinguished. 

His name was the synonym for pure and lofty eloquence. Not for a generation or 
more has there been a man among us who could, like him, sway and compose vast 
audiences at will, and by the authority of his imperial elociuence compel the people 
to ardently adopt his principles and enthusiastically follow his policy. At times he 
had the classic diction of Edward Everett, and again he could rival the peerless pe- 
riods of p:dmund Burke. He could on occasions pursue an argument with the ana- 
lytical precision and remorseless logic of John C. Calhoun; and tlien, if need be, 
kindle enthusiasm as with the magic word of Henry Clay. With equal skill he could 
wiebi the light sword of Saladin and the ponderous battle-ax of Richard. For ma- 
jestic utterance and forensic eloiiuence he had no peer in all our borders. 

His was a philosophic cast of mind. He dwelt in the higher realms of thought. 
This gave him the loneliness and sometimes moodiness of genius. He studied and 
mastered great principles. Beneath surface facts he saw their philosophy and dis- 
covered their unerring tendency. This made a statesman of vast prescience, and a 
wise political leader. 

He was the first Southern Retiresentative after the war to rift the darkness of our 
national skies and Ijring litfht into these despairing parallels. He caught the ear of 
tlie nation, and won back her lost confidence in our patriotic loyalty ; he rolled away 
the stone from the grave of our buried love, and proclaimed tlie resurrection of our 
national brotherhood; he reannounced the jdighted faith of our several sections, 
pronounced a blessing upon the happy reunion, and prayed that what God had joined 
together should never again be put asunder. The voice that spoke over the dead 
Sumner, like another prophet in the wilderness, proclaimed the daydawn of our na- 
ti-jnal peace, the cloudless sunburst of our Federal immortality. When with sub- 
lime passion he declared, " if we knew each other better, we would love each other 
more," he rang out an appeal for peace whose silvery echoes are yet making music on 
both sides of the quiet Potomac. 



696 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

With all of his vast learning and varied culture and profound philosophy, he was 
a simijle, humble, unquestioning believer in the great doctrines uf Christianity. He 
had little respect for so-called " honest tloubt," and scant patience with blatant skep- 
ticism. I shall never forget a delightful evening in his Washington home over a 
year ago, and the cheerful, even joyous, announcement of his faith in the world's Re- 
deemer. Some time before, he had connected himself with the Methodist Church, 
humbly assuming the solemn vows in the presence of a great congregation. 

I knew him first in my boyhood at the University, where he occupied a professor's 
chair, and there learned to love and admire him. He was the Gamaliel at whose feet 
I sat and from whose lips I received instruction. The thrill of that flashing eye, the 
tone of that magic voice, the strange magnetism of that magnificent presence, filling 
as he did the broad heaven of our imaginations, and the loftiest ideal of my young 
ambition, have lingered and insjiired me for more than half a jubilee of years. He 
stirred many a noble impulse and set on fire many a laudable ambition. On his 
grave I crave the privilege of dropping a tear. 

He is gone who seemed so great — 

Gone; Init nothing can bereave him 
Of the force he made his own 

Being here, and we believe him 
Something far advanced in State, 
And that he wears a truer crown 

Than any wreatli that man can weave liim. 
Speak no mdre of his renown. 
Lay your earthly fancies down, 
And in the lioary Abbey leave him: 
God accept liim, Christ receive him, 

E.iiract from the Addresn uf Ifon. John L. T. Snerd, at the Memorial Mretiiig if tlir Bar 

of Memphis, Teim. 

Is it any wonder that such a man as Grover Cleveland should have put forth his 
brawny arm across the bloody chasm and beckoned this man to a high place in his 
councils? Another Chief IMagistrate, in the spirit of the true and courageous patriot, 
had already furnished the example. That good man had just preceded tlie great 
Mississipj)ian to the tomb. . . . All honor to Rutherford Burchard Hayes! all 
honor to Grover Cleveland ! They knew how to cut the Gordian knot. They were 
brave enough to do it, and peace came smiling fi'om behind a cloud, and by her side 
the blessed angel of everlasting fraternity ami union; but another peacemaker had 
appeared ni>on the scene — a man who, in peace and war, had never preached the gos- 
pel of hate or despair. This man was Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, whose no- 
ble Roman qualities seemed to have been in prophetic anticipation, even at the bap- 
tismal font. 

If I could be allowed to single out a solitary episode from the checkered lifi> and 
varied services of Lamar wliich better than all others illustrates the character of the 
man, I would select that dramatic spectacle in the capitol when, in defiance of the im- 
bedded prejudices of his own people and to tlic utter confusion and amazement of his 
enemies, he stood upon the ragged edge of the bloody chasm and pronounced that 
classic and superb funeral oration ujion Charles Sumner, the abolition Senator from 
Massachusetts. For twenty years before the war the voice of Charles Sumner had 
been reverberating through the corridors of old Faneuil Hall in bitter invective 
against the South and a labor system peculiar to the South unparalleled in the annals 
of mankind for the absolute comfort and contentment of the menial classes; but it 
was slavery for all that, and philanthropic men of all the world believed with Charles 
Sumner that slavery in a free government like this was not only an incongruous blun- 
der, but a crime against God and humanifv. But the Soutli w.as intrenched behind 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 597 

the organic law; and these atritators were, in their turn, denounced as pragmatic med- 
dlers and traitors to the constitution and the laws, who ought to have known that the 
South was not alone responsible for slavery. They seemed oblivious of the fact that 
New England was not only the cradle of American liberty, but, in part at least, of Af- 
rican slavery also. In the virulence of their anathema they ignored the first great 
transaction in commercial barter when the cavaliers of theCaroliiias and Virginia ex- 
changed their shiploails of tobacco, venison, and i)eltry with the traders of New En- 
gland for shiploads of black barbarians for the plantations of the king's colonies in the 
South. The intelligence and culture of the South had never, indeed, seriously ob- 
jected to the gradual extinction of slaver}-, if done according to the forms of law and 
without alisolute ruin to the people. ^Ir. Jetferson, himself a large slaveholder, had 
inserted in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence the most terrific in- 
dictment against African slavery the world ever saw ; and perhaps slavery, then ex- 
isting in some of the Northern as well as the Southern States, would have died with 
the birth of the government, but for the action of John Adams, who had that part of 
Mr. Jefferson'.? report stricken out. " I am with you in sentiment, Jetferson," said he; 
" but don't let us antagonize the slaveholders until the Declaration is adopted." In 
this long struggle, therefore, the Soutli thought there was an element of injustice and 
oppression in this perpetual war upon its constitutional rights; and many intelligent 
citizens, both of the North and the South, believe to-day that if Faneuil Hall and its 
uses in this regard had never been. Fort Sumter and Appomattox had never been. 
But then slavery would have survived; and Sumner and his party believed that slav- 
ery was worse than war, i)estilence, and famine. Charles Sumner died, and was buried ; 
slavery had died before him, and is buried. He is canonized as immortal; he had 
helped to destroy the fabric of slavery built by his progenitors nearly three hundred 

years ago, and, like 

Tlie aspiring youth wlio fireil tlie Eiilieriati tlome. 
Outlives in fame the pious lools who raised it. 

Senator Lamar knew all this. He knew that the very name of Sumner was a stench 
in the nostrils of the people of all the South ; but he knew also that Sumner was an 
honest man ; that he was a pure man, a cultured gentletnan, a patriotic and philan- 
thropic man. The occasion was a sublime and an auspicious one. The audience and 
the auditorium were the most magnificent on earth. He thought of his own people; 
and, above all things else, he wanted peace. This was the opportunity of a lifetime to 
set an example of lofty generosity and forgiveness, to lift up the standard of peace and 
justice in the sight of the people. The supreme hour had come, demanding the 
forecast of a statesman, the chivalry of a hero, the moral courage of an archangel, the 
heaven-born inspiration of a Chevalier Bayard; but Lamar possessed them all. He 
arose in his place. "The fiery tribune from Mississippi has taken the floor." "What 
for? "every man asked of his neighbor. "To bury Oesar; not to praise him," was 
the mental reply of each. All eyes were fixed upon him, all voices hushed ; and such 
a flow of elociuence in praise of the dead statesman, and in extenuation of the bitter 
persecutirm of which the South complained, was never before heard in that hall. The 
speech was heralded all over the world, and reproduced in all the tongues of the world. 
Old men bowed tlieir heads and wept. Young men gathered around him and gazed 
upon that familiar figure, now transfigured befoi'e them into the very genius of peace, 
pathos, and eloijuence. The fiery Southron looked upon the intrepid orator with un- 
speakable wonder at the temerity of his utterances. The women in the gallery clapped 
their hands and waved their handkerchiefs in a frenzy of admiration for the only 
man who had dedicated his head and heartand breast to the Southern cause who had 
the courage to speak a word of kindly eulogy over the bier of the dead Senator from 
Massachusetts. Tlie orator ceased. For a time the Chamber was as silent as a mau- 
soleum. A holv influence as of " incense from an unseen censer " suffused itself over 



598 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

that vast assembly ; and for the first time in twenty years the peace of God, which pass- 

eth all understanding, seemed to pronounce its blessed benison upon the Congress of 
the United States. . . . 

Memorial Address of Hon. James M. Arnold, ex-Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of 

Mississippi. 

At a bar meeting held, in March, at Birmingham, Ala., called to pay 
respect to the memory of the late Justice L. Q. C. Lamar, of the Su- 
l^reme Court of the United States, Judge Arnold, who knew him well, 
and loved him, said: 

Mr. Chairman : I desire to be recognized as one of those who feel special interest in 
the purposes of this meeting. The resolutions reported l)y the committee do not ex- 
aggerate the merits of Judge Lamar. I am familiar with his character. It is in every 
way worthy of being cherished and honored by us. It is a solid fabric that will pre- 
serve itself; but it will also support and admit, without unseemly contrast, the richest 
ornaments with which admiration, gratitude, and affection can adorn it. 

I was a student in the University of Mississippi shortly after he became a citizen 
of that State, and after he had married the beautiful and accomplished daughter 
of Judge A. B. Longstreet, then the President of the University. He was then in- 
deed the glass wherein the noble youth of the University did dress themselves. 
While at the University I witnessed a joint political discussion between him and 
Gov. James L. Alcorn, who was then the strong and aggressive leader of the AVhig 
party in Mississippi, in the first race made by Judge Lamar for Congress, and in 
which he was elected over Gov. Alcorn. There were thousands of enthusiastic parti- 
sans on each side present, and music and beauty and generous rivalry and patriotic 
ardor lent their attractions to the swelling scene. 

It was a contest between giants, conducted with the utmost courtesy and decorum, 
over great principles and policies. The older and more experienced "Whig leader, who 
had but few equals in tliis State as a political speaker, spoke grandly, and conducted 
his lines of assault and defense with consummate skill and ability ; but it was gener- 
ally conceded that he had found his match in the young Harry Percy of Democracy 
from Georgia. I have never before or since witnessed such a discussion. It was an 
inspiration to everybody: instructive to the young, refreshing to the old, and elevat- 
ing in all its aspects. 

" 'Twere worth ten years of successful life, one glance at that array." Afterwards 
I knew Judge Lamar as a politician, a member of Congress, a lawyer, a professor of 
law in the University, a member of the United States Senate, a Cabinet officer at 
Washington, and a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. I saw his 
struggles, his trinniplis, and the displays of his genius through all these successive 
grades of lionor and usefulness; and I fear that a full expression on this occasion, 
among those who knew let^s of him, and without time for proof or argument, of my 
estimate of his virtues, would subject me to the charge of excessive adulation. 

Judge Lamar was a tyiiical Southern man, but he was more than this: he was an 
American, and he cherished the distinctive institutions of our common country with 
the fervor of a true patriot. Every pulsation of his heart was loyal to the South ; but 
his vision was broad enough, and his heart was big enough, to embrace the whole 
grand Republic. 

In the triple cliaracter of orator, jurist, and statesman, Judge Lamar won enduring 
fame. As far as I know, and am informed and lielieve, no man of his day and gen- 
eration surpassed him in brilliant, thrilling, and effective oratory. Reading nia<le 
him a full man, and speaking, a ready man. He possessed all the faculties and quali- 
ties — the reason, the imagination, the passion, the courage, and the sensibilities — nee- 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 599 

essary to make a great orator. He was as bold and vehement as Demosthenes, and as 
polished and versatile as Cicero. He wielded the club of Hercules, but it was aided 
and relieved by the graces and arts of Hermes. Gifted by nature, and improved and 
developed to the highest degree by liberal and varied culture, he was not liiuited in 
controverey to a single weapon or to a few weapons, but all the arms and chariots of 
free discussion were at his command. In a temple dedi<'ated to Americuin oratory his 
image would appropriately appear among those of Patrick Henry and Fisher Ames 
and William Pinkney and William Wirt and George McDuffie and S. S. Prentiss and 
Henry Clay and Ben Hill and James G. Blaine and the 01ym|)ian thunderer, Daniel 
Webster. 

Judge Lamar's speeciies on academic and literary occasions, on the hustings, in the 
Lower House of Congress, and in the Senate of the United States, if collected and pub- 
lished, would, in my judgment, be a positive contribution to the literature of America. 

If it be true, as Edmund Burke said, tliat a good politician and a true patriot always 
considers how he may make tlie most of the existing materials of his country, and 
that a disposition to preserve and an ability to improve, taken together, constitute tlie 
essential elements of statesmanship, Judge Lamar was a statesman. Tliese lofty 
purposes were blended witli every measure anti every policy advocated by him. 
On this basis he cannot properly be classed in any other than the fiont rank of 
American statesmen. He was an ideal Southern representative and orator wlien the 
evil days of the war drew nigli; but it was after the downfall of the South, when the 
South was crushed and the Republic itself was wounded and bleeding at vital points, 
and the unreasoning passions kindled by war were rampantand burned most fiercely, 
that his t;ilents shone most conspicuously. 

While others remained silent or were confused or confounded Ijy the direful exi- 
gencies of the situation, Lamar came forth in the pride of his strength as a leader. 
Knowing — what seemed to be almost forgotten at that time — that men may differ in 
politics, and yet be patriots; differ on questions of constitutional rights, and yet be hon- 
est; differ in matters of religion, and yet be devout Christians ; and that mere differ- 
ence of opinion in the practical alfaira of life is not criminal; and believing that the 
hearts of men everywhere could be bi-ought to respond to these simple truths, he ap- 
pealed as one whose lips were touched with the fire from holy altars to the great 
heart and conscience of the American people, for justice, moderation, and equality; 
and he wooed and turned back to their accustomed channels the warm currents of na- 
tional sentiment and brotherliood. It is not unjust to anybody to say tliat he con- 
tributed more than any other man to soften and remove .sectional Ijitterness and ani- 
mosity, and to restore the Soutliern States to tlieir rightful position as coequal mem- 
bers of the Federal Union. 

It was a novel and striking spectacle in our history to see a thoroughbred South- 
erner stand up in the face of the nation in such days, and with one hand strew the 
flowers of classic eulogy over the grave of Charles Sumner, and with the other smite 
with the terrors of a thunderbolt whoever dared to aggravate or exult over the mis- 
fortunes of liis own section. It was another instance of a faithful leader standing be- 
tween the living and the dead and rebuking and staying the pestilence that scourged 
the land. 

At that time and during the whole of his political career I was one of his apjirov- 
ing and applauding constituents in Mississippi, and I know something of how much 
courage, manhood, and ability it required for him to pursue such a course success- 
fully, as he did. None but a great and brave man gifted beyond his fellows could 
have maintained his advanced position under the conditions that then existed. He 
was bitterly condemned by some of his own party and people for the Sumner eulogy 
and for refusing to obey an instruction of the Legislature of Mississippi as to how he 
should vote in the United States Senate on the silver question ; and on these ac- 



GOO LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAE: 

counts the clouds of censure and detraction for a time darkened his horizon. Bnt he 
was a leader, and not a follower, of men ; and such clouds, like those that rested on the 
taljernacle of Israel, were the testimonies, either of the presence or the coming, of a 
])0wer tliat could not lie resisted by men. 

Judge Lamar's career on the Supreme Bench was brief— too brief, too brief! — only 
a few days more than five years; but during tliat time some of the most iuipoitant 
causes in the annals of our independence, and with which his name will be forever 
associated, were decided by the court. In several such causes the court was divided, 
and he was among the dissenting judges. 

The case of Pennoyer rs. McConnaughy, 140 U. S., maintained the inviolability of 
contracts as against State laws, and accurately defined the extent to which State ofli- 
cers under our system may be imjileaded in, or enjoined and restrained by, the Fed^ 
eral Courts ; the Neagle case, in 13.^ U. S., submitted for decision the question w liether 
or not a Federal officer who commits homicide in one of the States while in the dis- 
charge of his official duties is amenable to the criminal laws of the State for the of- 
fense, or can he be held to answer for the offense under the laws of the State ; and 
Fields vs. Clark, in 143 U. S., involved the power of Congress to appropriate money to 
pay bounties on domestic products, and to delegate legislative functions to the Presi- 
dent under the reciprocity stjitute, etc. 

These grave and dangerous questions, particularly those presented by the Neagle 
case, brought out the strong convictions and judicial powers of Judge Lamar. The 
opinion of the court delivered by him in one of these cases, and his dissenting opin- 
ions in the other two,sliow his mastery of constitutional law and familiarity with the 
nature and principles of constitutional government. 

The opinions written by him are in the best judicial style, and manifest not only 
a clear conception and analysis of legal principles, but also careful and conscientiona 
research and examination both of the law and the facts. But without referring fur- 
ther to special cases or features, it may be truly said that the wisdom of Mr. Cleve- 
land in naming him for the Supreme Bench has been demonstrated, and that his 
work on the Supreme Bench, in all the departments of law, comes fully up to the 
standanl of that high tribunal; and I am sure that none of his associates, and that no 
judge, ever enjoyed in fuller measure the confidence and afi'ections of the people 
among whom he lived and who knew him best. 

Sludii h,j Harry Pratt Judion, Head Dean of Cliicago University, in the Review of Reviews, 

for March, 1S!>3.* 
Justice Lamar is a type in our American politics for which history elsewhere has 
no match. His character, his life, and his political status are entirely unique outside 
of America- but here he is not peculiar. He represents a state of facts that it is not 
easy to describe, and yet that in our Federal Republic is entirely natural and reason- 
able. . r i1 c *1 

He was an active promoter of secession. Reserved in the armies of the Southern 
revolt and was an accredited agent in its diplomatic service. He probably never 
chan.'e.! his conviction of the righteousness of the lost cause; certainly he never 
avowed any such change of sentiment. And yet this man, wlio with all his soul had 
warred against the nation, after the collapse of the South became a member of the 
National Legislature, one of the chosen counselors of the President of the United 
States, and finally a ju.lge in the highest court in the land. And, save the last point, 
his is no exceptional case. 

Did any other nation ever put down a great insurrection at vast cost of money and 
bloo<l, and then, without revenges, without confiscat ions and executions, quietly re- 

*Article, "American Politics: Study ol Four Careers." 



ins LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 001 

ceive the insuigents l)ack into all the privileges of citizenship and into an aftivc 
share in the government which they had sought to destroy? Would it ever have been 
sale for any other nation to do such a thing? 

And yet that is just what the United States has done; and, what is more, it is en- 
tirely safe, proper, and wise to do it. 

Of course there are men of radical convictions who will deny this last assertion, but 
the nation at large nevertheless accords with it. Otherwise the fact would not lie per- 
mitted. And the writer believes that if, after the war, that most knightly man, Rob- 
ert E. Lee, had by any accident become Tresident of the United States, he would have 
administered that high otfice as scrupulously, as honorably, as patriotically for the 
welfare of the whole land, as any Northern Union man. 

And if this is true of the Chief Magistracy, it is quite as true of the Supreme Bench, 
as is plainly evident by the course of the Justice who lias just died, as higli-uiiuded a 
man as was General Lee. 

The explanation of this peculiar state of things is quite simple. 
The revolt of the South was to maintain the system of slavery and the right of 
States to secede from the Union. The war settled these questions. Slavery was de- 
stroyed. To reenslave the freedmen would be as impossible as to empty the Atlantic 
with a teaspoon, and it will be many generations before any one will think of seces- 
sion again as a practicable political expedient. Slavery and secession are issues as 
dead as if they were a thousand years old, and all the interests of the South are now 
bound up in the union of States. 

The men of the South who fought for their section were as honorable and sincere 
as any that history records. They fought for what they believed to be right and jus- 
tice. They were defeated. Their cause was not merely lost; it vanished utterly away 
from the earth. And a large proportion of the soldiers and statesmen of the Confed- 
eracy accepted the result in good faith as a final settlement of all the matters in dis- 
pute, and set themselves resolutely to a rehabilitation of the South in the Union; and 
among these none was more earnest and more honest than L. Q. C. Lamar. 

Mr. Lamar was not primarily a politician ; he was rather a scholar, one who dwelt 
in the philosophy of law and government rather than in their jiractice. Indeed, it 
was objected to his confirmation as a Justice of the Supreme Court that he had had 
very little experience at the bar. Circumstances drew him into political life, and at 
the beginning of hostilities his directness of nature led him to offer his sword to his 
State. But, after all, he found his most congenial place in Congress or on the Bench; 
and wherever he was, the war being once ended, he did all that lay in him to allay 
the passions it had aroused and to make the nation again united in feeling as well as 
in government. ... 

It was not reconstruction merely that the nation needed after Appomattox ; it was 
reconciliation. And every man in either section who gave his heart sincerely to liv- 
ing the national life, to building up what had been torn down, was and is a patriot 
who deserves the gratitude of the Republic. This Justice Lamar did ; and he is a 
type of Southern men, in public and private station, who have shown that most exalt- 
ed patriotism. The nation is a nation again because of him and them. It was the 
great war President who spoke " with malice toward none, with charity for all."^ It 
was the general of the victorious armies who said : " Let us have peace." The nation, 
as a whole, has taken them at their word. 

The self-restraint and largeness of view that make a republic possible find no bet- 
ter illustration than was afforded liy the electoral controversy of 1876-77. No more 
dangerous crisis ever came to a nation. The facts were by no means clearly on one 
side. At all events, the adherents of one party passionately believed that ostensible 
majorities had been secured by fraud and violence. The other jiarty as passionately 
believed that partisan returning boards had reversed the popular will. The Presi- 



602 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: 

(lent-y hung on the adjudication of this dispute, and the constitution provided no un- 
questioned means of deciding it. 

Provision was made for getting tlie certificates from the electoral colleges of the 
States into the hands of the I'resident of the Senate. That the count of the electoral 
votes was to take place in the presence of the two Houses of Congress was also explicit ; 
and the President of the Senate was to open the sealed certificates. 

But at that point tlie constitution failed ; and precedent would hardly be decisive, 
as never before had the election hinged on the validity of disputed returns. 

Had either party insisted on a course not plainly authorized by the constitution, 
the other party would have resisted, and with perfect right; and for a time it seemed 
that physical force was the only solution. Party spirit and passion were high. The 
nation was apparently on the verge of a civil war more dangerous than the war of 
secession. 

It is entirely evident that in such an emergency arbitration is the only reasonable 
resort for enlightened people. But it was l:iy no means so evident at that time as 
to just what form of arbitration would be feasible, and under those circumstances the 
bill providing for the Electoral Commission was not merely a happy escape from a 
dangerous situation; it was more than that. It was also a triumph of patriotism and 
self-control, second only to the issue of the war of secession itself, as evidence that 
self-government is possible and enduring. The Electoral Commission was a board of 
arbitration. Congress may or may not have had express constitutional power to dele- 
gate such functions to an extra-congressional boily ; but imperious necessity overruled 
any quibliles of strict construction, and the contested certificates were duly referred 
to the arbitrators for adjudication. 

A second test of self-go\ernment, quite as crucial as the adoption of the commis- 
sion, was the acceptance of its award by the losing party. There was excited feeling, 
and a strong disposition on the part of some to resist ; but the cooler counsels of pru- 
dent and patriotic leaders prevailed. It is a hard strain on one's self-control to sub- 
mit to law when it decides for the other side. Among those who were active in secur- 
ing a pacific and law-abiding course, 'Mr. Lamar was conspicuous and influential; and 
he should have the respect which all sincere wellwishers for republican institutions 
will never fail to give to the men who settled the great dispute of 1877 by law, and not 
by violence. Their action vastly strengthened the cause of Democracy in all lands. 



Resolutions of tin- Lerfishilure of Xnrtli Dakota. 
The joint conventimi adopted tin- following resolutions on the death 
of Justice Lamar: 

Be it resoh'ed by the Legislative Assembly of the State of North Dakota: 

1. That this Assembly has heard with unfeignetl regret of the sudden death of Hon. 
L. (.1 C. Lamar, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court; that in his de- 
cease another star has vanished from the galaxy of America's living gi-eatness than 
which, though eclipsed jierhaps in brilliancy by some, none have shown with a purer, 
steadier light and radiance. 

2. That we rejoice that when tlie nation was emerging from the bloody cataclysm 
of fratricidal strife, ere yet the dark clouds of mistrust had disappeared or the angry 
mutterings of sectional passion had died out, his was one of the first voices call- 
ing amid the storm for peace, forbearance, and reconciliation; that lie was one of the 
earliest to urge upon the reconstructed States that, as integral jiarts of the great gov- 
ernment, it was their unciuestionable duty as patriots and citizens to accord to it their 
hearty and earnest sujiport in strengthening the mighty fabric in every joint and 
fiber after the terrible ordeal to which it had been subjected ; that, undeterred by 



HJ.S LIFE, TIMES, AiXD SPEECHES. 603 

hostile criticisms and party rancor, conscious of his own purity of intent and patriot- 
ism of purpose, above the petty temptations of sectional pojiularity, he lived to see his 
judgment vindicated and his country moving on through years of fertilizing peace to 
tlie goal of a united, happy, and prosperous people. 

3. That, as a United States Senator in a critical period, we commend the maidy in- 
dependence of character and loyalty to conviction that impelled him to disregard the 
bidding of a mistaken Legislature and a|)peal to the people for vindication, and that 
his triumph was signal and complete. 

4. That we express our high admiration of that happy eijuipoise of temperament 
that, by its geniality, uniform courtesy, manliness, and high sense of honor, attracted 
alike the friendship and att'ectiou of political friend and foe in common; that, as a 
kind friend, a devoted husband and father, as a consistent Christian, " he bore with- 
out reproach the grand old name of gentleman." 

5. That, having served many years in the respective positions of professor of math- 
ematics, social science, and law, and with a successful career as an advocate, he 
brought to the judicial questions a fine native intellect, enriclied by a compendious 
knowledge, analytical training, and auiplitude of illustration and practical experience 
that enabled him to preserve just temper between the mere man of theory who can 
see nothing but general principles and the mere man of business who can see nothing 
but particular circumstances, which marks the perfect lawyer. 

6. We also believe that now his life, so full of judicial independence and tlignity 
and so fidl of professional honor, and with unlimited public respect, has closed; and, 
though the deep, damp vault may claim its prey and the casket may molder into dust, 
the hand of history will snatch the jewel froui the grave and enshrine it in the annals 
of his country's imperishable memory. 

7. That, though we know that grief is a vestal virgin who retires in secret to hide 
her woe, we trust that some echo of this tril)ute of respect from the far-oil' Northwest 
may penetrate the lialls of mourning and bear some consolation to the sorely bruised 
hearts of his family and friends. 

Examples of the Press CommeiUs. 

The Boston (Mass.) Olohe (Independent Democratic), reproduced in the Evening Tran- 
script (Independent Republican): " Outside the narrow circle where it is held as a tenet 
of political laith that no Southern man should ever hold office, the integrity and abil- 
ity of the late Justice Lamar were acknowledged well nigli unanimously. First and 
last Mr. Lamar had played no unimportant part in our history, but his latest years 
were unquestionaldy his best years. He ranked as one of the most earnest and jiro- 
gressive men of the South in Congress. As a member of IMr. Cleveland's Cabinet, he 
acquitted himself worthily and well; and all his colleagues on the Supreme Bench 
unite to bear willing testimony to his great worth." 

The Bridgeporl (Conn.l Standard (Republican': " Justice Lamar has proven a better 
man for the position than was expected at the time of his appointment. If not con- 
spicuously able, he has had the good sense to refrain from any exhibition of incapac- 
ity, and preserved undiminished the dignity which belonged to the hi5:h position 
he held." 

The Review of Reviews (editorial): " The death of Justice Lamar was followed by a 
unanimous chorus of tributes to his high character. He was esteemed as highly in 
the North as in the South. He was an ornament to American public life. His varied 
career was typically American. He stood emphatically for the new issues of a re- 
stored Union, though he had thrown himself with enthusiasm into the cause of the 
Southern Confederacy." 

The Neio Yorlc Daily News (Democratic) : "Although engaged in very diverse pursuits, 
the two notable public men who died unexpectedly yesterday were very much alike. 



604 LVCim Q. C. LAMAR: 

Phillips Brooks, the ablest Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, 
and Justice Lamar, of the United States Supreme Court, botli belonged to the broad- 
minded type of humanity. Nothing could ever make acrabbed theologian of the one, 
or a narrow political partisan of the other. Tiiey both were proof against all the influ- 
ences that chill the heart and stunt tlie mind. Bishop Brooks was by descent and 
birth a Puritan of the Puritans. Justice Lamar was by the same circumstances pre- 
eminent among the proud Southern planters of the antew'ar ]>eriod. Both should 
have been filled with the narrow views of their sections, but neither had even a sug- 
gestion of them. ... It was while in the Lower House of Congress that Lamar 
delivered the eulogy on Charles Sumner, which won him the resi)ect of the people of 
the North and endeared him still more to those of the South. That speech did more 
to obliterate the old bitterness lietweeu the sections than anything that had preced- 
ed it. It was permeated throughout l>y the spirit of brotherly love, and it made strong 
men who had fought on both sides weep. Men wept, too, when PhiUijis Brooks 
preached from his pulpit against the bigotry which sees nothing good in other creeds; 
and men and women will weep when they realize what a loss not only the nation, but 
the human race, has sustained in the death of tliese two champions of the divine in- 
junction to ' love thy neighbor as thyself.' " 

The New York Evening Post (Independent) : " His physical weakness has indeed 
shadowed his career upon the Supreme Bench, to which he was appointed by Mr. 
Cleveland five years ago, and he has not made the record as judge which his emi- 
nent ability would otherwise have insured. . . . Once in a while a great occasion 
would stir him profoundly, and he rose to the height of genius— as when he, a Rep- 
resenUitive from the State of Jefl'erson Davis, paid an eloquent tribute to Charles 
Sumner, the abolitionist. . . . Mr. Lamar has left no enduring mark upon na- 
tional legislation or Federal jurisprudence; but he rendered his generation an even 
greater service by furnishing the example of a patriot and statesman who was ready 
to sacrifice his continuance in public life to do his duty to the people who elected 
him, and who then, in a fit of folly, tried to instruct him to do what he believed to 
be wrong. It is such acts as this of Mr. Lamar's which attest the success of popular 
government, and revive the hope of its permanence. 

The New York Tribune (Republican): "If he was not conspicuously qualified for 
the Supreme Bench by learning and temperament, his rectitude and sincerity were 
universally recognized in the closing years of his life; and within the limits which 
physical infirmity imposed he more than satisfied the expectations which his 
appointment suggested. He was not a man of robust intellect, and his disposition 
was retiring and contemplative; but he was not deficient in moral any more than in 
physical courage. ... He died respected and esteemed by all his countrymen." 

The Rochrsler (N. Y.) Herald (Democratic) : " It was the influence and example of 
men like Justice Lamar that contributed, more than any other cause, to allay North- 
ern resentment and suspicion toward the South during the gloomy and trying days 
of reconstruction, and to facilitate the restoration of amicable relations between the 
two sections. "Without the display of great sense and self-control by the leaders of 
Southern opinion, this healing process would have been seriously retarded; and of 
this group of leaders none has earned more respect or gratitude than the Mississip- 
pian who is now dead at the age of sixty-seven. 

" In the twenty years that elapsed before his death he proved that he could be a 
useful and broad-minded supporter, as well as a former determined enemy, of the 
Union. It was given to no other Southerner to ' live down ' more happily and eft'ec- 
tively than Lamar the terrible mistake of secession. In 1874 he evoked the fervid 
applause of the North by pronouncing upon the dead Charles Sumner in the House 
a eulogium that was magnificent in itself, and derived unique i)ower and grandeur 
from its ])eculiar source. 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 605 

" He was one of the Ijravest and ablest of the apostles of an honest and lasting peace. 

" Both in the House and in the Senate Mr. Lamar attained as large a measure of dis- 
tinction as any Representative of a former Confederate State. He wis never rated as 
a mere master of parliamentary strategy; his accoiiiplislimentsworeof a higher order. 
He was a statesman. Senatorial duties probably suited his tastes better than any otiier 
that he was called upon to pertbrni, and it can be said that some of the best speeches 
in the Senate from 1S77 to ISS.'j came from his lips. He was an allable, mild-man- 
nered, peace-loving man, yet the country had evidence that it was dangerous to 
arouse within him the old Southern tire. It was at Conkling that he hurleil one of 
the most scorcliing personal denunciations ever heard in either House of Congress. 

"Lamar's mental grasp of public questions was conceded by his fellow-Senators of 
both parties, and his speech on the tariff in 1883 or ISS-i was one of the most power- 
ful delivered on that subject in Congress. In inviting Lamar into his Cabinet in 
1885, President Cleveland not only honored one of the best and most popular of 
Southerners, but added wisdom to his council board. 

" Lamar's transfer to the Supreme Court Bench was the crowning reward in a series 
that had been fairly won by eminent public service. Of the erring sons of the Re- 
public who labored unselfishly, wisely, and usefully to retrieve their historic fault of 
1861, by demonstrating the sincerity of their new allegiance to the Union, L. Q. C. La- 
mar will occupy an honored place in the public memory." 

The Philadelphia (Pa.) Evening Telegraph (Independent Republican): "It may with 
truth be said that a great mind is at rest; that the South has lost one of its ablest 
men, and the nation a thoroughly reconstructed and reconciled patriot. . . . An 
ordinary man in publiclife can drift along upon the tide of jiublic opinion and ap- 
proval — and, alas! this seems to be the highest aim with the average so-called states- 
man of our time; but Lamar was so c'onstituted that when he saw- what he conceived 
to be his duty he went steadily forward, regardless of personal consequences. . . . 
He made a department chief of conspicuous and painstaking fidelity. His ambition 
was not in the line of this routine work, and his elevation to the Supreme Bench was 
a just recognition of great qualities and undoubted merit. Pie was the equal of his 
associates in learning and judicial capacity ; and his retirement by the great reaper 
will be the occasion of sincere regret by those with whom he labored, and he will be 
everywhere spoken of with profound respect." 

The Philadelphia (Pa.) Ledger (Ilepublicanl: "Among the many distinguished men 
who have honored the Supreme Bench, Justice Lamar will hold high rank in future 
histories. A learned and most upright judge, he bore himself with dignity and honor. 
Before his elevation to the Bench he was a strong, and at times even a bitter, parti- 
san; but in that position he knew neither political friend nor foe." 

The Chicago (111.) Globe (Democratic): "Thus has passed from the stage one who 
has modestly played a great part in the making of the new Republic and the unmaking 
of the old. Lamar has died rich in everything but money; poor in all but the honor, 
the love, and the memory, not alone of his own South, but of his whole country. His 
career covers and is entwined with the country's greatest crisis, and in his own per- 
son he bore the message of i>eace and union to the South. . . . He has passed, with 
Hayes and Butler, to the tribunal of history, wdiere Blaine will soon follow, leaving 
behind a united jieople who will not soon forget the great figures of the great war 
and of the great reconciliation." 

The Chicago (111.) Inter-Ocean (Repidilican) : "Justice Lamar may be said to have 
come into national prominence at the time Charles Sumner died. No more glowing 
and just tribute was paid to the stalwart Senator from JNIa^sachusetts than the one 
which fell from the lips of the Southern jurist who has just appeared before the great 
assize. That eulogy gained for Mr. Lamar almost universal praise at the North, and 
did not, so far as known, lessen his popularity at home. 



606 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAE: 

" When President Cleveland sent his Cabinet list to the Senate Mr. Lamar was on 
it for Secretary of the Interior. It was regarded as a good appointment ; not that 
the Senator from Mississippi was specially adapted to the position, but that he was 
a worthy representative of the South. His appointment to the Supreme Court Bench 
in the last ye.ar of the Cleveland administration was, however, regarded at the time 
as an unwise appointment. . . . It is due to his memory to say tliat he acquitted 
himself with more credit than was anticipated. He had a judicial turn of mind; and 
had lie been thoroughly trained for the Bench, he would have been a great judge. As 
it was, he left a creditaljle record. He had won the respect of his associates and the 
bar as a painstaking, fair-minded, upright, and able jurist." 

The Delroil (Mich.) Free Press (Democratic) : " Few men have appeared so conspicu- 
ously in the affairs of the country and been so little understood by the masses of the 
people. . . . During his terms of service in Congress Mr. Lamar was recognized 
as a clear thinker, an able disputant, and a man of unquestioned integrity. A por- 
tion of his service was during a period when partisan feeling was aggravated by mem- 
ories of the war; but he was always the dignified statesman, never displaying sec- 
tional animosity, and always enjoying the highest respect of his fellow-members. 
. . . Time will insure a just estimate of his character, and the future historian 
will recall him as among those leaving their impress upon the eventful age in which 
he lived." 

The Minneapolis (:Minn.) Tribune (Republican): "In sterling integrity, iidelity to 
conviction, and courageous stand for his convictions, in spite even of the demands of 
his constituents, Justice Lamar was one of the notable iignres in American politics." 

The Denier (Col.) Sun (Republican): "Justice Lamar was faithful in every position 
of public trust which he held, and equal to all its duties and responsibilities. He was 
just and true in all tlie relations of life. His death was a national loss." 

The SL Louis Republic (Democratic) : " He held many positions of trust, and never 
showed himself unequal to the duties of any. Whether in the Legislature of his State, 
where he began his long career in politics, or on the Bench of the Supreme Court of 
the United States, where he ended it, he knew how to do his duty so as to win the 
approval of those he served." 

The Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal (Democratic): "Justice Lamar was in many re- 
spects so big a figure in our national life as to impress his proportions upon the mere 
observers, as well as upon the students, of cun'ent affairs. 

" He was, in truth, a tiig man, whose l.ireadth and strength of min<l, enriched by a 
thorough classic culture rare among the public men of these days, gave no inconsider- 
able momentum to the thought and action of the time, despite a certain lack of ag- 
gressiveness, due in part to temperament and in part to ill health. Whether as sol- 
dier, scholar, statesman, or jurist, his sincerity, his independence, his ability, and ac- 
complishments compelled the respectful and deferential recognition which such qual- 
ities are bound to command. . . . Serving his party as disinterestedly as he did, he 
serveil his country as well; and the learned dreamer and Southern secessionist won 
the confidence of the country, as he won the love of all who came within the associa- 
tion of his engaging personality, and dies worthily filling a seat on the highest tribunal 
of the nation, no member of which is more generally admired, resiiected,and trusted. 
... In history he will stand among the greatest of the scholars, statesmen, and 
jurists whom the South has given to the nation." 

The Ailanla (Ga.) Constitution (Democratic): "The typical American has been the 
subject of much discussion. Some have found him in Lincoln, and others point to 
Lee. Perhaps it will not be amiss to take up another branch of the subject: the typi- 
cal Southei-ner. We believe that there will be no dissenting voice when we name 
Lucius Q. C. Lamar. Chivalric.and yet conservative; imaginative, and yet practical; 
scholarly,andyet aman of affairs; 'loving a nation into peace,' and yet devoted to his 



HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND SPEECHES. 607 

native South— Lamar was all tlii;^, and more. . . . Surely this Rupert of debate 
was our typical Southerner." 

The New Orleans (La.) Times-Democrat (Democratic): "Mr. Lamar was a typical 
Southerner. He loved the South and its people with a depth of affection that was 
only bounded by the limits of the trials to which they were subjected, and the great 
abilities witli which nature endowed him were used solely for their advancement. 
With singular self-sacriiice he gave his talents freely to his country and to liis people, 
giving no thought to his personal interests. ... It was after the war, however, 
that the great abilities, the pure patriotism, and the almost matchless elocjuence of 
Mr. Lamar commanded national attention. He soon became known as one of the 
deepest thinkers in the United States Senate, one of the best constilntional lawyers in 
the country, and one of the readiest debaters that ever sat in Congress. The courage 
and the genius that he displayed in combating the attacks upon his State and his peo- 
ple soon made him a leader on his side of the Chamber. His defense of the rights of 
the States from the continued assaults of the ablest Republican statesmen of the 
country marked him as one of the most distinguished men that the South had ever sent 
to Congress. His record as a Senator will compare favorably in point of ability with 
those of the greatest statesmen that the country has ever produced, and his patriot- 
ism and his affection for his people were unsurpassed by the purest of them. In the ad- 
ministration of the office of Secretary of the Interior and in his career on the Supreme 
Bench the same great ([ualities were shown. At one point in his career Mr. Lamar 
seemed in danger of losing the place he held in the affections of the people of his 
State. Though he represented a constituency intensely Southern, he was the first of 
the leaders of his party in the Scjutli to accept, without reserve, the issues decided 
by the war, and to take a long step forward toward the reconciliation of the sections. 
But the people of Mississippi had full confidence in his judgment and in his fidelity, 
and without hesitation marcheil to the advanced position behind him. In the death 
of Lamar the country has lost a statesman ami a jurist which it could ill spare; 
Mississippi, its most distinguished citizen; and the South, a patriot who will go down 
in history as one of her ablest and best sons." 



APPENDIX. 



SPEECHES, LETTEES, ETC. 

Appendix No. 1. 

ON NICARAGUAN AND KANSAS AFFAIRS. 

Speech in the House of Bepresenlatifes, January IS, 1S58. 

The House being in Committee of tlie Whole on the State of the Union, and li.aving 
under consideration the President's Annual IMessage, ]\Ir. Lamar said: 

Mr. Chairman: It is not my purpose to discuss the various questions involved m 
our Central American relations. Should I avail myself of a future occasion to do so, 
I may be forced reluctantly to dissent from some of the views so ably presented by 
my distinguished colleague [Mr. Quitman]. However painful this may be to myself, 
I nevertheless feel confident of his generous indulgence, especially when he sees in 
mv course only the reflex of his own spirit of independence; a sjiirit which runs hke 
a stream of fire tlirouah all his acts and v.'ritings, which enal)led him a few years 
since to li"ht up the ardor of a tliousand itatriots, to fire his countrymen to the asser- 
tion of their rights, and at this day enshrines him in the hearts and aflections of the 
people of his S1;ate without distinction of party. 

Mr. Chairman, any proposition which has for its object the advancement and 
progress of Sontliern institutions, liy equitable means, will always commend itself to 
my^cordial approv.al. Others may boast of their widely extended patriotism, and 
their enlarged and comprehensive love of this Union. With me, I confess that the 
promotion of Southern interests is second in imiiortance only to the preservation of 
Southein honor. In reading her history and studying her charactei-, I delight to lin- 
ger in the contemplation of that stern and unbroken confidence with which she has 
always clung to the integrity of her principles and the purity of her honor. In that 
unfortunate division which bus separated our country into sections, natural causes be- 
yond our control have assigned to her tlie weaker section. A numerical minority 
finds safety and protection'' alone in the power of truth and invincibility of right. 
The South' standing ujion this high ground, has ever commanded the respect of her 
friends and defied the assaults of lier enemies. AVheu ruthless majorities h.ave threat- 
ened wrong and injustice, tlieir hands have been stayed only liy the deference which 
the worst spirits unconsciously pay to the cause of justice. In the long and bitter 
contests which have marked our internal struggles, the South has made but one de- 
mand — the constitution of our common country, the claims of justice, and the obli- 
gations of States; and it is our boast to-day that we can present a record unstained 
with a single evidence of violated faith or attempted wrong. The same regard for 
truth, justice, and honor which characterizes our intercourse with the various sec- 
tions of our own country, furnishes the safest rules for our dealings with other coun- 
tries. As the constitution is the law of our conduct at home, so let good feith be the 
rule of our conduct abroad. 

If I could do so consistentlv with the honor of my country, I would plant Amer- 
ican liberty, with Southern institutions, upon every inch of American soil. I believe 
that they give to us the highest type of civilization known to modern times, except 
in those particulai-s ilwelt upon so elaborately and complacently by the gentleman 
from Massachusetts [Mr. Thayer]. In that particular form of civilization which causes 
the population of a country to emigrate to other lands for the means of subsistence I 
concede to the North ijreat superiority over our section. [Laughter.] There can be 
no doubt that New England, and especially Massachusetts, is a splendid country to 
emigrate from, and in this respect stands unrivaled, with perhaps the single exception 
of Ireland. [Laughter.] And right here I desire to express my acknowledgments 
to the gentleman for the very apt and classical comparison which he instituted be- 
tween his section and the officina gentium. It never occurred to me before, but since 
39 (609) 



610 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

he has mentioned it, I must confess to the resemblance, in many respects, be- 
tween the recent emigration from New England and the irruption of the Goths 
and Vandals. [Laughter.] It is also due to say that the gentleman's vindica- 
tion of the emigrant aid societies places the objects and motives of that enter- 
prise upon more defensible grounds than we of the South supposed to exist. 
For one, I am perfectly satisfied that the thing was demanded by necessity, 
and has resulted in benefit to all parties concerned; that the country was bene- 
fited by getting rid of the population, and the population greatly benefited by 
leaving the country. [Laughter.] 

To return from this digression. While I am a Southern man, thoroughly im- 
bued w'ith the spirit of my section, I will never consent to submit the fate of 
our noble institutions to the hands of marauding bands, or violate their sanc- 
tity by identifying their progress with the success of unlawful expeditions: 
and most especially when I see them receiving the countenance and sanction 
of a distinguished Senator, whose course on the Kansas question is so fresh in 
our recollection. 

Before I consent to any new schemes of territorial acquisition, to be effected, 
as usual, by the prowess of Southern arms and the contribution of Southern 
blood and treasure, I desire the question of the South's right to extend her in- 
stitutions into territory already within the Union practically and satisfacto- 
rily settled by the legislation of this Congress. These territorial acquisitions, 
so far, have been to the South like the far-famed fruit which grows upon the 
shores of the accursed sea: beautiful to sight, but dust and ashes to the lips. We 
learn from the President's message that, the people of Kansas having reached 
the number that would justify her admission Into the Union as a State, she 
has, by her duly constituted authorities, taken all the steps necessary to the 
attainment of this object, and will, in a short time, demand the redemption of 
the pledge of the government that she " shall be admitted, with or without 
slavery, as her constitution may prescribe at the time of such admission." Bat 
in advance of her application we are informed by the distinguished author of 
the Kansas Bill, and gentlemen upon this floor, that her case has been prejudged, 
and her claims rejected. This presents a question before whose colossal mag- 
nitude the wrongs of Walker and the criminality of Paulding sink into insig- 
nificance. 

I propose to examine into the grounds upon which this violation of plighted 
faith is attempted to be justified. The ground principally relied upon is that 
the constitution which she presents was framed by a convention not called in 
pursuance of an enabling or authorizing act of Congress, but on the mere motion 
of a Territorial Legislature. Now, sir, apart from the practice of the govern- 
ment, which has not been uniform on this subject, I, for one, admit to the fullest 
extent the propriety and importance of such an act of Congress. I have always 
held that the sovereignty over these Territories was vested in the people of 
these United States: that the power of legislation in reference to them belonged 
to Congress, and that this power was limited only by the constitution and the na- 
ture of the trust, and that before the inhabitants of the Territory are competent 
to form a constitution and a State government it is necessary that Congress 
should first withdraw its authority over the Territories. The necessity of an en- 
abling act I concede to the fullest extent. Whenever individuals in a Territory 
undertake to form a State government, without the previous assent of Congress, 
they are, in my opinion, guilty of gross usurpation and flagrant disregard of the 
rights of the United States and the authority of Congress. Under such circum- 
stKnces it becomes a question purely of discretion with Congress whether to re- 
mand them to their territorial condition, or to waive the want of authority and 
to ratify the proceedings as regular and lawful. The question now presents 
itself: Do the circumstances attending the application of Kansas for admission 
into the Union present such a case? 

Was the convention at Lecompton an unauthorized and revolutionary assem- 
blage, usurping the sovereignty of the State, and throwing off unlawfully the 
authority of the United States? I hold that it was a convention of the people 
called by the regularly constituted authority, and with the previous assent of 
Congress. I hold that" the Kansas Bill was an enabling act, vesting the Territo- 
rial Legislature with power to call such a convention. In analyzing the provi- 
sions of that noble law we find that it looks to higher objects and more enduring 
results than the mere organization of temporary territorial governments for 
Kansas and Nebraska. It looks beyond the territorial status; it provides for 
its admission as a State, and In express terms pledges the faith of government 



APPENDIX, NO. J. Cll 

that it shall be received into the Union "with or -without slavery, as its constitu- 
tion may prescribe at the time of such admission." It also declares the " in- 
tent and meaning of this act" to be, "not to legislate slavery into any Territory 
or State, nor to exclude it therefrom; but to leave the people thereof perfectly 
free to form and regulate their institutions in their own way, subject only to 
the Constitution of the United States and the provisions of this act." 

Now, had the bill stopped here, had it gone no further, there might be some 
ground for the objection that additional legislation by Congress is necessary; 
for the bill might guarantee to the people admission as a State and the right of 
forming their constitution, and yet reserve to Congress the all-important power 
of determining when the people had attained a sufficient maturity and growth 
to fit them for the enjoyment and exercise of this highest and most glorious 
right of self-government. It might reserve to itself the power of determining 
who should constitute sucli a people, who should be the qualified voters, and, in 
short, of prescribing all the steps preliminary to a call of the convention of the 
people. I say Congress might well have reserved all these liigh and delicate 
discretionary powers to herself, and there migltt be some ground for claiming 
them in behalf of Congress, liad the bill stopped with the clause I have quoted. 

But, unfortunately for the enemies of Kansas, the bill does not stop here. It 
goes on to confer the most ample powers on the Territorial Legislature. In 
Section 22, after providing for the first election, it says: "But thereafter the 
times, places, and manner of holding and conducting all elections by the people, 
shall be prescribed by law." 

Again, after providing for qualifications of voters for the first election, it says: 
"But the qualifications of voters and of holding office, at all subsequent elec- 
tions, shall be such as shall be prescribed by the Territorial Legislature." 

In Section 24 it is further enacted that the legislative power of the Territory 
shall extend to all rightful subjects of legislation consistent with the constitution. 

These clauses, taken together, embrace the entire subject in dispute, and vest 
all powers connected therewith in the Territorial Legislature. What can be a 
more clear and rightful subject of legislation than to determine the time when a 
people shall emerge from their condition of territorial pupilage into that of State 
sovereignty, of calling a convention of the people, prescribing the qualifications 
of voters, and arranging the usual details preparatory to the application for ad- 
mission as a State? Indeed, sir, according to the well-settled maxims of civil 
law. no people can undertake to form or abolish a constitution except in obedi- 
ence to the summons or invitation of the existing legislative authority. It was 
in this view that Congress has delegated these high and important matters of 
legislative discretion to the territorial government. You may take up any en- 
abling act passed by Congress, and you cannot find a provision in it, which is not 
involved in either the specific grants or general delegation of powers contained 
in the Kansas Bill. 

The conclusion which the language of the bill authorizes is strengthened and 
sustained by its history. When this bill was first reported it contained the usual 
power which you find in all territorial bills, of Congressional veto, revocation, 
or repeal of the territorial laws; but it was stricken out, and the bill became a 
law, with no reservation of power to Congress touching this point, limiting the 
broad grant of jurisdiction to the Territorial Legislature over "all rightful sub- 
jects of legislation." If the language of the bill and its history could leave any 
doubt as to the correctness of this construction, it would at once be removed by 
a recurrence to the debates when the bill was pending in Congress. The 
speeches of both friends and foes are replete with the proof of what I say. I 
could quote from the author of the bill and from its supporters in this House, to 
show that their object was to transfer to the people of Kansas the entire control 
over her internal affairs, including slavery, untrammeled by any Congressional 
legislation: but, sir, it is not necessary. 

It mav be said that, if this construction be true, the bill embraced two entirely 
distinctand dissimilar subjects: one organizing a Territory, and the other pro- 
viding for the admission of a State. Well, sir, if I am not mistaken, this very 
objection was madt^to wit, that the bill w-as against all regular parliamenta- 
ry procedure; and a distinguished gentleman from Missouri, after exhausting 
his powers of invective, like a man in fight— reserving his most potent weapon 
for the last blow— threw at the bill an immense w^ord. which sent our venerable 
Secretary of State stunned and reeling to the dictionaries. He said it was "am- 
phibological." But the framers of that bill were not after parliamentary sym- 
metrv or harmonv of outline. Their object was to settle great questions of strife 



612 LVVIUS Q. C. LAMAR: ITJS LIFE, ETC. 

which threatened the iulegrity of the Union; to bind in one compact and dura- 
ble structure the equality of the States, the authority of Congress, and the glori- 
ous right of self-government: to build a platform on which the right of every 
section in the Union might rise above the tui'bulent waters of sectional strife, 
and proudly defy all the attacks of fanaticism. 

In contirmation of the view I have taken, I desire to invoke the authority of 
the distinguished publicist and jurist who is now lending his influence to the 
enemies of the South and of Kansas. Mr. Robert J. Walker, in his inaugural 
address as Governor of Kansas, speaking of the Lecomplon convention, says: 
" That convention is now about to be elected by you, under the call of the Ter- 
ritorial Legislature created, and still recognized by the authority of Congress, 
and clothed by it, in the comprehensive language of the organic law, with full 
power to make such an enactment. The Territorial Legislature, then, in assem- 
bling this convention, was fully sustained by the Act of Congress." 

Again he says: " The people of Kan.sas, then, are invited by the highest au- 
thority known to the constitution to participate freely and fairly in the election 
of delegates to frame a constitution and State government. The law has per- 
formed its entire function when it extends to the people the right of suffrage, 
but it cannot compel the performance of that duty. Throughout our whole Un- 
ion, and whatever free government prevails, those who abstain from the exer- 
cise of voting authorize those who do vote to act for them in that contingency; 
and the absentees are as much bound, under the law and constitution, where 
there is no fraud or violence, by the act of the majority of those who do vote, as 
though all had participated in the election." 

It is true that the distinguished author of the bill denies that it confers any 
such power, and yet the very ground upon which he rests his opposition to the 
admission of Kansas seems to break the moral force of this denial. His posi- 
tion is that the Kansas Bill intended that the constitution, when adopted, should 
be submitted to a direct vote of the people: that this was its intent and mean- 
ing. Now, sir, if the bill went so far as to prescribe the mode of adopting the 
constitution, it certainly contemplated the framing of it. A constitution cannot 
be submitted to the people until it is formed. 
I Having demonstrated that this convention, assembled to form the constitu- 
tion, possessed every attribute heretofore regarded requisite to complete the 
work effectually, it is objected that before it can present a valid title to this 
Congress it should be first submitted, for adoption or rejection, to the people- 
not to the people whose delegates framed it, but to them and such settlers as 
may have com_e into the Territory during its progress to completion. 

In order to show how empty and ridiculous are the pretexts for rejecting Kan- 
sas, I propose to give this argument in the language of its author. Speaking 
of what the President savs of the convention at Lecompton, the distinguished 
gentleman to whom I refer [Mr. Douglas] says: "The President does not say, 
he does not mean, that this convention had ever been recognized by the Con- 
gress of the United States as legal or valid. On the contrary, he knows, as we 
here know, that during the last Congress I reported a bill from the Committee 
on Territories to authorize the people of ICansas to assemble and form a con- 
stitution for themselves. Subsequently the Senator from Georgia [Mr. Toombs] 
brought forward a substitute for my bill, which, after having been modified by 
him and myself in consultation, was passed by the Senate. It is known in the 
country as 'the Toombs Bill.' It authorized the people of Kansas Territory 
to assemble in convention and form a constitution preparatory to their admis- 
sion into the Union as a State. That bill, it is well known, was defeated in the 
House of Representatives. It matters not. for the purpose of this argument, 
what was the reason of its defeat. Whether the reason was a political one, 
whether it had reference to the then existing contest for the Presidency, whether 
it was to keep open the slave question, whether it was a conviction that the bill 
would not be fairly carried out, whether it was because there were not people 
enough in Kansas to justify the formation of a State— no matter what the rea- 
son was, the House of Representatives refused to pass that bill, and thus denied 
to the people of Kansas the right to form a constitution and State government 
at this time." 

Proceeding then to discuss the power of the Territorial Legislature to call a 
convention he concludes as follows; "If vou apply these principles to the Kan- 
sas convention, you find that it had no power to do any act as a convention 
forming a government: vou find that the act calling it was null and void from 
the beginning; you find that the Legislature could confer no power whatever on 
the convention." 



APPENDIX NO. 1. 6i3 

Upon a subsequent occasion, defending his position, lie says: " In other 
words, 1 contend that a convention constituted in obedience to an enabling 
act of Congress previously giving assent, is a constitutional body of men, with 
power and authority to institute government; but that a convention assembled 
under any act of the Territorial Legislature, without the assent of Congress 
previously given, has no authority to institute government. . . . This was 
my position in regard to the effect of an enabling act. I then went on to show 
that, there having been no enabling act passed for Kansas, the Lecompton con- 
vention was irregular." 

It is rather late in the day for this gentleman to begin to rectify such irregu- 
larities. We need go no further baclv than California. She was begotten by a 
military general, and forced into the family of States by the Caasarean opera- 
tion of an executive aeviiuiluiir. [Laughter.] Yes, sir, without any previous 
assent of Congress, without even the authority of a Territorial Legislature, 
without any census, a band of roaming adventurers was lugged into the Union 
over all law and precedent, as the coequal of the oldest State of this Union, be- 
cause it happened to be a free State. What then said this stickler for enabling 
acts? How spoke the putative father of these latter-day doctrines? Mr. Douglas 
said, in It^SO: '"I come now to cocsider California as a State. The question is 
now presented whether we will receive her as one of the States of this Union; 
and, sir, why should we not do it? The proceedings, it is said, in the formation 
of her constitution and State government have been irregular. If this be so, 
whose fault is it? Not the people of California, for you have refused for the 
period of two years to pass a law in pursuance of which the proceedings would 
have been regular. Surely you will not punish the people of California for your 
own sins, sins of omission as well as of commission. 

"It will be recollected by every Senator present — I trust the fact will not be 
forgotten — that more than one year agol brought in a bill to authorize the people 
of California to form a State constitution and to come into the Union. Had that 
bill passed, the proceedings would have been regular. 

"Well, the bill was defeated; and the people of California, acting upon these 
suggestions, and relying upon the precedents cited, have formed a constitution 
and presented themselves for admission. Now they are to be told that they 
cannot be received, because Congress failed to pass a law, and the proceedings 
are irregular without it. I do not precisely understand what is meant by the 
irregularity of these proceedings. I have examined the precedents in all the 
cases in which new States have been admitted into the Union, from Vermont to 
Wisconsin. I will not go over them in detail. . . . Those precedents show 
that there is no established rule upon the subject. There are several cases in 
which there have been no previous assent of Congress, no census taken, no qual- 
ifications for voters prescribed. There is no rule, and can be no regularity. . . . 
I hold that the people of California had a right to do what they have done; yes, 
they had a moral, political, and legal right to do all they have done." 

How different is his language to Kansas! The very refusal of Congress to 
pass an enabling act for California is urged as a justification of her monstrous 
proceedings, and is presented as her strongest title to admission: but when 
Kansas applies, the same action by Congress is relied upon as an insurmounta- 
ble obstacle to her admission. The California convention had the perfect right, 
moral, legal, and political, to do what they have done; but the Kansas conven- 
tion, although acting under an act of Congress which pledged the faith of 
the nation to her admission as a State, acting under a regular and legal call of 
her people, every safeguard provided, is held to have no power to do any act as 
a convention forming a government: that the act calling it was null and void 
from the beginning, and that Congress, in refusing to pass an enabling act (no 
matter what the motive), denied to the people the right to form a constitution 
and State government. 

Sir, how are we to reconcile such glaring inconsistency? There is but one so- 
lution, and every dav is riveting it in the Southern mind; and that is, where a 
State, with a constitution excluding slavery, applies for admission, no irregular- 
ity can be too enormous, no violation of precedent too marked, no disregard of 
constitutional procedure too palpable, no outrage too enormous, for its ad- 
mission as a State into the Union; but when a State, with slavery in its consti- 
tution applies for admission, no excuse can be too trivial, no pretense too paltry 
and ignoble, to keep her out. Sir, the direct tendency, and with some the avowed 
object of ail this opposition is to delay the admission of Kansas until she be- 
comes a free State. I do not charge this on that gentleman; but why does he 



614 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: JUS LIFE, ETC. 

pursue this course? It is but an offshoot of that damnable policy which has 
been preying upon the vitals ot the South for the last forty years: that of buying 
peace for the turbulent and fanatical at the expense of the quiet and orderly. 
When Missouri applies for admission, abolitionism gets up an excitement about 
slave territory. For peace's sake Congress overleaps the constitution, and marks 
out a line beyond which slavery shall not go. Abolitionism raves to be heard in 
Congress about slavery generally, and for the sake of peace Congress allows It 
to fill the capitolwith abolition petitions which it has no power on earth to grant. 
Abolitionism hires armed bands to go and drive slaveholders out of Kansas; 
and Robert J. Walker, for peace's sake, would hand it over to them. To pacify a 
band of rebels, reeking with the blood of Southern men, women, and children, 
to whom he is indebted for all he is, he turns against his benefactors; he violates 
his pledge; abuses his trust; disgraces his office; truckles to the vile; tramples on 
the just; and scatters the firebrand of discord throughout Kansas, the Union, 
and the capitol. And Stephen A. Douglas, who was for lassoing California and 
dragging her into the Union over all law and precedent and the violated rights 
of fifteen of the sovereign States of this Union, would now subject Kansas to 
all the rigors of the Inquisition to keep her out ot the Union. 

But we are told that it is a contempt of the authority of the people of Kansas, 
that it is an inroad upon popular sovereignty, to withhold from them a revision 
of their constitution. Sir, the authority of the people is fully recognized, the 
popular sovereignty, as a principle, is fully enforced, when an opportunity is 
afforded to the legal voters to deposit their votes for delegates to a convention. 
And are not those delegates the people's representatives? Is there a lawyer 
present who would teach his client that the acts of an authorized agent are in- 
valid if not submitted for ratification to the principal? Would he tell them 
that such acts unsubmitted would be insulting to the principal's dignity or in- 
trusive upon his prerogatives? Would you say that no respect should be paid 
to the acts, or to the principal himself, if he suffered them to go forth as his own, 
unratified? The truth lies just in the opposite direction. "The right of electing 
delegates to a convention," in the language of the profoundest writer on the 
philosophy of government, "places the powers of the government as fully in the 
mass of tlie community as they would be had they assembled, made and executed 
the laws themselves, without the intervention of agents or representatives." 

The people act in their sovereign capacity when they elect delegates; and the 
delegates thus elected and convened are, for all practical purposes, identical 
with the people. Sir, I take higher grounds. I hold that the highest embodi- 
ment of sovereignty, the most imposing political assemblage known to our con- 
stitution and laws, is a convention of the people legally assembled, not en, masse— 
for such an assemblage is unknown in our representative system — but by their 
delegates, legally elected. When such a body, with no declared limitation upon 
their powers, are deputed to form a constitution, and they execute their trust, 
the constitution, ip>:o fm-to, becomes the supreme law of the land, unquestionable 
and unchangeable by any power on earth, save that which ordained it. This is 
no novel doctrine. It has the sanction of the wisest and greatest men known 
to American history. Mr. Calhoun, speaking of a convention of the people, 
says that it implied "a meeting of the people, either by themselves or by dele- 
gates chosen for the purpose, in their high sovereign character. It is, in a 
word, a meeting of the people in the majesty of their power— in that in which 
they may rightfully make or abolish constitutions, and put up and down govern- 
ments at their plea'sure." (Calhoun's Works, Vol. II., page 612.) 

Our present Chief Magistrate, in standing by the action of the Lecompton con- 
stitution, is only acting in accordance with his opinions, long since recorded. 
In the debate on the veto power, he said: "The Senator [Mr. Clayj asks why the 
veto has not been given to the President on acts of conventions held for the pur- 
pose of amending our constitutions; if it be necessary to restrain Congress, it 
Is equally necessary to restrain conventions. The answer to this argument is 
equally easy. It would be absurd to grant an appeal through the intervention of 
the veto to the people themselves against their own acts. They create conven- 
tions by virtue of their own undelegated, inalienable sovereignty; and when they 
speak. their servants— whether legislative. judicial, or executive — must be silent." 

Such was the convention of Lecompton; and the constitution it presents was 
established under laws, Federal and territorial, to which every man in Kansas 
(except rebels) has given his consent. These laws direct the election, prescribe 
the order of it, the qualifications of voters, and the times of holding the meeting, 
and the duties and qualifications of the presiding officer. In this way the dele- 



APPENDIX, SO. 1. 615 

gates were elected. They met, and upon mature deliberation framed a consti- 
tution — a constitution republican in form, and securing to tlic people of Kansas 
all those great institutions of fieetlom which have ever been regarded as tlie only 
and surest bulwarks of civil liberty. Violating no law, inconsistent with no 
principle of the Federal Constitution, it preserves and guarantees to the people 
of Kansas all the great agencies of freedom (the right of Imbiiix curj>ii\; trial by 
jury, freedom of the press and speech, and liberty of conscience) as inviolate and 
pure as when they were first given to us, baptized in the blood of our Revolution- 
ary fathers. Now, sir, can a greater insult be offered to the understanding of 
the American people than to say that a constitution thus established would gain 
anything of credit or sanctity by a ratification like that contended for? I 
grant that the people, through the Legislature, may reserve to themselves the 
right of ratification, or the delegates may recognize it in the constitution itself; 
and in either case a ratification would become necessary to the validity of the in- 
strument; but without those terms it would become absolute as soon as sanc- 
tioned by the delegates. 

I go further. I boldly maintain that wisdom, prudence, and policy, demand 
that the delegates should be entirely untrammeled in framing the fundamental 
law. The people in mass cannot deliberate upon a constitution, adopt what is 
good, and amend what is faulty in it. They must adopt or reject it in the entire; 
and thus, on account of objections to a single clause, they might reject the most 
admirable constitution ever devised by the wisdom of man. The radical error 
which underlies the whole argument of these gentlemen is this: They assume 
that there is a general agreement of opinion, a collective sentiment of the people, 
as a unit, as to what shall be the principles and provisions of their fundamental 
law, and that this common sentiment is to be ascertained only by a direct vote 
of the people. And j'et, sir, such a course might result in a grave and capital de- 
lusion. If a method could be devised for collecting the opinion of each citizen, 
upon each clause of a constitution, the diversities of sentiment would be equal 
to the number of voters, and perhaps greater. The theory of ratification, 
however, does not allow to the people the right of framing a constitution, or 
even offering amendments and modifications; they can only, like a witness on 
cross-examination, answer "yea" or "nay." And I repeat, a constitution which 
might stand an imperishable monument of human wisdom could be voted down 
by an immense majority, of which each individual member might be in an actual 
minority on the particular subject-matter of his dissent. Such a process, so far 
from evoking the general pervading sentiment of a people as to what shall be 
their fundamental law, may signally fail in eliciting the true view of a single 
individual. 

Sir, I admit that a direct vote of the people is a fair test of their will when 
you submit to them a single isolated proposition, such as the question of exclud- 
ing slavery submitted by the Kansas convention; but whether it is the best 
mode or not depends upon circumstances. It depends, for instance, upon the 
number voting on the question of ratification as compared with the number who 
vote for delegates. Now, so far as I have observed, the elections in which the 
people manifest the least interest are those in which they are called upon to pass 
upon constitutions and constitutional questions. It is not the way the people 
choose to exercise their right of self-government. In the ancient city of Athens, 
where democratic absolutism existed in its purest form, the number of citizens 
entitled to vote amounted to about twenty-five thousand persons; and yet not 
more than five thousand votes were generally given on the most interesting ques- 
tions, and on questions of ostracism six thousand votes were sufficient. If you 
will consult the poll books of the different States of this Union, where men and 
propositions claim the suffrages of the people at the same time, you will general- 
ly find that the men get three votes where the proposition gets one. I could call 
attention to numerous instances of this kind which have fallen within my own 
observation. 

We accordingly find that nearly all writers on governmental and social science, 
representing every class of opinion (except a few run-mad red Republicans of 
Germany and France) unite in condemning this theory of direct appeal to the 
people. Montesquieu, in his "Spirit of Laws," speaking of democracy, says: 

"The people, in whom resides the supreme power, ought to do of themselves 
whatever conveniently they can; and what they themselves cannot rightfully 
perform they must do by their ministers. 

"The people are extremely well qualified for choosing those whom they are 
to intrust with a part of their authority. 



61G LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: lUS LIFE, ETC. 

"SlioukI we doubt of the people's namral ability, in respect to the discernment 
of merit, we need only cast an eye on the continual series of surprising elections 
made by the Athenians and Romans, which no one surely will attribute to hazard. 
But are they able to manage an intricate affair — to find out and make a proper 
use of places, occasions, moments? No; as most citizens have a capacity of 
choosing, though they are not sufHciently qualified to be chosen, so the people, 
though capable of calling others to an account for their administration, are in- 
capable of the administration themselves." 

A distinguished Senator has laid down the proposition that, under the power 
to admit new States, Congress is forced by a paramount duty to see that the 
constitution of a State asking admission into the Union embodies the will of the 
majority of the people. Sir, I hold that a constitution presented by the regular 
and legally constituted authority is conclusive upon Congress as to the will of a 
people. We will not allow any such issue to be presented. We assert the riglit 
of the people to form their government; but we hold, and I think I have already 
shown, that the highest rind purest exhibition of their sovereign will is a people 
acting by their own chosen delegates in convention assembled. The Federal 
Government and half of the States of this Union were formed in this way, and 
they need no improvement from the constitutional tinkering of this day. 

To object that the convention may have abused its powers, and that the con- 
stitution should be submitted to a direct popular vote, in order that it may be 
ascertained whether it accords with the will of the people, is to beg the question, 
and to strike at the very root of all constitutional and legal authority. It is an 
objection, not to the constitution of Kansas alone, but to the very genius and 
framework of all representative government. Upon the same ground that a con- 
stitution framed by delegates should be submitted to the people it may also be 
demonstrated that every law enacted by Congress or by a Legislature, and that 
every verdict by a jury or decision of a court, should likewise be submitted for 
the approval of the people. Sir. a delegate iikiji misrepresent the people, a Sena- 
tor or Representative niint misrepresent his constituents; but the remedy does 
not lie here in this central power of the Republic (more liable to abuse than any 
other) ; it lies in the hands of the local constituency, to whom the representatives 
are immediately responsible. And here lies the efficacy and power of our form of 
government. The direct responsibility of our rulers to their constituents, the 
right of suffrage among the people, aided by that great moral engine of freedom, 
the liberty of the press, are the vU iiiriViratrix nnturrr of our political system, 
sufficient to remedy every disorder and throw off every impurity, without resort- 
ing to violent irregularity and revolutionary action. 

When a State applies for admission. Congress is bound to subject her to no 
restrictions except such as Congress may constitutionally impose upon the States 
already composing the Union. There is but one limitation which you are bound 
to impose, and that is that her form of government is republican; but under 
the power to guarantee a republican form of government, you have not the 
right to range with unlimited discretion through every provision of her consti- 
tution, interfere with her internal and local distribution of political power, ad- 
just questions of majority and minority, lay down arbitrary rules of your own as 
to what constitutes repulilictin government, and. by compelling her to conform 
to them, to substitute the will of Congress for hers a.3 to what shall be her fim- 
damental law. Are not the constitutions of the original thirteen States pretty 
fair tests as to what constitutes republican government? Can any one say 
that the Kansas constitution, tried by this test, the only one which you can 
rightfully apply, is not a republican form of government? Where is the fea- 
ture in it contrary to our republican institutions or repugnant to the paramount 
constitution of the Union? 

We are told by a distinguished gentleman that he would "pass over forms, 
ceremonies, and organizations to get down deep to the will of the people." Sir, 
the will of the people can only be obtained through these forms, ceremonies, 
and organizations; and the structure of our government is intended to pro- 
vide these forms and organizations, through which the people can speak authen- 
tically and authoritatively. What can he mean by passing over and disregard- 
ing these forms? The Constitution of the United States is a form; times, 
places, and manner of holding elections, and qualifications of franchise, are but 
forms through which the people exercise their power: this matchless govern- 
ment, springing from the constitution, and the division of power between the 
Federal and State governments, is but an organization. Would he pass over all 
these to get down to what he sees proper to consider the will of the people? The 



APPENDIX, NO. 1. G17 

doctrine is monstrous, dangerous, and disorganizing. It gives to tiie action of 
regular government no more autliority than belongs to an ordinary, voluntary 
assemblage ot citizens outside of the constitution and law. It" tliese views bo 
correct, we had better at once tear down this splendid fabric ol American archi- 
tecture, and discard conventions, Legislatures, and Congress, as incouvenienl. 
cumbrous superfluities, and resort at once to the democratic absolutism of Ath- 
ens. The doctrine has been in Europe omnipotent for pulling down forms, cere- 
monies, and organizations, but powerless for reconstruction — like those serpents 
in the East, which, while they inflict a deathblow, breathe out their own life in 
the wound of their dying victim. 

We are told by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Cox] that the constitution is 
not republican in form, because it prohibits amendment, alteration, or change, 
until after 1S64, and then hampers the perfectly free action of the people by re- 
quiring a majority of two-thirds of the Legislature to concur before they will 
allow the majority to call for amendment. But the climax of antirepublicanism 
is the provision that "no alteration shall be made to affect the rights of prop- 
erty in the ownership of slaves"— a doctrine that would tumble into Irretrievable 
ruin the Federal Constitution and the constitutions of half the States in the Un- 
ion, including that of the gentleman's own State; for there is not one of these 
which does not contain as stringent and dilatory limitations as are found in 
this Kansas constitution. The argument by which he supports this view is 
that the "-Democracy, as taught in Ohio, believes in the repealability of every- 
thing by the popular voice." Do the Democracy of Ohio consider the clauses of 
the constitution securing all those great rights, such as freedom of speech, 
freedom of the press, liberty of conscience, inviolability of property, repealable 
by the popular will? Do the Democracy of Ohio believe in the repealability of 
that clause guaranteeing the right of a State to equality of representation in 
the Senate of the United States? This may be Democracy in Ohio, but I hope it 
is a Democracy conflned to Ohio alone. It may be Republicanism, but it is not 
the constitutional republicanism of America; it is the red republicanism ot 
France. The very tenure by which the gentleman exercises the privilege of 
uttering these objections against the Kr.nsas constitution is an oath to support a 
constitution liable to them all— a constitution imposing the heaviest restrictions 
on the power of amendment; a constitution whose framers intended it, not as an 
instrument of power, but as an instrument of protection against power. 

It would be well lor these gentlemen to consider when and by whom this par- 
ticular-mode of adopting a constitution, which they insist is the only true mode, 
was first established. It was not by the fathers oi this Republic, the men of 
1776 The Federal Constitution was not submitted for adoption to a direct vote 
of the people, nor were the constitutions of the Old Thirteen. The first instance 
in modern times, so far as my researches go. was the constitution of 1799. which 
was submitted to the people of France, and accepted by a vote of three million to 
fifteen hundred. This was in accordance with the teachings of Rousseau— the 
doctrine of unlimited, indivisible, undelegated power of the people — a doctrine 
almost identical in terms to that upon which the opposition to the admission of 
Kansas rests. What was the result? The sovereignty of the people was estab- 
lished and recognized, the king was beheaded, the nobility were banished, the re- 
ligion abolished, property confiscated; and France was converted into one moral 
and political volcano, from the conflict of whose discordant elements arose the 
demon of centralization and military despotism, the rod of whose power smote 
down all the valuable rights of the people and the cherished interests of human- 
ity It was during the progress of this fanatical and bloody drama that one of 
its most conspicuous and sanguinary actors, appalled by the magnitude of the 
power that he had evoked, exclaimed: "Do you not see that the project of appeal 
to the people tends but to destroy the representative body? It is sporting with 
the sovereign majesty of the people to return to it a work which it charges you 
to terminate promptly." . , , ^.x ^■ 

The next constitution submitted to the people was the consular constitution 
of 1S02 (onlv three years later) making Napoleon Bonaparte consul for life, 
and conferring on him the power of naming his successor and the Senate— in 
other words, a despotism. It was submitted to the people of France, and ac- 
cepted bv a vote of 3,568.885 against 8.374; and from that time the unlimited 
sovereignty of the people has been the potent instrument by which the Napo- 
leons have fastened upon France a despotism more grinding and debasing than 
that of the Autocrat of Russia. The fathers of our Republic proceeded on prin- 
ciples totallv opposite. Adopting as a fundamental dogma that all political 



618 LlVirS Q. C. LAMAJ!: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

power springs from the people, they insisted and incorporated it into their or- 
ganic law that this power should not be unlimited and absolute. They accord- 
ingly established our grand system of representative government, with its 
checks, balances, guarantees, and organic laws — the noblest political institution 
that adorns the pages of the history of civilization, and which experience has 
shown to be the only means of securing and diffusing among the people that 
broad civil liberty which constitutes the distinguishing features of the Amer- 
ican and British Governments. I say British Government: for the statesmen of 
1776 founded our institutions, not upon Utopian theories, but upon those great 
fundamental principles of the common law inherited from our Saxon ancestors, 
which guaranteed to English freemen the right of personal security, personal 
liberty, and private property, with their judicial safeguards and protecting 
forms, as inviolable and irrepealable by any power on earth. 

The convention in Kansas, having declared in their fundamental law that the 
right of property in slaves, already existing, shall not be interfered with, has 
only given a constitutional sanction to a principle as old as the foundations of 
free government: and. sir. Congress is bound by the most solemn obligation that 
honor can impose to admit her with this very clause in her constitution. Sir. 
wfc of the South demand the redemption of your pledge. The issue is boldly ten- 
dered, and we are ready to go before the great Areopagus of the American people 
upon it; and when the enemies of Kansas shall attempt to justify their opposi- 
tion to her by invoking a principle which has deluged Europe in blood, only to 
sink her into more degraded despotism, we will justify her admission upon the 
principles which lie at the foundation of our Republic. We will call upon the 
people to stand true to the traditions of our ancestors and the practice of the 
government when Washington was President and the men of the Revolution 
ministered at the altars of liberty. 

One word on the bill introduced into this House by a member from Massachu- 
setts [Mr. Banks] calling another convention in Kansas for the purpose of 
framing a second constinition. to be submitted to the people for acceptance or 
rejection. Mr. Chairman. Congress has no more right to call a convention of 
the people of Kansas than it has the right to call such a convention in New 
York. By the Act of Congress and the action of her people the entire relations 
of Kansas to this government have been changed. It is no longer a Territory of 
these United States; she has. by your own authority and permission, thrown 
off the habiliments of territorial dependence, and stands now a State, clothed 
with all the attributes and powers of a State, and asks admission as an equal in 
this noble confederation of sovereignties. You may reject her application If 
you will, but it will be at your own peril. To remand her to her territorial con- 
dition you cannot, any more than you can roll back to their hidden sources the 
waters of the Mississippi. Kansas is a separate, organized, living State, with 
all the nerves and arteries of life in full development and vigorous activity. Be- 
tween your laws and her people she can interpose the broad and radiant shield 
of State sovereignty, and may laugh to scorn your enabling acts. 



Appendix No. 2. 

ON IMPORTANT TOPICS OF THE DAY. 

Newspaper Report of the Address Delivered before the Legidalure of Mississippi, and the 
Citizens, at Jackson, November S, 185S. 

Although a comparative stranger to the most of his audience, Mr. Lamar was 
sure that among Mississippians there was always a bond of union that bound 
them together, and never failed to make them friends. He knew that a welcome 
so warm and disinterested could come from none other than a patriotic commu- 
nity: and he highly appreciated the opportunity of addressing those who. though 
not his constituents, had extended to him a mark of esteem and kindness which 
was doubly dear. 

In 1S51 the people of Mississippi published to the world a proclamation of 
principles known as the Union Platform, but which should be called the Missis- 
sippi Platf'>rm. It contained two distinct provisions. One was the feature of 
acquiescen ,« in the compromise measures of IS.iO: the other, looking to the fu- 
ture, laid down the line beyond which free-soil aggression should not pass. 
This latter portion of that platform still exists in undiminished vigor now. and 
will continue to operate with deathless energies: and from the time of its adop- 
tion to the present day, men of all parties in Mississippi have stood by it, deter- 



APPENDIX, NO. 2. (JIO 

mined to maintain its pledges witli unwavering support and sleepless vigilance, 
it was this which gave him the greatest pleasure in appearing before them. For 
he felt that upon the great paramount questions of the day which arc nearest 
to their hearts there was no diversity of sentiment between his audience and 
himself to reconcile; that their views were his views, their feelings his feelings, 
and their destiny his destiny. But in casting his eyes over the assembly he 
cotild not but feel that there were other assemblages in this great Republic in 
which the same harmony does not prevail. He could not but feel the contrast 
between his present position compared to what it was a few months ago, when 
he was amid the exciting scenes and angry collisions of the last session of Con- 
gress. 

Early in the session Kansas applied for admission into the Union as a State. 
But, though the Federal Government in all its departments was bound by the 
most solemn pledges which honor could impose to admit that people, with or 
without slavery, the entire free-soil North, without an exception, repudiated the 
pledge, denied the claim, and, to the extent of their power, i-ejected her applica- 
tion. That was a gloomy period in the history of our Republic; for, to our 
dismay, many Northwestern ;n£n, in whose fidelity to the sacred principles of 
the constitution we had been taught to repose unlimited confidence, failed us in 
the hour of trial, and took their place in the ranks of our mortal enemies. 

Among them was one endeared to the South by the recollection of his former 
devotion to her rights. He too went over to the enemy, and shot back a Par- 
thian arrow into the ranks of his former allies. That man was Stephen A. 
Douglas, once regarded by the South as the model of political consistency and 
purity. The speaker was not among those who thought that a long career of no- 
ble service should be forgotten on account of one error or blunder. It was but 
natural that a spirited people like ours should admire the bold and dashing style 
in which Douglas handles his competitor, yet they cannot forget his treachery 
and Punic faith. They cannot forget that all that force and aggressiveness of 
character, that intellectual energy and power, which he is now exhibiting on the 
hustings of Illinois, were invoked again.st their rights, their interests, and their 
honor in the late session of Congress, when, striking hands with Seward and 
Hale, he ranged himself under the banner of that hideous fanaticism which 
threatens to crush the constitution and the South. They despise and defy the 
impotent malice of Lincoln, but they accept no such championship as that 
which Douglas offers. What is it? Why. that a Territorial Legislature, a little 
police affair, may lawfully exclude Southern institutions from the Territories of 
the Union. 

And yet this same man, in the last Congress, denied to the people of a nascent 
State the right to establish slavery in their constitution unless it was submitted 
back to the people for ratification. We are told, however, that the issue is con- 
fined to Douglas and Lincoln, and that we must choose between them. And have 
we Southerners sunk so low as to be forced to accept an issue so dishonoring 
and ignoble? Hitherto the South, although a minority, has. by the courage and 
pride and union and intelligence of her people, made her own issues and dictated 
her own policy. So far from allowing Northern men to force their views upon 
her, she has ever impressed her own views upon the national policy. There is 
scarcely an event which adorns the political history of the country which is not 
the offspring of the Southern mind or the achievement of a Southern hand. 
And now, having lost our political equality, shall we lose our pride also, and be 
content to follow along the trail of Mr. Douglas' inconsistencies and tergiversa- 
tions? Shall we be told by the Democracy of Illinois, or by the Democracy of 
the North, that it "is true that neither of these men is acceptable to the South, 
that our man has trampled under foot your rights as you understand them, has 
outraged your public sentiment as represented by your great and wise states- 
men, has defeated your cherished policy, and is now engaged in an effort to tear 
down the glorious administration which is interposing the only check between 
your section and the overpowering antislavery section of the North; but, for 
all that, take him you shall, or you shall have the black Republican. Lincoln?" 
If that be the best issue which the Democracy of the North can pi-esent us, then 
perish the Democracy of the North! and, if need be, perish the Union! but pre- 
serve unblemished the honor, and unhurt the rights, of the South. 

Returning "to the events of the last session, Mr. Lamar referred to the bold 
and defiant attitude assumed by the Free-soilers upon the defection of Douglas 
and his followers. It was then that William H. Seward announced that startling 
programme of Northern antislavery action which fell with such appalling effect 



G-20 LCCIl'S Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

upon the Southern mind. He congratulated the North upon its brilliant future; 
he welcomed Douglas and his allies as recruits in the ranks of free-soilism, and 
promised him the rewards of his treachery; and it was not until they paid his 
treachery in its own coin by nominating Lincoln for the Senate that Mr. Douglas 
took ground against black Republicanism. He said that the North would soon 
wield the machinery ot the Federal Government, and he expected to live to see 
the day when within the limits of this Union the footprints of not a single slave 
could be seen; and in his triumph he advised Southern men by timely conces- 
sions to mitigate the fats which they could not avert. Here Mr. Lamar alluded 
in terms of severity to the course of Bell and Critt-enden and other Southern 
men, who seemed ready to bow to the haughty mandates of this vainglorious 
foe of the South. He also paid a tribute to the patriotic and noble stand taken 
by ZoUicoffer and the other Americans of Tennessee, and Trippe and Hill, of 
Georgia, which was responded to with enthusiastic applause. 

He then referred to the settlement of the Kansas question. After answering 
some objections which had been urged to the measure, he expressed his convic- 
tion that the principle on which the bill was based secured to the South the 
unlimitefl right of extending her institutions, if carried out in good faith. He 
was not among those, however, who regarded the measure as a final settlement of 
the slavery question. It had been spoken of as the rainbow which betokens the 
departure of the storm. Alas for political rainbows! They most frequently he- 
span the brow of an advancing, not a receding, cloud. If asked if the principle 
of this bill would be carried out in good faith, he could only answer: When has 
the North ever observed in good faith any settlement into which she has entered 
with the South on this subject? The history of the North in all contests in 
which the rights of the South were involved, might be written in two words: 
Piuiiai fiilr/!. 

Continuing to review the political history of the country, he touched upon 
other epochs, all of which he discussed with consummate eloquence and great 
boldness. He asked how long any compromise had ever remained as a monu- 
ment of Northern fidelity. The Ordinance of 1787, by which Virginia ceded the 
vast territory of the northwest to free soil, was ruthlessly trampled under foot. 
The Missouri Compromise, too, was treated in the same manner by Northern 
cupidity, it having been violated in less than four months after its passage. Her 
conduct was such as to teach us that nothing could be expected from her. Cali- 
fornia, upon the plan she had always adhered to, was dragged into the Union 
over the violated rights of the Southern States. Upon this sliding scale of com- 
promises we had been invariably cheated out of otir rights. 

The distinguished orator, after presenting his views upon the national issues 
of the day, drew a parallel between the North and South in point of wealth, pros- 
perity, and education: and from the crushing array of statistics which he brought 
to bear in the discussion of this subject, all were convinced that, though we could 
present to the commercial world no men whose fortunes would challenge com- 
parison with those of an Astor or a Lawrence, yet the general distribution of 
wealth was such as to afford each and every man the necessities of life; and that 
we were unlike the other portion of the confederacy, where one might see side 
by side bloated and overgrown wealth and squalid poverty. Here there was a 
greater equality of wealth and, of necessity, a corresponding homogenousness in 
the character of our population; here we witnessed no revolutions of the poorer 
class driven by power ot hunger to cry for "bread or blood." His whole argu- 
ment on this point was a masterly exposition of the real condition of the two sec- 
tions in a moral, religious, and educational point. V,'e would not impair the 
happy impression which it niade upon his delighted auditory by attempting a 
synopsis. 

In conclusion, he returned his thanks to the ladies for the attention which 
they had given his remarks, which he feared had seemed to them dry and prolix; 
and' yet there was no subject in which the ladies should take a more direct and 
vitalinterest than the preservation of the benign institutions of the South. It is 
universallv conceded that no other institutions in the world were so favorable 
to the development of all that is pure, lovely, and virtuous in woman, and so 
well calculated to bring out and intensify those exquisite graces and finer traits 
which are her peculiar adornment. The most perfect and complete of all God's 
creatures is a high-bred, well-educated Southern matron. In no other nation do 
you see so much tenderness, so much goodness, so much purity, with such ex- 
quisite refinement and delicacy. The reason is obvious: in the South, homage to 
female virtue is cherished as a "household God." 



APPENDIX, NO. 3. G'il 

Appendix No. 3. 

OX THK ELKCTION OF SPEAKER, AND IN REPLY T( » lIO\. \V. KEhl.oiKI, 

OF ILLINOIS. 

Speech hi (lie Jlouse of Representatives, Dcccmhir 7, 1S5H. 

Mr. Kellogg, of Illinois, having addressed the House at some length, Mr. Lamar 
said: 

Mr. Cii'i-k: I wish to make my acknowledgments to the gentleman from Illinois 
[Mr. Kellogg] for the very explieit, frank, and ingenuous statement which he submit- 
ted to tlie House this morning. I desire, however, to rei)ly to the charge which some 
gentlemen have made as to the undue sensibility which the Soutli has exhibited upon 
the subject of tbe pamphlet or circular now under consideration. 

The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Sherman], the recognized organ of that side of the 
House, I'omplained that we had brought this question needlessly before the House. 
Tlie gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Kilgore], in an attitude and manner of offensive 
defiance, denounced the resolution of the gentleman from Missouri as a firebrand 
upon the floor; and still another gentleman [Mr. Palmer], with a classic elegance of 
language characteristic of his style, and with a refinement of manner peculiar to him- 
self, spoke of it as lugging the negro into the House, and said that he must be put out. 
Other gentlemen, and one from New York, asked, in a tone of triumph: "Who is to 
blame for this agitation? Whom does the fault rest upon?" From every one on that 
side we hear language of lemonstrance and rebuke of Southern men for rising and 
expressing their sentiments in relation to the treasonable doctrines of that circular. 

Now sir, I wish to submit a few remarks by way of vindicating Southern Repre- 
sentatives from the charge of needless agitation upon this subject. Scarcely six weeks 
have elapsed since a foray was made upon one of the sovereign States of this Vnion 
by a band of lawless, desperate men, fresh from the scenes of bloodshed, arson, mur- 
der, and treason in Kansas, of which it has been the seat. A public armory belong- 
ing to the Federal Government is seized; Southern citizens — innocent, law-abiding 
citizens — are taken prisoners; peaceable citizens attending to their ordinary business 
are shot down like dogs in the streets of a Southern town; Southern soil is polluted 
with the blood of traitors to the State and to the Union. After being taken prisoners 
their corresi>ondenee is laid before the country. The face of that conespondence 
shows that the leader of these blood-stained desperadoes was in comnmnication with 
men distinguished f)r their intelligence, for their wealth, and for their moral worth, 
all over the North. 

More than that, a distinguished Senator of the United States— I put out of the way 
everything that he has said prior to that occasion; I do not choose to throw any light 
upon this transaction from the i)revious speeches of that Senator; but that corre- 
S|iondence shows that that Senator, the Corypheus of Northern antislavery sentiment 
— is implicated in this lawless, treasonable jiroceeding; a proceeding to excite a serv- 
ile insurrection, the object of which is to place the South a bleeding, mangled victim 
at the foot of Northerii power. I say the fiice of the correspondence shows it. 1 
make no charge U]ion Senator Seward; I do not even express the ojjinion that he is 
guilty. I hope that he may show innocence of the charge. I am only showing what 
were the condition and circumstances in which the Representatives of the Southern 
States met these gentlemen here upon the floor of the House. 

Well, sir, no sooner do we meet here upon this floor, than through the agency and 
industry of tbe press of the country there is disclosed a circular foreshadowing the 
very events which were consummated upon the soil of Virginia, proscribing Southern 
slaveholders, sociallv, ])oliticallv, and religiously, sowing firebrands and arrows, dis- 
cord and death, throughout the" laud; and we find it with your signatures attached to 
it and vourselves recommending it. 

I ask" if there was not occasion for sensibility. I ask you if there was not a pro- 
priety and fitness in invoking a disclaimer from that part of the House. The gentle- 
man who now bears the banner of that party says they have said nothing, hut have 
" preserved a studied silence." Ave, sir; you have. You understand the policy of a 
wise and masterly inactivity. [A'pplause.'] You know there are occasions when the 
truth not spoken, which ought to be spoken, will pierce like an arrow and rankle like 
poison. [Renewed api>lause.] And yon observed this studied silence because you 
knew that from it in future would spring forth baleful and discordant utterances. 
That, sir, is the secret of that studied silence. I commend the policy of the gentle- 
men, but it will not avail you; we will have an explicit avowal upon this and upon 
other subjects. 



622 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: Ills LIFE, ETC. 

Well, sir, with these facts palpably and undeniably confessed, written upon every 
newspaper, a resolution is introduced, giviuK {.'cntlcmen an opportunity for disclaim- 
ing the treasonable utterances of that pamjjhiet. How is it received? Why, with 
tliat same freedom of manners which they claim for their principles: with a gufl'aw, 
with uncoiirteous and indecent laughter. 

What follows? Under oneof the mostable and solemn appeals that I have ever lis- 
tened to, when the gentleman from Mrginia [Mr. Millson] had called attention to the 
fact that they had met this call with contemptuous silence, they still resjionded with 
laughter; and these were the circumstances, and these the positions, in which this con- 
trovei'sy stood, up to the moment in which the gentleman from Ohio took the floor. 
* )ne gentleman, to whom I have already alluded, said that we had brought the negro 
here, and that he must lie put out. Let us see you do it. [Applause.] 

Sir, there are twenty mendjers from the South standing upon this floor by virtue 
of the negro, not as property, but as " jiersons not free." Put them out, will you? Sir, 
your fathers and my fiithers did not put the negro out. They put him, as an institu- 
tion of property and of society and of government, in the constitution which you 
gentlemen swore to sup))ort. [Apjjlause.] The\' did more than that. They put in 
that constitution which you swore to support a clause making it the duty of Con- 
gress to suppress insurrection; and when yon signed your name to a document which 
encouraged and incited servile insurrection, you did it in the teeth of an oath to sup- 
press insurrection. [Ajiplause.] This is not all. That same constitution makes it 
your duty to return the negro to his owner, even when he escapes into your own non- 
slaveholding State. Not only that; that same constitution, framed by your fathers 
and my fatliers in a lofty spirit of enlarged patriotism, also made the institution of 
slavery part and parcel of this Federal Government. It now holds here titles to this 
floor, and is an important element of Federal power by virtue of that instrument. 
Put the negro out at your jjeril ! No, sir ; it cannot be done. We of the South, under 
the necessities of our position, see what is our mission. Regarding that constitution 
as the instrument of om- protection, we are determined to maintain its sacred compro- 
mises. You being a majority, and looking ujifm it as an instrument of restraint upon 
your power, have taken issue with the constitution and are attempting to throw ofl' 
its restrictions. That is the tight between us, and we are ready to meet it here. 
[Applause upon the floor and in the galleries.] 

Mr. Clerk, it is not my purpose to discuss the question of disunion upon this floor. 
I have no desire to discompose the nerves of any of those timid gentlemen to w'hom the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens] referred yesterday. I know that it was 
spoken inirony. I know thatthese gentlemen areby no means timid. From the bot- 
tom of my heart I Ijelieve that your object is to drive "us to disunion, and I have no idea 
that the intrepid gentlemen from Pennsylvania will feel the slightest apprehension. 
No, sir; I almost tremble for the South when I recollect that theopposing forces will be 
led by the distinguished hero of the " Buckshot War." * [Great laughter and applause.] 
Whatever may be the result, however gloomy the catastroplie, his saltatory accomplish- 
ments will enable him to leap out of any ditticnlty in which he may be involved. 
[Laughter and applause.] We have talked aliout secession in the South sometimes, and 
I would desire to take the gentleman down into my State to give my peojile a practical 
illustration of peaceable secession ; for I understand that he gave, in a consjiicuons way, 
a practical illustration of that doctrine upon a ceitain memorable occasion. [Laughter.] 
On that point, then, I have nothing to say. All that I desire to say, Mr. Clerk is, that, 
for one, I am no disunionistpcr se. I am devoted to the constitution of this Vnion ; and 
so long as this Republic is a great tolerant repnlilic, throwing its loving arms around 
both sections of the country, I, for one, will bestow every talent which God has given 
me for its i)romotion and its glory. [Applause.] Sir, if there is one idea touching 
merely human affairs which gives me more of mental exaltation than another, it is the 
conception of this grand Republic, this great Union of sovereign States, holding niil- 
lions of l)rave, resolute men in peace and order, not by lirute force, not by standing 

• " BiicUsliot War "—.illusion to a political controvovsv in Pennsylvania in 183S. There were two 
parties, ilu- Democrats and tlie anti-Masons. Tlic former had carried the Legislature; but in the 
or^'anization of the Lower House the latter contepted certain seats, and undevtocik to control the 
House. Each party organized separately. Tlie agitation reached tlie Senate, though not to the 
same extent. Mr. .Stevens, although a menilier ol' the Senate, was one of the leaders of the anti- 
Masons. -'To aid in this intamons scheme of subverting the goyernnient, Stevens induced Gov. 
Ititner to call out the military; and some twelve hundred or fourteen hundred volunteers, with all 
the pomp of war, with Inicksiiot and ball, were quartered for weeks at Harrisliurg for the purpose 
of iniinii.i.iiing the nenmcracy." It is said lliat at one time the excitemeut in the Senate, was so 
great that there was prospect of a riot among the memliers. and that Mr. Stevens, with some of 
hi.s friends, made their escape through a back window. The efforts of Stevens failed, and the 
Democrats caiTied the <!ia.y.— National Intelligencer, istiti. 



APPENDIX, XO. .5. 623 

armies, indeed by no visible embo<)iinent of law, but by the silent omnipotence of 
one grand, glorious thought — the CouBtitution of the United States. [Appliuisc] That 
constitution is the life and soul of tliis great government. I'ut out that light, and 
v*-here is "that promethean heat which can its light relume?'' That is our platform. 
We stand upon it. We intend to abide by it and to maintain it, and we will submit to 
no persistent violation of its provisions. I do not say it for any purpo.se of nienace, 
but for the purjiose of defining my own position. When it is violated, persi.stently 
violated, when its spirit is no longer observed upon this floor, I war u|i(jn your 
government, I am against it. I raise then the banner of secession, and I \>ill fight 
under it as long as the blood flows and ebbs in my veins. [Applause.] 

But, sir, these gentlemen have assured us that wlieu tliey signed that document in- 
citing to insurrection they did not know Vfhat was in it, and tliat tliey had no inten- 
tion of indorsing its sentiments. Tliat document emanated from a man by the name 
of Helper. Two years ago it was made the basis of an argument in the Senate Cham- 
ber by a distinguished United States Senator. Its facts were controverted, and the 
character of the author was held up to derision and scorn, by a Senator from North 
Carolina. The discussion in reference to that book was one .of the most pronounced 
features of that stormy session. Why, sir, it was the occasion of a brutal and violent 
assault upon this floor upon the person of a member of this House. Yet gentlemen, 
on the iiice of these notorious facts, indorse him in hhtnk. Tliey indorse all that he 
could sav and all that be might sav. I honor them for repairing tlie mischief to the 
extent that they liave; but, sir, it comes too late for the victims of the Harper's Fer- 
ry tragedy. Tliat was the logical and practical carrying out of your recoinmendation. 
Brown doubtless read it. Yours was the mere idea, but his raid in Virginia was the 
practical illustration of that idea. He crystallized that idea into action. You may 
now get u]i and say that you did not know what ^ou were signing; but it will not 
reachthediill, cold ear of John Brown and his associates, who now fill felons' graves. 
You cannot, by tli.at disclaimer, call back into life t be men who were shot down like wild 
beasts in the "streets of Harper's Ferry; and I call ui)on you, gentlemen, now, to rise 
and answer, in the name of God, are you guiltless of the blood of John Brown and 
his co-conspirators, and the innocent men the victims of his ruthless vengeance? 

But you assure us, notwithstanding your indorsement of that circular, that you in- 
tend not to violate a single right of Soutliern citizens; that yon do not intend to come 
ill conflict with a single'constitutional right of the Southern people or of the Southern 
States. The gentleman from Ohio made that declaration, and the gentleman from 
Illinois [Mr. Kellogg] asserted, with his usual and characteristic impetuosity, thatany 
man who dared to charge upon any one of his constituents a desire to interfere with 
a single constitutional right of Southern people belied them. Now, sir, I have this 
to answer; John Brown would have said precisely the same thing; he did say, I am 
told, that he ilid not intend to interfere with a single constitutional right of any 
Southern man. Fortunately for the South, our constitutional rights are not to be 
graduated by your prostituted standard of constitutional law. Now I appeal to gen- 
tlemen right here to know what yr)U mean when you say that you will not inter- 
fere with our constitutional rights. I>o vou mean oui- rightsas you understand them? 
Where is the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Kellogg], with whom I have in times past 
lieen on agreeal^le terms of courtesy? The ingenuous manner with which lie spoke 
this morning induces me to interrogate him a little furtlier. Is it not the i>urpose of 
your part\' to liring to bear all the machinery of this government— the executive, the 
judiciary '(by remodeling it if necessarvl, and the legislative— to strike with its Con- 
gressional arm the institutions of the Southern States from the Territories of the 
Union? I ask you that, and I ask vou if you do not know that when you strike 
slavery from tlie Territories you have' taken the initial and most decisive steji toward 
the destruction of slaverv in'the States. You know that that is your policy; and if 
there is any difference between vou and John Brown, the difference is between the 
impetuous 'charge of the rude Cossack and the stealthy operation of the sapper and . 
miner. Why cannot I get a response to that question? 

Mr. Keli.oog, of Illinois: I made wdiat I supposed would be a clear, distinct, and un- 
qualified statement of my views in relation to slavery in the Territories. I will make 
it again if the gentleman desires it. I stateil that in the States slaverywas a matter 
of their own. I believe it to be a State institution, not a national institution. As a 
State institution, I treat it as such, for the constitution recognizes it as a right. Be- 
yond the limits of a State the institution finds no warrant in the constitution ; and, 
believing as I do that it is a moral, social, and political wrong, I said then, and I say 
now, that, with .all constitutional power, I will resist its aggression. [AiJiilause and 
hisses in the g.allerv.] Tliese hisses and applauses in the gallery are all immaterial to 
me, and I know they are to the gentleman from Mississippi ; and I remark here that I 



624; LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

and the gentleman from Mississippi, I douljt not — between whom and myself Iiave 
been social relations of a frientUy character — both desire that these manifestations 
shall cease upon eitlier side. 

Mu. Lamar: 1 have no feeling whatever in this controversy. All I want— and I 
know that I shall get an explicit, unqualitied, and distinct avowal from the gentleman — 
is to know whether )-oii are not in favor of exerting the power of the government, and 
especially of Congress, to exclude slavery from the Territories, in order that tliere may 
be no more slave States. 

Mr. Kellogg, of Illinois : Before the country and my God, I declare I desire that the 
blighting curse of slavery should never extend beyond the Stjites in which it is. As 
a State institution you liave it, and you can perpetuate it in your State; and I pledge 
3'ou that we will not interfere with it. Is the answer explicit? If it is not, I will 
endeavor to make it so. 

Mr. Lamar: I have no doubt that the want of explicitness in the answer is owing to 
mv own vagueness in putting the question. I acquit the gentleman of any intentional 
effort to evade an answer. He now, as I understand, asserts that it is the desire of 
his party that slavery should not extend beyond the limits of the States in wliich it 
now exists. The question to which 1 desire to direct his attention is, whether he does 
not intend to accomplish that desire liy exerting all the power of the government to 
exclude slavery from the Territories belonging to the Union? 

Ml!. Kellogg, of Illinois: In every eonstituticjnal way, I do. 

Mr. Lamar: I ask the gentleman if he does not believe that the passage of an act 
excluding slavery from the Territories is a constitutional way. 

Mr. Kellogg, of Illinois: I believe it is. [Applause and hisses in the galleries.] I 
believe that we now understand each other. 

Mr. Lamar: Yes, sir, we do understand each other; and I am rejoiced that the gen- 
tleman has told us what he means when he savs that he and his party will resjiect our 
constitutinnal rights. He declares that they will confine slavery to its present limits; 
and tlie vast domain now belonging to our common government, or herealter to be 
acquired, shall be appropriated to the Free-soil North. But why don't these gentlemen 
continue their responses? Are the revelations ill-timed and emliarrassing? " Ye gods, 
strike these dumb Republicans and make them speak!" [Laughter, applatise, and 
hisses.] AVhy so still upon this occasion? Is it another specimen of your " studied 
silence?" 

Mr. Stewart, of Pennsylvania: By the rules of the House there can be but one 
speech at a time. 

IMr. Lamar: I am glad to hear that exceedingly luminous remark. [Laughter.] I 
tliank the House for its attention ; and, as I have disclosed precisely the positions 
which have been occui)ied, I will not detain tlie House any longer. I desire, how- 
ever, to say one word to the u'entleman from New York [:\Ir. Clark], who said (and I 
listened to him, hohling m v Ijreath in silent wonder) that he had never seen a known 
aliolitionist until he came t;o this city. All I have to say is, to commend to that gen- 
tleman from New York City a sentiment of an old maxim: " Know thyself." [Laugh- 
ter and applause.] 

Appendix No. 4. 
SOUTHERN SLAVERY AND SOUTHERN SLAVEHOLDERS. 

Speech in. the House of RepresentativeK, Febniary SI, 1S60. 

The House being in Committee of the AVhole on the State of the Union, and having 
under consideration the President's Annual Message, Mr. Lamar said: 

Mr. Chairinan: I obtained the floor several days ago for the puriiose of replying to 
some arguments advanced in a very ingenious and well-considered speech from the 
gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Ferry]. I desire to begin my remarks to-day by 
a quotation from the philosopher and poet, Coleridge, which I will thank the clerk 
to read for me. 

The clerk read as follows: "An American commander, who had deserved and re- 
ceived the bi^diest honors which his grateful country, through her assembled Represen- 
tatives, could bestow upon him, once said to me, with a sigh: ' In an evil hour for my 
country did the French and Spaniards abandon Louisiana to the United States. \\ e 
were not sufficiently a country before; and should we ever be mad enough to drive 
the English from Canada and her other North American Provinces, we shall soon 
cease to be a country at all. Without local attaehnient, without national honor, we 
shall resemble a swarm of insects that settle on the fruits of the earth to corrupt and 



APPENDIX, NO. 4. G25 

consume them, rather than men who lovo and cleave to the land of their forefathers. 
After a shapeless anarchy and a series of (^ivil wars we shall at last he formed into 
many conntries, nnless the vices engendered in the ]>roecss shonid demand lurther 
punishment, and we should previously fall heneatii the despotism of some military 
adventurer, like a lion, consumed by an inward disease, prostrate and helpless beneath 
the beak and talons of a vulture, or yet meaner bird of prey.' " 

The distinguished commander there referred to, Jlr. Chairman, was Decatur. No 
one can read tliat declaration without feeling some disposition to inquire whether we 
are about to realize its fallilhnent. The animosities tbat exist between the two sec- 
tions of the Confederacy, the tliscord that reigned for seven long weeks on this floor, 
are fearful tokens of a deep-seated disorder in our political system. 

My object to-day is to inquire how far my constituents and the people with w'hom 
they are associated are responsible for the existing condition of things. Mississippi, 
sir, has grown up under this Federal Union. There is not within her limits a propri- 
etor who does not hold his home under a grant from the Federal Government. Her 
noble university and her common schools are all established by donations from the 
publico domain, which she has received in couimon with all the new States. It is true 
that in the special and apiireeiable advantages of Federal legislation {such as discrim- 
inatiims in favor of industrial pursuits and commercial enterprise, and the return of 
taxation in the form of government expenditures) slie receives far less than an av- 
erage. She has no ships to particijiate in the monopoly granted to American vessels 
of the coasting trade, and the benefit of tonnage duties in their favor in the foreign 
trade. Her population have no fishing or other bounties from the national treasury, 
and the tarifl' on imports does not operate to protect the productions of her industry. 
She has no army of contractors or Federal officers, nor are there any public buildings 
of imperial magnificence constructed by the government within her limits; but she is 
prosperous, and the hearts of her people beat truer to the Union than to their own 
tranquillity. Nor will she be driven from her devotion, except by causes which she 
has not created and by consequences for wliich she is not responsible. Mississippi 
has never declared herself in favor of disunion, pfr se. She will not make that dec- 
laration until she liecomes convinced that her sister States North are deUt)erately de- 
termined to endanger her internal and social institutions, or to impair her dignity 
and equality as a Confederate State. 

Now, sir,"l sliould not be candid if did not say that there are many, perhaps a 
majority, in my State who do not speak with the same reserve ami caution as I am 
doing on tins occasion. The obvious and unmistakable tokens of design in the long-con- 
tinued and crafty agitation of this slavery question have produced alienation and 
distrust. It is aunanimous sentiment in the South that the existence of this Re- 
iniblican organizatifm is a standing menace to her peace and security, and a stand- 
ing insult to lier character. More especially have the recent events in Virginia, the 
discordant proceedings of this House, and the angi-y discussion on the Heljier liook, 
created a tone and tendency in the public feeling which must tell unhappily on the 
political transactions of our country for a long series of years. 

I was pained, during that discuss'ion, to hear the distinguished gentleman from Ohio 
[Mr. Corwin] ask, in a tone of levity, which evinced how lightly he esteemed the tem- 
])er of our people: "Why, gentleman, can a small book like tlie Helper Compend en- 
danger your proud institutions? " Sir, a million of such books could not for an in- 
stant affect the South, but for the conviction that it represents and embodies the sen- 
timents of a large class of the Northern people. You, gentlemen, who have disclaimed 
and repudiated its jmiclical recommmdnlioiis, do not deny, I believe you all admit, 
that the fundamental doclrlae of the book— that slavery is a great moral, social, and po- 
litical wrong, to be opposeil by the government everywhere and under all circum- 
stances, by all constitutional means; its extension to be prohibited, and the powers 
of this government to be applied to confine it with a view to its extinction — is the pre- 
douiinant opinion of a large mass of the Northern peoide ; that it infects their literature, 
pervades their jurisprudence, is inculcated in their theolog}% controls their local legis- 
lation, and constitutes this day the sole creed of a political party which commands a 
majority of States, and overwlielming majorities in States, at the North. 

:Sfow,"sir, this is a portentous fact; for a moral sentiment thus diffiised among the 
majority of a great people will work itself out into practical action, and the law, fun- 
damental or statute, which oljstructs its progress to development must yield before it 
or be overborne by it. 

Sir, institutions and constitutions and laws and governments are at last but exter- 
nal structures whose roots are in tlie moral and intellectal life of the jieople for whom 
they exist; and any revolution in that moral and mental life must have its corre- 
sponding effect upon institutions subject to its influence. 
40 



626 LUCIUS Q. C. LA MA II: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

Xow, sir, among a great, earnest, and religious people, whose moral and religious 
conviction is that slavery is a "sin against God and a crime against humanity," in the 
language of the gentleman from Connecticut [Mi-. Ferry], I ask what countenance or 
support will be given to a constitution which sanctions that sin, or to institutions 
which uphold and estaljlish that crime. Let, sir, the party which represents this sen- 
timent get possession of this government, intrench itself in all its departments, arm 
itself with its jjower ; and I ask if the barriers of the constitution, the forms of law, 
the obligations of humanity, and the sovereignty of the States will not all melt down 
in its fiery path. Is it strange, sir, that our people should think of withdrawing their 
imperiled institutions h'om tlie sweep of this fanatical revolution? And yet, sir, if a 
Soutliern gentleman, from a heart oppressed with gloomy forebodings fcjr his country, 
expresses any such sentiment upon this floor, forthwith these Republican gentlemen 
— aye, sir, and grave Senators — seize upon it, tear it from its context, misrepresent the 
spirit which prompted its utterance, and send it forth grouped with other expres- 
sions similarly garbled, to arouse jiassion, inflame prejudice, and madden fanaticism. 
Sii-, the calamity of the times is that the people of the North do not understand the 
people of the South, and it is to the interest of a certain class of politicians to perpet- 
uate the misunderstanding. 

Tlie gentleman from Connecticut, sir, in his speech a few days since, i-epeated the 
assertion of tlie gentleman from tlhio [Mr. Corwin] that it was the policy of the 
founders of our Republic to j^revent the establishment of slavery in new communi- 
ties. In my oiiinion, a greater error was never committed upon this floor. My own 
State is a standing refutation of the proposition. Sir, slavery exists this day in Mis- 
sissijipi by the encouragement — certainly with the consent — of this Federal Govern- 
ment when it was in the hands of the founders of our Reputilic. By the act of 179.S 
tlie President was authorized to extend over the Mississippi Territory the same gov- 
ernment which existed northwest of the Ohio, excepting the last clause of the famous 
ordinance prohibiting slavei-y, anil that was repealed. And upon the motion of Mr. 
Thatcher, of Massachusetts, to protect wliat he called " the rights of man," the Wil- 
niot Proviso j>rinciple was proposed to be extended over IMississijipi, and received at 
first but twelve votes, and uiion tlie last proposition but one vote. Now, sir, this 
seems to me to be a legislative declaration to exclude the conclusion that theie was 
any desire upon tlie jiart of tlie founders of our Republic to prevent the establish- 
ment of slavery in new communities. It certainly displays the considerate caution 
which then existed on this subject. It shows that there was no disposition on the 
part of the founders of our Republic to interfere with the delicate relation in new 
Territories, and it would have been a jiolicy of peace bad this precedent been followed 
in all subsequent legislation. This act shows that the United States gave their free 
and spontaneous consent that slaves mif;ht be carried and held in Mississi)iiii as 
]iroperty, and that her freemen were at the proper time to form an independent gov- 
ernment and become a member of the Union on equal terms with the other parties 
to the compact. Now, sir, Mississippi stands here to-day, and finds slavery, through 
the action of this Federal Government, an integral ami live element in her social sys- 
tem, interfused witli the social relations, the industrial pursuits, the investments of 
capital, and the political forms of her jieople. 

Gentlemen, I ask, have you the right — I do not mean the constitutional power — 
have you the moral right, is it just, is it tolerant, to reverse the action of this govern- 
ment ancl embark it in a career of hostility to an institution which the action of this 
government has made the basis upon whose durability our social and political order 
is constituted? The condition of Mississijipi is that of other new States in the South 
and Southwest. 

The gentleman from Connecticut justifies this policy of his party on the ground 
tliat our institution is regarded by the peojile of the North as " hateful to God and un- 
just to man;" that "it cannot exist of natural right." But when he seeks to give the 
authority upon which he bases this dogma, he takes particular pains to lodge it in that 
most secret place in all nature, "the instincts of the human heart" and the dictates 
;of natural reason. 

Mi£. Ferry: An enlishtened conscience. 

Mr. Lamar: Yes, sir; the dictates of an enlightened conscience. Sir, he almost re- 
peated the proposition of the gentleman from Oliio [Mr. Bingham] in a debate dur- 
ing the last Congress, when he said: "I appeal to your immortal spirit, can you be 
riijhtfully reduced to slavery? " The gentleman from Connecticut, following that line 
of argument, asks: " Is there a man upon this floor who would not rather die than 
be a bondman, who would not rather see his little son dead in his cotiin than see 
that son sold into slavery? " 

AVell, sir, I answer the gentleman (and I presume it is just as he wishes me to an- 



APPENDIX, NO. 4. 027 

swei) tliat I cannot be rightfully reduced to slavery; nor can you, sir; nor can the 
gentleman himself. But, sir, does it follow that men are right-angled triangles, that 
whatever is true of one is predicable of all men? Will these gentlemen say that that 
is the test by which the rightfulness of a civil regulation is to be determined? If so, 
I will ask these gentlemen a question: "1 appeal to your immortal si)irit," can you 
rightfully be reduced to a felon's cell? I ask the gentlemen : " Is theie a man upon this 
floor who would not rather die than be " a felon ; who '' would not rather see his little 
son dead in his coffin " than to see that son torn from his mother's emlirace and doomed 
to imprisonment for life with hard labor, the associate of convicts and criminals? 
Mr. Ferry: Does the gentleman wish an answer? 

Mr. Lamar: Not just now. Sir, they can give me but one answer, and that is the 
answer which I give to their question. And yet there are some hundreds of thou- 
sands of our fellow-citizens, in whom the same immortal spirit resides, who are re- 
duced to that ignominious condition; and these gentlemen justify the ordinances and 
statutes which condemn them to it, not because they are not "created with eciual, 
inherent, natural, and inalienahle rights," but simjily because the order aiul well-be- 
ing of society recjuire that thev shall be deprived of that liberty and equality which, 
in our hands, is such a priceless, peei'less blessing. But I again " appeal to the gentle- 
man's immortal spirit." I ask him if he can be made sul iservient and oljedient to an- 
other's will; his intellectual aud moral nature subject to the restraint and control of 
anothei-'s autboritv. Sir, these gentlemeu are ready to fight for the liberty (_if private 
judgment; and yet all the young men of the country under twenty-one years of age 
are reduced to that condition, not because their rights are not natural, inherent, and 
inalienable, but simply because the interests of society require that they should be 
kept under this personal restraint until they are fitted for political and social equality. 
But, sir, I appeal again " to the gentleman's immortal spirit," and I ask him if be 
can rightfully be deprived of all political power, even the right of voting; every civil 
privilege, even of suing, in a government which acts upon every relation of his being, 
which taxes his |)erson and taxes his iiroperty, and affects, for weal or woe, the desti- 
nies of his posterity. The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Bingham] has already justified 
rebellion in Kansas " to maintain the natural right of self-government," and the 
gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Ferry] has asserted that one of the objects of our 
Revolution was to establish " universal equality in political rights ; " yet, sir, one-half 
of our adult poinilation— the lietter half, who have the same immortal nature, and a 
far purer nature than ours— are reduced to that condition, are deprived of every po- 
litical right, of every civil privilege. Their existence is ignored by the laws of some 
States, and their very pereons in many instances are subject to the custody of coarser 
and inferior natures. And these gentlemen justify all this, not upon the ground that 
woman's nature is not immortal, or that her rights are less inherent or inalienable, 
but simply because the necessities of society demand her consecration to those high 
and noble" responsibilities which unfit her for the exercise of political rights. 

Now I put the question, and I want it answered, whether female dependence or the 
immaturity of youth constitute any better reason for the privation of social and po- 
litical equality," for the infliction of civil disal^ilities and personal restraints, than the 
ignorance, superstition, tlie mental and moral debasement, which centuries of barba- 
rism have entailed upon a servile race? I want to know, sir, if the good of society, 
its interests and order, as a whole, recpiire that this race should be retained in its ex- 
isting relation; whether the institution does not stand vindicated by every principle 
upon which human institutions repose. 

Mr. Chairman, the mistake of these gentlemen is this: that men are to be governed 
by certain fixed, inflexible, invariable rules deduced from natural reason; and that a 
government which is applicable to a race of intelligent white men can be forced upon 
States consisting of two distinct races opposite in color, and differing as widely in 
character, disposition, moral and mental habits, as are the opposing characteristics of 
barbarism and civilization. 

But, sir, shall we always be disputing about these " natural rights of man and the 
foundations of society? "Are we to have no time-honored institutions, no recognized 
precedents, no grand maxims of common law growing up around our constitution, and 
almost as sacred as the constitution itself? Is our grand Republic, its destiny, its ad- 
ministration, its policy, to be forever floating hither and thither upon the uncertain 
billows of this beautiful but daneerous sea of political metaphysics? Are these gentle- 
men prepared to sav that every' institution of society must stand or fall, according as 
it conforms, or fiiils"to conform, to some principle of natural right, deduced by each 
generation from natural reason? "Where, sir, \yould such a iirinciple stop? There are 
philosophers, and I believe they are correct, who say that the right of mdmdual 
property cannot be deiluced from the natural reason of man. 



628 LUCIUS (>. C. LA MA 11: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

But, sir, this principle is not limited in its action to political forms; it institutes re- 
volt in all the elements of the social system, and raises impious war against the rec- 
ognized ordinances and express commandments of God. The gentleman Irom Con- 
necticut [Mr. Ferry] stated the otlier day that there was no warrant in the language of 
inspiration for the relation of master and slave as it exists in tiie South. Now, sir, I 
am not going to quote the Bible on these gentlemen ; but I propose to give them tiie 
language of a learned Northern divine, the President of a Northern college, an advo- 
cate of inunediate al:iolition, whose book on moral science is the text-book of your 
Northern colleges, academies, anil schools. Dr. Wayland, in his letters on the pul ijei-t 
of slavery, speaking of the twenty-fifth cliapter of Leviticus, in which the Hebrews 
are commanded to buy the children of the strangers among them, uses the following 
language: 

" The authority to take them (is slaves seems to be a part of this original, peculiar, 
and anomalous grant." 

1 presume, Mr. Chairman,that none but an abolitionist would characterize a grant 
oi (joA a,A anomalous. [Laughter.] 

Again: 

" i grant at onc'e that the Hebrews held shmx from the time of the conquest of Ca- 
naan, "and that Al>raham ancl the patriarchs held them many centuries before. I 
grant also that Closes enacted laws with special reference to that relation." 

I hope that I have the attention of tlie gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Ferry] to 
the next sentence: 

" I wonder," says Dr. Waylatid, " ilmt any should have the hardihood to deny so plain a 
mailer of record. I should as soon deny the delivery of the Ten Commandmcnls to Moses." 

Mk. Ferkv: Will the gentleman yield to me a moment? 

Mr. Lamar: It is this stupid hour rule that prevents my yielding to the gentleman. 

iNIr. Fkrry: I do not wish to interrupt the gentleman further than to >ay that I will 
take another opportunity to answer him. 

JMr.Lam.\r: Sir,thegentlemau said that the sentiment of all Cliristendom was repug- 
nant to the institution of slaverv. Christianity came into the world when the relation 
of master and slave wasone of hostility and i-ruelty. " Our slaves are our enemies," was 
the observation of the elder Cato. How did our Saviour and his aiM>stles treat that 
relation? I propose, sir, no vitnvs of my own; but I will give an extrart from Dr. 
Wayland's " Elements of jVIoral Science," the text-book of your Northern schools. In 
an argument seeking to j.ro\e " the moral principles of the gospel to be directly sulj- 
versive of the principles of slaverv," he make the following admission : 

"Tlie gospel neither commanils masters to manumit their slaves nor authorizes 
slaves to free themselves from their masters; and, also, it goes further, and prescribes 
the duties suited to both parties in tlieir present condition." 

Again: 

" The dtUy of slaves i.s also explicitly made known in the Bible. Tliey are bound to 
obedience, fiilelity, submission, and respect to their masters, not only to the good and 
kind, but also to the unkind and froward ; not, however, on the ground of duty to 
man, but on the ground of diili/ to God."—Wai/land's Elements of Mortd Science, pages 
225 and 229. 

This is abolition authority, T want it understood. 

Now, sir, the teachings of the apostles, as thev aie here made known by Dr. AVay- 
land, were the teachings of the Christian Church. The Church itself was a slaveliold- 
er, and Christian kincs and princes f illowed its example. There is in the Hami-ton 
Court at this day the marble bust of the favorite negro slave of William III., Prince 
of Orange— one of the cherubim of English liberty— with a <'arved collar around his 
neck, witli a padlock upon it, and in every respect made like a dog's collar. 

But, sir, there is one authority which I came near forgetting to read, and which. I 
suppose, stands higher with tliese gentlemen than even Dr. Wayland. It is a work 
which Ib an elaborate exposition of certain abstract principles of New England theol- 
o<^ and politics, albeit in a narrative and dramatic form. I read from the " Minister's 
Wooing," by l\Irs. Harriet Beecber Stowe. [Laughter.] In this novel, which would 
stand uneiiiialed as a work of fiction but for tlie antislavery bigotry which runs like 
a coarse black thread through the otherwise admirable tissue of tliouglit and feeling, 
she puts in the mouth of the erudite and learned Dr. Hopkins— the hero, by the way, 
of the tale— the following answer to Mr. Marvin's question: "Was there not an ex- 
press permission given to Israel to buy and hold slaves as of old? " 

Says the Doctor: . , i j ^ 

" Doubtless; but many permissions were given to them which were local and tem- 
porary. For if we hold them to applv to the human race, the Turks might quote the 
Bible"for making slaves of us, if thev could; and the Algerines have the Scripture all 



APPENDIX, NO. 4. (Jii'J 

on their side; :ind our own blacks, at souje future time, if they can get tlu; jiovver, 
miglit justify themselves in making slaves of us." (Page 174.) 

Now, sir, 1 do not wish the point of my argument to be misunderstood. I am not 
seeking to show a Bible sanction of Southern slavery as it now exists. 1 do n<it ask 
your assent to that. Jly point is that the prim-iple with wliich you are warring 
upon us is condemned by "the ordinance of tiod and the language of Scripture. 1 say 
that God would never, even "for local and tcnii>«>rary |iuri)oscs,"_ have given jic'rinis- 
sion for that which comes in conflict withthose imnmtable princiijles of natural right 
of which he is the Avithor. When he established slavery among the Jews he estab- 
lished the principle that there may be comlitions and circumstances under wliich 
slavery is not "hateful to Uod or unjust to man." Nor does this argument justify 
Turkish slavery, Algerine slavery, or white slavery; it justifies no sort of slavery ex- 
cept that which justifies itself by the rightlulness of its own conditinns and circum- 
stances. And this is the ground upon wliich we of the South place our cherislied in- 
stitutions. We uiaintuin that these justifying circumstances do exist in relation to 
our institution of negro slavery. They consist in the unfitness of the black race for 
a condition higlier than that of slavery. Our pro])osition is that when these two 
races are brouglit into contact, the supremacy of the white man must be acknowledged, 
and his right to govern both races with reference to the happiness of both. This is 
the principle upon which, until recentlv, the legislation of all your Nortlieru States 
was founded. They all asserted the supremacy of the white man and the subordina- 
tion of the black man. 

The gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Ferry] stated that the object of our devolu- 
tion was to establish " universal equality in political rights, and the indefeasable title 
of all men to social and civil liberty." He ought to have had the candor to have held 
up his own State to public reprehension for violating this principle, for in Connecticut 
he knows that the negro has neither political nor social equality; that he is deprived 
of the right of votiuL'T that he is legallv incompetent as a witness against white men, 
and excluded from the right of interinarriage with whites. Those gentlemen guard 
sedulously enough against all contact of this race with themselves or their own class 
of society. I could not insult that gentleman more grossly than to ask him if he is 
willing to throw open the sacred precincts of his family and allow the negro to come 
in as an equal meinlier. No, sir; but he is for freeing hislabor, and possibly for giving 
him the right of voting, and by that means bringing him in contact and equality, not 
irith himself, liut with tlie laboring tvhite freeman of the North. And why such a jiroposi- 
tion does not kindle a consuming flame of indignation among those laboring freemen 
of the North is one of those political phenomena for which I will not undertake to 

account. -.- , , c. ii, 

Sir. the only cause of the diflerence between the legislation of Northern and South- . 
ern States upon the subject of slavery is that the negroes are notin sufficient numbers 
at the North to make it necessary to reduce them to the condition of domestic servitude ; 
while with us that condition i's indispensable to the good order and welfare of the 
whole society. And it is demonstrable (and I will make it so appear, if I have time) 
that the negro in the Southern States has reached a moral and intellectual develop- 
ment superior to his race in any other position in which he has been placed; that he 
contributes more in his present condition to the good of mankind, their moral and 
intellectual progress, tlian in any other position in which he has been placed. What 
was his condition when he was first brought here? Look at him up.on his native 
continent. The most humam> exjilorers of the African continent tell us that they 
exist there without social or ix.litical order, without modesty or shame, some of the 
tribes not even reaching the civilization of the fig leaf . , , , 

I propose just here to read from " Hegel's Philosophy of History,' an imperishable 
monument of human genius, in which the author holds "freedom to be the essence 
of humanitv, and slaverv the condition of injustice." And what does he say? 

" The net'ro, as already observeil, exhibits the natural man in his completely wild 
and untamed state. Wemust lav aside all thought of reverence and morality, all that 
we call feeling, if we would rightlv comprehend him. There is nothing harmonious 
with humanifv to he found in this type of character. (Page 97.) 

" The uudervaluing of humanitv among them reaches an incredible degree of inten- 
sity Tyranny is regarded as no "wrong, and cannibalism is looked upon as quite cus- 
tomary "and proper. . . . The devouring of human flesh is altogether consonant 
with the general principles of the African race. To the sensual negro, human flesh is 
but an object of sense, mere flesh." (Pages 99, 100.) 

\fter describino- many other characteristics, the author concludes 

" Slavery to have been the occasion of the increase of human feeling among 

the negroes. The doctrine which we deduce from this condition of slavery among the 



630 LCCIi'S Q. C. LAMAJ;.- Ills LIFE, ETC. 

negroes, and which constitutes tlie only side of tlie (|uestion that has an interest for 
our inquiry, is that wliicli we deduce from tiie idea — viz., that tlie ' natural condition ' 
itself is one of absolute and tliorougli injustice, contravention of the riglit and just. 
Every intermediate grade between this and the realization of a rational state retains, 
as might be expected, elements and asjjects of injustice; therefore, we find slavery, 
even in the Greek and Roman States, as we do serfdom, down to the latest times. 
But thus existing in a State, slavery is itself a phase of advance from tlie merehj isolated, 
sensual e.vislence, a pliusc of education, a mode of becoming purtiapant in a Idglier morality 
and the cidture connected with it." (Page 104.) 

Xow, sir, wdio will say that the three hundred thousand negroes, whose character 
is thus described by this German autlior, brouglit over to this continent, would ever 
have had their condition improved, or would ever have secured to themselves the 
benefits they now- enjoy, had they been left in their "natural condition?" At that 
time there were two barbarous races which came in contact upon this continent with 
the European. The one was the African, occupying the lowest point in the scale uf 
human existence; the other was the noble Indian race, superior to the African in in- 
telligence, in moral and physical development. Free as the wild bir<l of his native 
forests, boli-1 as the stream which dashed dnwn his mountain gorges, generous as the 
bounteous nature around liim, the American Indian goes into history the poetic em- 
bodiment of savage life. What has been his fate compared witli that of the African? 

What has become of the Xarragansetts, Pequots, Senecas, Oneidas, and Delawares? 
Driven back by the advancing wave of European civilization to continually contract- 
ing circles, witii diminished means of subsistence, into degradation, wretchedness, and 
extinction. 

The African, with all its foulness, with all its prosaic vulgaiities, domesticated and 
disciplined, has been by that same wave borne uji higher and higher, until now it 
furnishes insiiiration for Northern song, heroes and heroines for Northern romances, 
and is invited by Northern statesmen into their charmed circle of political and social 
equality. Not just yet, gentlemen, if you please. He is not your equal; and history 
proves that even when he has reached this ]3oint of civilization, if you take from un- 
der him the institution that has borne him u)) to it, he relapses into liis ))ristine bar- 
barism. I intended to show this by detailed reference to the French Islands, the Eng- 
lish Antilles, and other countries in which slavery has been abolished. I could have 
shown that in Hayti, where the negro was left with all the endowments of a civiliza- 
tion whicli vied with that of Rome in gorgeous magnificence, you see now nothing 
but poverty, vice, indolence, and all other signs of a rapidly approaching barbarism. 
I intended to sliow from antislavery authority that the British Antilles have disap- 
pointed every promise ami frustrated every hojie that accompanied the act of eman- 
cipation. I intended to show the condition of the free colored population in Peru, as 
exhibited by a most intelligent German traveler, Von Tschndi, whose work was pub- 
lished among the " Choice Reading " of the antislavery publishing house of Wiley & 
Putnam, in New York. 

I need not refer to Lil^eria. The gentleman formerly from Missouri [Mr. Blair] has 
demonstrated on tins floor that Liberia is a failure, and Africa still the " house of 
bondage." The distinguished gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Corwin] has expressed some 
doubt about that matter, but be can certainly point to no sign of an advance beyond 
the original moral status of tlie colony ; and, sir, if it does not show signs of decay and 
dissolution, it is because tlie emisratiou of our freed negroes pours constantly into the 
shrunken veins of its sickly civilization fresh tides of moral and mental life. I need 
not refer to tlie condition of the free negro in the Northern States. These gentlemen 
are familiar with it. One thing I will .say: that the census returns show that his mor- 
al and physical condition is superior in the South to what it is in the North : and if 
freedom to the individual be such a boon and blessing to the African, Southern slavery 
has done more in this respect for the race than Northern abolitionism. There have 
been one hundred thousand more emancipated by the Southern States than have been 
emancipated liy the Northern States; and there are now forty thousand free negroes 
living in the South more than are resident in the Northern States. 

If, then, we show that the condition of the negro at the South is superior to his 
condition in any other country, and that the abolition of slavery has always been 
followed by immediate retrogression, I ask of wdiat has humanity to complain against 
the institution? 

Sir, another alignment that has been advanced by Northern gentlemen and by the 
leader of their ]iarty is that tlie interests of the white race require the exclusion of 
this institution froin new territory: that it should be dedicated to free soil and to the 
freemen of the North. Now, I want to say, in passing, that that jnits out of view every 
consideration of humanity which these gentlemen liave made the instrument of the 



APPENDIX, NO. .',. (;:;i 

fanaticism that has hitherto heen wa,L>cd against us; but I will pass on. How (Jo tlie 
interests of" tlie wliite race require the restriction of shiveryV They say that I'ree 
lal)or is dishonored by its contact with slave labor. How? The tw<i systems coexist 
under our Republic. Look at labor as it exists at the North, the mighty North, the 
seat of commerce, manufactures, mcc'lianic arts, accumulated wcaltli, and common, 
schools. Look at the mighty i)()j)ulatioii tiiat fills that vast territory with tlie hum of 
its free industry, the toiling millions that constitute the sulistralum on which this 
splendid fabric of free society rears its aspiring hea<l. Are they not all freemen? Is 
not each one of them the equal of the proudest ami richest in "the land, teiiacious of 
his rights, and proud of his position? What, though he is often compelled to toil 
in midday while the very earth is melting with fervent heat, and while the negro slave 
is resting from his work"? Still his labor is dignitied and honoiable, because it is free; 
and, although commerce may languish and manufactures go into decay and the wages 
of labor fall and the cost of provisions increase, yet he can hush the nmtterings of 
discontent and still the gnawings of hunger by the one proud, glorious thought: Oic 
dignity of labor. Now, how is this labor contaminated by the existence of Southern 
slave labor? Sir, our negroes are working under and for your free laljorers at the 
North. They furnish them with the raw material on which this free labor exercises 
its skill and industry, the raw material which is tlie very basis of your commerce and 
manufacturing enterprise. 

But you say that it becomes dishonored by coming in contiict with slave labor in the 
common Territory. This very contact exists in the South; and is labor dishonored 
there? Why, according to the estimate of these gentlemen, there are only three hun- 
dred and twenty thousand slaveholders in the South; all the balance are ncmslave- 
holding laborers, ilark that! Now, gentlemen, universal sufl'rage exists in the 
South. Each one of these three hundred and twenty thousand slaveholders has one 
vote, and no more; each one ot the live million nonslaveholders has one vote, and 
no less. These latter, then, have the overwhelming majority. Sir, the institution is 
in the hollow of the hand of the nonslaveholder of the South. He has but to close 
his hand, and tlie institution is crushed. He sees its eflects on the slave; he feels its 
effects on himself Sir, if these eflects were degrading, why not throw it ofl', when he 
could do it by simply depositing a ballot in a senseless urn? I ■will tell you why 
he does not do it. I will show you why it is that from that vast body of independent, 
voting freemen there comes uji not one whisper of disapprobation, not one mur- 
mur of discontent, not one protest against its morality, its justice, and its expedi- 
ency. It is because there is no class among whom negro slavery secuies such wide- 
spread blessings as the nonslaveholders of the South. There has never been a race of 
men more maligned and lied about than that very class of freemen in the Scnitli. I 
know them. I have lived among them, and have felt the heart-warm grasp (if their 
strong hands ; and I tell you, Mr. Chairman, that God's sun does not shine on a nobler, 
prouder, happier, more prosperous and elevated class of people than the nonslave- 
holders of tlie South. It is impossible, from the very nature and constitution of 
Southern society, that it should be otherwise. 

I have time to mention only one fact, among others, that shows you its advantages 
in their view. Mr. Webster, in one or his speeches, spoke of the ownei-ship of land 
as constituting the basis of free governmc^it, and said that suflVage should be restricted 
to those whose property gave them an interest in the i^reservation of the State. Now, 
I do not think that. I think that an honest, intelligent laboring man is as much 
entitled to a participation in the government as the member of any other class of 
society. 

■ (But there are certain moral advantages in favor o[ a landowning community. Sir, 
in every country and in every age the proprietorship of the soil has been regarded as 
a position of dignity and of personal elevation. Now, sir, that is the position of the iion- 
slavebolding laborers of the South. They are a nation of landowners. There is not 
such a body of landowners in the world as the nonslaveholders of the South. Each of 
them feels in himself a jiride of character, an elevation of position. And, sir, he feels 
that he is not merely a freeman ; he is a freeholder. More than that, he is a gentleman. 
You talk about free labor at the North, and free soil, as if it did not exist in greater 
purity in the South than anvwhere else. AVhat you call "operatives" have to share 
the profits of their labor with capital, and it is hinted that capital gets the lion's share. 
What we call "slaves" are owned by capital, and get their return only in food, rai- 
ment, shelter, and protecting care. But, sir, true free labor is that which the South- 
ern farmer, with his own free arm, applies to his own soil, allowing neither master, 
capitalist, nor employer to have any participation in its profits. And, sir, what are those 
profits? Not alone the crop of cotton, corn, and j)otatoes; something more than that. 
When the strong, brave man drives his plowshare through the fallow ground, the up- 



632 LUCIUS Q. C. LA MAI!.- JUS LIFE, ETC. 

turned sod reveals to liis eye that whicli is richer to him than the golden sands of 
California. 

'Tis the sparkle of liberty 

and personal independence. Sir, at the end of the year he has other gains, too, that 
his labor brings him: tlie industry and honesty of the fatlier, tlie liousehold virtues 
of the mother, the intelligence of the sons, tlie chastity of the daughters — there, sir, 
is a harvest which we would not barter for this wide world's commerce and all its 
honors besides. 

But, sir, let us see what this institiation has <lone for the progress of mankind ; and 
this brings me to the third class of men in the South who have been subject to niis- 
reiiresentation. I allude to the Southern planters. I have but a moment to spare, 
and I will allude to one branch of Southern industry as an illustration of the whole: 
I mean cotton culture. Some idea of the importance of the cotton trade to the civil- 
ized world mav be obtained by the following graphic description of its influence 
upon Great Britain, from the pen of Macaulay: 

" I see in this country a trreat manufacturing population drawing the materials of 
manufactm-e from a limited market. I see a great cotton trade carried on, which fiu-- 
nishes nearly two million people with food, clothes, and tiring; and 1 say that if you 
shut out slave-grown cotton you woulil produce a mass of misery among the jieople 
whom Providence has I'omm'itted to your charge frightful to oontemplate; you would 
introduce desolation into your richly" flourishing manufacturing districts; you woiild 
reduce hundreds on hundreds to beggary and destitution; you would risk the stability 
of your institutions; and when you had 'done all this, you would have great reason to 
doubt whether you hail conferi-ed any great benefits on the particular class for whom 
you made such a sacrifice." 

Now, sir, the cotton ]ilant grows in the East Indies. It has been long a productof 
Bengal and Malal>ar. It grows in the West Indies. During the French domination 
Hayti exported a larger quantity of cotton than the North American continent. It 
exits in Persia; it exists in Brazil; it exists in Egypt and China; in Spain, in IMalta, 
and in Mexico; it exists in Africa itself The peculiarity of climate and soil neces- 
sary to its jiroduction has been greatly exaggerated, in my opinion. I attribute the 
vast production, swelled from one hundred and fifty thousaml jiounds to four miUion 
bales in seventy years, to the combination of moral and physical qualities which h;ive 
been associated in its culture. 

The Southern planter is not the indolent, aristocratic nabob which he has been rep- 
resented to lie. He is, in general, careful, patient, ]>rovident, industrious, forbearing, 
and yet firnx and determined. It is these qualities which liave enabled him to take a 
race of untamed savages, with no habits except such as inspire disgust, with no arts, no 
information, and out of such a iieojile to make the finest body of fixed laliorei's that 
the world has ever seen. Sir, England has imjiorted Coolies, Chinese, natives from 
the African coast, into lier colonies, and yet she has lieen unable to compete with the 
Southern plantations. There is no product which reijuires such constant and unre- 
mitting attention, such continuous lalior, as the cotton plant. The great complaint in 
the British colonies is that the fruit of each year's effort is lost hy the broken and 
irregular labor of the operatives. Now, sir, the Southern i>lanter has secured con- 
tinuitv, consistency, and steadfastness, in the most indolent, inconsistent, and capri- 
cious 'of the human race. Burke, in his speech upon conciliation with America, paid 
to the victorious industry employed in the fisheries of the colonies of New England 
a just and glowing tribute of admiration. The perseverance, the dexterous and firm 
sagacity enlisted in that perilous mode of industry, is worthy of his esteem. Sonie- 
thtng of the same qualities are displayed by the .Southern planter in the productioii 
of those beneficent results which have flowed from the culture of the great tropical 
products of the Southern States. , ■, , , i.i i 

The Southern planter penetrates the dense forests, the tangled brake, the gloomy 
wilderness of the river swamps, where pestilence lias its abode; and there, day by .day 
and year by year, amid exposure, privation, and sickness, are his foresight, his pru- 
dence, his self-reliance, his adaptation of means to ends, called into requisition. In 
the communion with himself— which his isolation makes indi.si-iensable— and in the 
daily and yearly provision for a large bodv of domestics and dependents for whom he 
has tothiiik, aiid whose labor he has to direct, he forms those qualities which enable 
him to emerge from his isolation to fill the county co\irt or to become a member of 
his State Legislature, to discharge the duties of local magistracy, or to take his place in 
the national councils. . ^ . j , i 

The solution of the enigma of the " slave power," so mysterious to transcendental 
and infant school philosoidiers, mav be sought here. Its basis lies m that cool, vigor- 
ous jud<'ment and unerring sense applicable to the ordinary aff'airs and intercourse ol 



APPENDIX, NO. r,. f)33 

men which the Southern mode of Hfe fosters. Tlio htihits of industry, finnnesH of 
purpose, lidelity to dependents, self-reliance, and tlio sentiment of jusliee in all the 
various relations of life whieh are necessary to the nuinu.^enient of a well-ordered 
plantation, fit men to guide Legislatures and conunand armies. 

I see that gentlemen are disposed to smile at this suggestion. Int-onlirination of wluit 
I say, I have onlv to point them to the fact that it was in such eommunities as these 
that a Washington, a Jackson, a Taylor, a Scott, a Twiggs, a (Juilman, a Davis, a J.ce, 
a Ringgold, a Bragg, a Butler, and a host of otliere, acquired those qualities whicli en- 
abled "them, in the positions in which their country placed them, to add such undying 
luster to the American name. It was m such coniinunities that such men as Jeiler- 
son, Madison, Jlonroe, Polk, Lowndes, Calhoun, Ckiv, i\lacon, Hhirshall, Taney, and a 
host of others that I could mention, acquired those characteristics which then- covui- 
trymen North and South instinctively discerned whenever "called upon to face some 
awful moment to which Heaven luisjoined great issues, good orbad, for humankind." 

I have sought, sir, in a cui-sorv way, under the whiii and spur of this hour rule, to 
show that there is nothing in our institutions that cannot stand justified before iin- 
partial history for our mode of dealing with the race wliich Providence has placed m 
our hands. I do not preteml to say that, in the adjustment of our economic forces, 
there may not be ameliorations ; I do not pretend to say that we have arriveil at a 
standard of ideal perfection; but 1 do say that there is a reach of thought and a ma- 
turity of judgment brought to bear upon this subject in the South which is always 
adequate "to evolve the greatest good. We certainly can learn nothing from the ene- 
mies of our institutions and conspirators against oar ]ieace. 

I come to the last consi<leration I think it ])roper to urge upon the attention of the 
House. Is it the part of statesmen to attempt to exercise the powers of this govern- 
ment in a spirit unfriendly to the institutions and interests involved in the political 
and economical system which I have been discussing? The father of the constitution, 
Mr. Madison, on the floor of the convention which framed it, expressed a diflereut 
sentiment: 

" He admitted that every peculiar interest, whether in any class of citizens or any 
description of States, ought to be secured as fiir as possible. Whermr there is danger 
of aUark, there ought to he given a conslitutmialpoiver of defense. But he contended that 
the States were divided into different interests, not by their diflerence in size, but Ijy 
other circumstances, the most material of which resulted partly from climate, but 
principallv from the effects of their having, or not having, slaves. These two causes 
concurred' in forming the great division of interests in the United States. It did not 
lay between the large and small Stiites. It lay between the Northern and Southern 
States ; and, if any defensive power were necessary, it ought to he m utuallgia these Ivv in- 
terests. He was so strongly impressed with this important truth that he Jiad been 
casting about in his mind for some scheme that would answer the purpose. 

I do not anticipate that the magnanimous counsels of a wise and iiatnotic statesman, 
whose provisions embraced in their scope the entire Repuljlic, will obtain such aut lior- 
ity as to secure additional guarantees to our institutions. These we have not asked. 
We ask onlv our constitutional rights in the Union. The Southern people demand 
that this organized "irrepressible conflict" shall stop, that the institution of slavery 
shall be maintained as an existing fact in this Confederacy. The sentiment is rapid- 
ly approaching unanimitv among them that anv attempt to impair its property value, 
or a single political iirivilege which it confers, or any of the constitutional nghta by 
which it is guaranteed, or to place over them the party which arrogates to itself the 
right to do any of these things, will be a fivtal blow at the peace and stability of tins 
great country. 

Appendix No. 5. 

LETTER TO HON. P. F. LtDDELL, OF CARROLLTON, MISS. 

Wasiiixgtox Citv, D. C, December 10, 1860. 
ill/ Dear Sir: Your letter ot the 4th inst., requesting me to give you my views 
as to the best metliod of concentrating the efforts of all the friends of a real and 
Bona flde resistance in Mississippi and the South to black Republican rule, is be- 
fore me. Apart from my disposition to oblige an esteemed friend, the relations 
which exist between the people of Mississippi and myself as one of their Repre- 
sentatives in the Federal Congress, the uniform kindness and confidence I have 
experienced from the portion that form my immediate constituents, and the ne- 
cessity I feel for frank and open-hearted communication with them, are addi- 
tional reasons for complying with your request. 



(334 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAU: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

The result of the recent Presidential contest has inflicted a dangerous, perhaps 
a fatal, wound upon the confidence of the Southern States in the integrity of the 
B'ederal Government. 

1 have not supposed that the Federal Executive would always command the 
support of, or inspire confidence and esteem among, all the peoples of the Un- 
ion. The framers of the constitution did not anticipate that we should always 
have a wise, faithful, and patriotic President. 

We may reasonably expect that delusions will often exist in respect to the 
worth of a nominee for that office, and that parties and demagogues may some- 
times succeed in debauching or misleading the popular judgment in favor of an 
unworthy candidate. There are in our constitution important checks upon Pres- 
idential power; and the tenure of office is not so long as to enable a vicious man, 
unassisted, to do irreparable mischief, even in the full possession of that power. 
The people of the South understand fully the nature and functions of the Federal 
Government. They do not need to be taught that its legitimate structure fur- 
nishes them ample and eflicient means of checking the vices of executive admin- 
istration, protecting themselves against the hostile and unconstitutional pur- 
poses of the existing incumbent, and of even repairing such violations of the 
fundamental law as may, during his term of service, be beyond their control. 
The personal character of Mr. Lincoln and his political opinions (except so far 
as they represented that armed doctrine which menaces our peace, and was con- 
trived for our degradation and dishonor) have not formed, with them, the subjects 
of either inquiry or interest. The stern protest which has spontaneously leaped 
from the hearts of the Southern people, simultaneous, and yet without any con- 
cert, free from revolutionary excesses or party recklessness, indicates a thor- 
ough knowledge of the real extent and depth of the grievances inflicted upon 
them, and shows a political maturity in that people adequate to evolve the 
proper remedy and firmly to apply it. 

Let us look at this event in its mildest aspect, dissociated from the sectional 
hostilities in which it originated, and apart from the purposes which it was de- 
.signed to accomplish. It is the first step toward the subversion of American rep- 
resentative liberty. 

There is, as you know, a Northern and a Southern theory of the constitution; 
the former regarding it as one political community, a consolidated Republic, 
in which a majority of the people govern under the forms of the constitution; 
the latter regarding' the United States as a confederacy of States, sovereign, in- 
dependent, and equal. Either theory may be adopted for the purpose of my 
argument. Let us, for the sake of argument, adopt the latter. It is an essential 
condition of representative liberty that the powers of government (of which the 
choice of rulers is not the least important) be distributed through the entire 
mass of the nation. This is the point from which all representative liberty 
starts, and to which it must return: (hat the central authority must derive its 
nutriment and draw its force from all the parts of the entire body of society, so 
that by their reciprocal independence they can counteract the tendency of any 
one part to usurp the sovereignty of the whole. It is required that all the parts 
should seek and contribute to legitimate rule in common; and if any part, v.-hat- 
ever be their number, insulated from the rest, assumes the common government 
over the others by virtue of a prerogative which it arrogates to itself as its ex- 
clusive possession, the result is not liberty; it is tyranny unmixed. Test the 
recent Presidential election by this principle. The Northern States— or. if you 
prefer the expression, the Northern people— have usurped an entire branch of 
the government, to the exclusion of the Southern people. I do not wish to be 
understood as saying that the Southern people have been deprived of the priv- 
ilege of depositing their ballots and having them counted with all the formali- 
ties of law. Mv proposition is that the principle, not the form, of representative 
government has been violated. The policy of a conquering power has ever been 
to disguise its grasp upon the liberties of a people under the sameness of e^ftertial 
forms: not to startle the people by any striking altei-ations. but to cheat them 'by 
respect for their usages and customs into acquiescence in the control which it 
covertly assumes over their public affairs. The Greek Republics retained all 
their forms of municipal government— the freedom of legislative and judicial 
proceedings unchanged— while all Greece lay, a subjugated nation, at the feet of 
Philip. This is the relation which the Southern people, if they quietly submit to 
this election, will sustain to the executive department of (he government on the 
4th day of March, ISGl. They will live under a Chief Magistrate whose power 
touches them at every point, penetrating into their States, their towns, cities. 



Al'l'KMUX, SO. .'. ■ Gl-iS 

villages, and settlements, their business arrangements and family relations — a 
Chief Magistrate elected in no part by them, but over them, by another people 
widely distant from them in loealily, and still more widely distinct in i)assions, 
prejudices, interests, civil and domestic institutions, than ihey are in geograph- 
ical position. The obligation to submit and live under a Chief Magistrate thus 
elected for one Presidential term implies the obligation to do so under an indefi- 
nite number of terms— forever. The right of the North to place the executive 
department in such a relation to the Southern people involves the right to place 
all the departments of the government in that relation. But would that be rep- 
resentative liberty? L,iberty does not exist where rights are on one side and 
power on the other. To bo liberty, rights must be armed with vital powers. A 
people cannot be free who do not participate in the control of the government 
which operates upon them. If it is irresponsible to them, if they cannot conti'ib- 
ute to the check upon its operations, they are not a free people, but subjects, de- 
pendent for their rights and interests upon no power in themselves, but upon 
the moderation and justice of irresponsible rulers, or upon those revolutionary 
remedies which constitute no part of the machinery of civil society. Such will 
be the condition of the Southern people if they remain in the Union until after 
the 4th of March next. You will observe that it is a matter of no importance to 
the people of the South whether Mr. Lincoln was elected according to the forms 
of the constitution or in disregard of those forms. Had he been appointed by 
the Governors of the Northern States, or nominated by the crowned heads of 
Europe, his selection as Chief Magistrate would have been, in either case, no 
more in disregard of the wishes, interests, and feelings of the entire South than 
his election has actually been. When one of the vital princijiles of a political 
system has been destroyed, society, in all its elements,' is thrown into disorder. 
In this election the Democratic element of our government shares the fate of 
the representative idea. Mr. Lincoln is elected by a minority of nearly a million 
votes, the South being thus subjected to all the terrors of a passionate Democ- 
racy and the tryanny of a selfish oligarchy. 

It may be said that this is a mere temporary displacement of the political 
forces, and that another Presidential election will readjust them and restore 
the harmonious operation of our political system. But our people cannot shut 
their eyes to the fact that this revolution in the government only manifests and 
embodies a mightier moral revolution which has for fifty years upheaved the 
bosom of Northern society, a revolution which has never gone backward, and 
whose very law is progression. They cannot but see in this election the sword 
of empire drawn by a fanatical majority section in a contest which cannot be de- 
clined, and yet on the issue of which the existence of the minority section is 
staked; that it is a movement impelled by a fanaticism whose footsteps have 
never been seen in voluntary retreat; that it is a victory secured by the citizens of 
States whose Legislatures have solemnly recorded their determination that no 
oath shall bind them to observe the constitutional compact in respect to slavery. 
They are convinced that this antislavery fanaticism is rife at the North, and 
that societv, in all its elements, is surcharged with the deadly poison; that it in- 
fects their' literature, pervades their jurisprudence, is animating the spirit of 
their theology, is taught in their academies and schools; and they behold the 
party which represents this spirit intrenched (by overwhelming majorities m all 
their States save one) in the departments of the Federal Government, armed 
with the sword in one hand and the purse in the other. 

According to the theorv of the constitution which prevails at the South, ours 
is a Confederacy of equal and independent Spates. A Confederacy of itself in 
the absence of any express stipulation, is an implied recognition of. and friendli- 
ness to the subsisting institutions of its various members. By this election the 
nonslaveholding States have seized upon the powers of a common government, 
with the declared purpose that these Slates shall not continue part slaveholdmg 
and part nonslaveholding. There is no proposition better established than that 
the overthrow of the civil and domestic institutions of one people by an external 
or foreign power is in effect, a conquest and subjugation of the former. The 
Southern people are law-abiding, long-suffering, and averse to rash innovations; 
but where the alternative is presented of a change in their political relations or 
an overthrow of their political institutions, they will not hesitate. _ 

Such an election (in view of all the circumstances attending it), m my judg- 
ment not onlv justifies, but imperatively demands of, the Southern States to 
take measures tor their security. I believe that this sentiment is entertained 
from Mason and Dixon's line to the Rio Grande, and that hundreds of thousands 



63G LUCIUS Q. a LAMAIi: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

in the Northern States, who have opposed in vain the unrelenting hostility of our 
l^ersecutors, regard it with approbation. There is, of course, a diversity of 
opinion as to the extent of the measures to be taken. There is a large class in 
the more Northerly of the slaveholding States who will bo content with meas- 
ures of vigilance, and who look to a reorganization of parties which will modify 
the action of the Federal Government, or insure the overthrow of the party 
which has succeeded in the present election. The friends of the constitution and 
the Union in the Northern States, they think, compose a larger class than the 
Presidential election indicates. They have a natural dislike to w'hat they deem 
extra-constitutional or extreme measures, and are willing to abide the issue of 
the election. I think that in the more Southern States the time has passed when 
parties can command confidence. They rather fatigue contempt. A second 
class fully recognize the existence of an arrogant and contumelious disregard of 
their obligations by the New England States and Wisconsin and Michigan, in 
relation to the law for the extradition of fugitive slaves, and that self-respect re- 
quires that notice should be taken of their measures of nullification.* They are 
ready to make a demand for redress, and to put it in the power of these States to 
take measures to place the Union on constitutional foundations. They require 
time for consultation among the Southern States and for a change of sentiment 
at the North, so that before resorting to the extreme measure of disunion they 
shall have exhausted every other remedy. A third class — considering the long 
agitation that has existed upon the subject of slavery, its fatal effects upon the 
society of the United States, and their conviction that there will be no suspen- 
sion or pause in the agitation, and that the conflict is indeed irrepressible, and 
arises in the antagonism that exists in the political and social ideas of the two 
sections, and that the predominance of the antislavery idea in the politics of 
the Northern States has been and will be sufficient to prevail against the opposi- 
tion of the entire South, even in combination with their friends in the North — 
are in favor of secession. But considering all the evils that belong to any dis- 
ruption of the government, and appreciating the value of the existing Union, 
they are willing to return to it with loyalty if they can find adequate guarantees 
for their securitj' from further collision and strife. This class would expect 
amendments to the Federal Constitution, so that the conditions of slavery in 
the States and Territories and in all places of Federal jurisdiction be placed be- 
yond cavil or dispute, and that the slaveholding States should mutually guaran- 
tee their own rights; so that in the event of the renewal of another slavery agita- 
tion the remedy will be plain and adequate. There is a fourth class of energetic, 
resolute, and high-spirited men who consider the Federal Government a failure, 
the connection of Northern and Southern States as unnatural, and the independ- 
ence of the latter a supreme good. These are for immediate, unconditional, and 
even abrupt secession. The first class is diminishing in numbers and influence, 
and the fourth class is increasing. This class is dominant in one State, com- 
mands perhaps a majority in another, and is influential in all. It is possible that 
all the classes, which favor some action, would be brought to act in concert if 
they only understood one another's opinions. In my judgment, this long-contin- 
ued and rancorotis agitation (which has divided our Churches, rent asunder 
political parties, diminished and embittered the intercourse of society, unfitted 
Congress for the performance of the functions imposed by the constitution), the 
incendiary dispositions manifested in its course by the representative men of 
the Northern States, and the habitual attack upon the foundations of our society 
by men occupying public stations of the highest trust and responsibility, have 
estranged the majority of the Southern people from their Northern connection: 
and they would prefer a Union among themselves, other conditions being equal. 

* In allusion to the so-c.-illnl ••Persona! Liberty Laws" passed l)y fourteen of the Northern 
States — viz.: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont. Mas.sacliusetts, Connectieut, llliode Island, New 
.Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indian.a, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, and MiehiLran. Tiiese slatntis were 
a prre.at ort'ense to the .'southern jteojile. They were regarded as havincc been desi;;ni-ii to jir;n-titally 
nullif.v the fujritive sla\-e laws of Congress, and as beintr a direct breach of the constitutional com- 
pact between the States on which tlie^'Union was formed. They were denounced, not more because 
of the obsta<-les thrown by them in the wav of the reclamation of fugitive sl.aves, than because of the 
Insult and reproach to the slave States imported by their existence^ or than because of their direct 
tendency to encourage slaves to run away, and *to foster in the people of the Northern States 
a spirit of resistance' to the acts of Congress, Their general tenor was to prohibit State offi- 
cers from aiding in the arrest of fugitive slaves, to require the States' attorneys to ilefend them, to 
provide for the payment of the fugitives' expenses of defense out of the State treasnrv, to denv the 
use of the State courthous s and .jails in snch cases, to so regulate the rules of procedure and' evi- 
dence as to hinder the master, to give a right of trial bv iury instead of bv the court, to provide 
heavy jicnalties against the nnister in case of unlawful seizures, etc.— DcBoir's Review (September, 
1860),' p. 370. 



APPENDIX, .vo. ,-;. G37 

That is, if a Southern Confederacy could be formed without war, or violent 
change in existing conditions, the popular mind would receive no shock; the peo- 
ple would anticipate more of securily and happiness than in the present Union. 

The corruption of the State and municipal governments North, the nuignilude 
of their cities, and the consequent disorder and crime and disparity of condition 
among the inhabitants; the increase of heterogeneous populations, their red Re- 
publicanism, infidelity, and anti-Christian ideas; the intemperance and violence 
and indecorum of the Northern clergy, and the anarchy of opinions upon all 
questions of social interest, and the want of any sound public opinion — furnish 
strong evidence that sooner or later society there will experience a general over- 
turn. But the distrust of Northern institutions and the dislike of Northern 
manners are not active or stimulating emotions, and show themselves rather in 
the want of any anxiety to disturb or restrain this movement. If the formation 
of a Southern Confederacy, to extend from the Delaware or the Susquehanna to 
the western line of New Mexico, or to include California, were adopted, I believe 
that a large majority of the Southern people would be rejoiced. I believe that 
the patience of the people with New England and some of the Western States is 
exhausted. In my opinion, it is the duty of all the members of the Southern 
States, in the present emergency, to maintain a large, liberal, and magnanimous 
course of conduct toward one another. "To be subject one to another" is the 
lesson of wisdom in this conjunction of affairs. It is not necessary for me to 
declare to what class of those I have enumerated I now belong, for I shall not en- 
list as a partisan of any opinion in any part of this contest. I shall resign my 
own opinions with facility wlienever I can perceive that good can be accom- 
plished. What I desire to have, what I desire to represent and cooperate with, 
is the sound and deliberate opinion of the people of Mississippi first, and then of 
all the Southern States, after a candid, impartial, and deliberate review of the 
whole subject, and having reference to all their responsibilities, to themselves, 
their ancestors, and their posterity. 

But I feel it my duty to say that I think acquiescence on the part of the South 
in the results of the late Presidential contest is fraught with more danger to the 
safety of her society, the stability of her institutions, the freedom of her citizens, 
and the lives of her people, than can possibly attend any of the plans of resist- 
ance to black Republican rtile. 

Upon the stability of slavery in the Southern States as an institution of socie- 
ty, government, and property, entitled to the recognition and protection of the 
Federal Government at home and abroad, and the right to carry our property 
upon the common territories of the Union and to enjoy It there, without bar or 
hindrance from any quarter, I am prepared to advise firmness. Believing as I 
did that a vast majority of the Southern people prefer a Union of the Southern 
States to the existing connection with the Nortli— provided such a result could 
be secured without radical changes in their fundamental system or shock to ex- 
isting conditions— I submitted for the consideration of the Legislature of our 
State the plan to which your letter refers.* It is intended to avoid the perils that 
attend transitions fiom dismemberment to reorganization, and also the evils of 
provisional governments. 

The leading feature of that plan Is the adoption of the present government, 
either by a general convention of the Southern States or by commissioners ap- 
pointed by their authority, who shall provide that the Constitution of the 
United States shall remain in full force and effect among the States withdrawing; 
that the laws and decisions of courts which are now of force in the Republic of 
North America under the authority thereof shall be adopted as a body of laws for 
the Federal Government about to be established; that the people of the States so 
withdrawing will bind themselves to observe and sacredly carry out the stipula- 
tions of all treaties subsisting between the United States of North America and 
foreign governments anterior to the date of said ordinance, until such treaties 
are changed or altered, or are disregarded by such nation with this government 
about to be established. As the first step in this direction I submit for your con- 
sideration the ordinance which I think the people of Mississippi should adopt in 
their convention on the 7th of January: 

"An ordinance of the convention of the people of Mississippi, assembled at the 
capitol of the State, at Jackson, pursuant to the election of the people, pursuant 
to an Act of the General Assembly of the State of Mississippi, entitled, etc. 

"Whereas on the 1st day of March, 1817, the Congress of the United States 



*Iii alhision to the acUlress before the Legislature, Novemher 11. 1859. 



638 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAll: lIlS LIFE, ETC. 

passed an act entitled 'An Act to enable the western part of the Mississippi Ter- 
ritory to lorm a constitution and Slate government, and for the admission of 
such State into the Union on an equal footing with the original States;' and 

"Whereas on the 15th of August, 1817, the people of Mississippi, by a con- 
vention called for the purpose, did form for themselves a constitution and State 
government, and by ordinance did then consent to become a member of the 
Federal Union, on an equal footing with the original States; and 

"Whereas on the 10th of December, 1S17, by resolution of the Congress of the 
United States, the State of Mississippi became a member of the Federal Union, 
and has remained such from thence hitherto; and 

"Whereas for sufficient causes, in the opinion of this convention, the said 
Federal Union should be dissolved, 

"Be it therefore ordained by the authority of the people of Mississippi, in con- 
vention assembled. That the ordinance of the 15th day of August, 1S17, by which 
the State of Mississippi consented to become a member of the Federal Union, be, 
and the same is hereby, repealed, and that the State of Mississippi resume all 
the rights, powers, and functions therein conveyed, and be divested of all the re- 
straints and duties contracted in favor of the said Federal Union, and from 
henceforth be a free and independent State. 

"Section 2. Be it further ordained, That the State of Mississippi hereby con- 
sents to form a Federal Union with the States of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia. 
North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkan- 
sas, Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri, and the Territory of New Mex- 
ico, and the Indian Territory west of Arkansas, under the name and style of the 
United States of America, and according to the tenor and effect of the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, adopted September 12, 17S7, saving and excepting such 
parts thereof as embrace other portions than the States above named. 

"Section 3. Be It further ordained, That the laws enacted by the United States, 
under the said constitution, from 17S9 until the day of the sitting of this con- 
vention, and all treaties made under the authority of the same, shall be obliga- 
tory upon the people of Mississippi, in so far as they are applicable, in the same 
manner as if this ordinance had not been made, until the termination of the first 
Congress of the government hereinafter mentioned. 

"Section 4. Be it further ordained. That all officers of the United States within 
the limits of Mississippi shall remain in office, and perform the same functions 
therein, until the Federal Union hereby ordained shall be fully organized and 
established. 

"Section 5. That all the regulations, contracts, and engagements made by the 
United States of America shall continue to be binding as before upon the State 
of Mississippi, and that provision shall be made for the fulfillment of the obliga- 
tion in respect thereof. 

"Section 6. That the Governor of Mississippi shall perform all the functions 
of President of the United States, under this constitution, within the limits of 
Mississippi, until the organization of the Federal Union referred to in the second 
section of this ordinance. 

"Section 7. The accession of nine of the States mentioned in Article II. is req- 
uisite to give this ordinance effect, and for the establishment of the constitution 
between the States ratifying the same. 

"Section 8. That it shall be the duty of the Governor, immediately after the 
event described in the last preceding article, to direct an election of members to 
Congress in each of the Congressional districts, and also to direct the election of 
electors of President and Vice President at the same time, under all the regula- 
tions, except as to time, as are contained in the existing laws." 

It will be observed that the plan proposed aims at no change in our form of 
government, but seeks to protect existing forms from destruction. It proposes 
to give us our old glorious constitution in vigorous operation, strong enough to 
suppress domestic violence and repel foreign invasion, safe in the affections of 
our people from the attacks of fanaticism and sectionalism and black Republi- 
canism and red Republicanism all combined. It gives us all the laws of the old 
Republic, and those grand decisions of the judiciary, which have grown up 
around the constitution, as part of the fundamental law, and are almost as sacred 
as the constitution itself. It proclaims to the civilized world that as loyalty to 
the constitution is the law of our conduct at home, so will good faith and the 
observance of treaties regulate our intercourse abroad. It gives us the tradi- 
tions and the historic wealth, colonial and revolutionary, of the glonous old 
Commonwealth of Virginia. In a word, it gives us the Union and constitution as 



APPENDIX, NOS. 6, 7. 6;]'J 

the fathers made them, and separates us fiom the enemies to both, who them- 
selves have seceded from the constitution, and are indeed rebels and traitors. 

With great respect, your friend, L. Q. C. Lamar. 

To Hox. F. F. LiiDDELL, Carrollton, Miss. 



Appendix No. 6. 

JEFFERSON DAVIS, 

President of the ConfedercUe States of America, 

To all to whom these presents shall come: Greeting;. 

Know ye, that, for tlie purpose of establisliing friendly relations Ijetween the Con- 
federate States of America and the Empire of Russia, and reposing special tru.«t and 
confidence in the integrity, prudence, and aliility of Colonel Lucius Q. C. Lamak, I 
have ai^pointed him Sjjecial Commissioner of the Confederate States to tlie Empire 
of Russia, and have invested liim with full and all manner of power and authority 
I'or and in the name of the Confederate States, to meet and confer with any i>erson 
or persons, duly authorized by the Russian Government, being furnished with like 
power and authority, and with him or them to agree, treat, consult, and negotiate 
concerning all matters and sulijects interesting to both nations; and to conclude and 
sign a treaty or treaties, convention or conventions, touching the premises; transmit- 
ting the same to the President of the Confederate States for his final ratification, by 
and with the advice and consent of the Senate of the Confederate States. 

In testimony whereof I have caused the seal of the Confederate States of America to 
be hereunto affixed. 

, ~'^~i Given under my hand at the city of Richmond, this nineteenth day of 

< SEAL > November, A.D. 1862. 

*■ '-V-' ' Jefferson Davis. 

By the President: J. P. Benjamin, Secretary of State. 



To His Majesty, Alexander II., Emperor of all the Russias, etc. 

Great and Good Friend: Animated by a sincere and earnest desire to establish and 
cultivate the most friendly relations between the Confederate States of America and 
tbe Empire of Russia, I have fjr that purpose selected Colonel Lucius Q. C. Lamar, 
one of our most intelligent, esteemed, and worthy citizens, and have commissioned 
him as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the Confederate States 
to reside near the court of your Majesty. He is well acquainted with the wishes and 
interests of the Confederacy, anil your Majesty will therefore be pleased to give full 
credence to whatever representations he may make in its behalf. 

May God preserve your Majesty in his safe and holy keeping! 

Your good friend, Jefferson Davis. 

Richmoud, November 19, 18G2. 



Appendix No. 7. 

THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY, AT HOME AND ABROAD. 

Address delivered al the Atlieneum, Atlanta, Ga., April 14, 18G4. 

At the hour of S p.m. Col. Lamar entered the large hall, which had long been 
crowded with a brilliant assemblage of ladies and gentlemen, and was greeted with 
enthusiastic applause. He arose and began : 

Ladies and Gentlemen: Invited by a portion of the citizens of Atlanta to address 
you upon the "State of the Country, at Home and Abroad," I appear before you this 
evening, not simply as an act of courtesy, but.in obedience to my sense of j)ublic duty. 
I presume you desire that I should first state to you some of the results of my obser- 
vatinns during my recent visit to Europe. 

Though absent during a period not exceeding twelve months, I had unexpected 
opportunities of ascertaining the state of public opinion in England and France, and 
of obtaining some information of that throughout Europe, touching American affairs. 

In Great Britain the leading contestants for power, the Conservatives and Whigs^ 



6-40 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

supported by the great body of their respective adlierents, are favorable to the success 
of the Soutli. Many causes, however, combine to prevent this partiahty from pro- 
ducing any practical result. Not only the Government party, but even the Conserv- 
ative leailers are exceedingly timid in regartl to any movement which might give 
umbrage to the United States. They seem to consider that a war with that country 
would be the greatest calamity, short of actual dislionor, tliat could befall Great Brit- 
ain; and there exists a universal conviction that the United .States would not regret 
the occurrence of a confiufrcncy wdiich would justify them in declaring war. This 
belief has made a deep impression upon tlie ndnd of England ; anil though it has in- 
creased the willingness to witness the dismemberment of a hostile jiower and ditl'used- 
in a wider and still widening circle, the sympatliy for the South, it has, notwith- 
standing, exerted a powerful influence in holding that government to the so-called 
policy of neutrality which it announced at the commencement. 

Another cause lies in the jieculiar composition of parties in both Houses of Parlia- 
ment. I presume you are all aware that neither of the two great parties has such a 
working majority as will insure its continuance in power. The Conservatives can at 
any moment oust the Whigs, now in power; and the latter can, in turn, with equal 
facility, eject their successors. This gives the balance of power to the Radicals, under 
Mr. John Bright and others. Although weak in numbers in Parliament, this last- 
named party has become necessary to the maintenance of eitlier jiarty in power ; at 
least their united opposition would be fatal to any administration which might be 
organized. 

These men are the warm partisans of the United States, and had, a short time pre- 
vious to my departure, made a series of striking demonstrations by public meetings 
and addres-'es on tlie subject of slavery. I was told that it was well understood that 
United States gold was freely used in getting up these spectacles; and although they 
have been particijiated in by but few men of any note or consideration, yet they have 
been sulticiently formidable to exercise a powerful influence upon the policy of both 
the leading i)arties. It was tbouudit that some of Lord Russell's remarkable declara- 
tions about slavery were elicited by these demonstrations. 

If the nation were divi<led solely on the American question, the overwdielming force 
of jmblic opinion would lie on the side of the South. 

With the exception of John Stuart Jlill (the author), Mr. Cobden, and Mr. Bright, 
I cannot call to mind a single man in England, eminent in letters or politics or soci- 
ety, who will profess himself, |iublicly, in favor of the North. The nobility, a body 
of independent and highly cultivated men, who still rule that country, though com- 
I>eUed to do so in accordance with the wishes and instincts of its people, are general- 
ly in our favor. The same may be said of the clergy of the established Church. 

The Army and Nav\' may be pronounced almost unanimous in their sympathy for 
the South. There are seven leading daily newspajiers in London. Of these liut two, 
the Slar and Neirs, both issued from the same ollice, alone advocate the cause of the 
North. Tlie London Inde.r is a weekly paper, ably conducted, and entirely devoted 
to the Southern cause, in whose columns )-ou may find some of the highest and jiroud- 
est names of Great Britain on a committee to raise a statue to the memory of Stone- 
wall Jackson [ajiplause] ; and in every nundier there are acknowledgments of con- 
tributions from the most distinguished sources to a fund for the relief of Southern 
prisoners, which had already before my departure reached the amount of several 
thousand pounds. I Iiave heard the debates in Parliament, in which every allusion 
to the South was received with cheers, and every comjiliment to the North met with 
unequivocal tokens of disapprobation. Mr. Gladstone, the brilliant Chancellor of 
the Exchequer, in the very speech in which he 0])])osed our recognition upon grounds 
of policy, paid such a tribute to our people as almost itself acknowdedged our title to 
recognition. I state these facts because the rigiil exclusion of our jieople from all con- 
tact with the English mind, by the blockade, has prevented us from seeing what the 
North lias long discerned, in spite of Earl Russell's diplomacy, tliat the heart of En- 
gland beats for us. Nor have reluctant concessions, extorted liy the ujost indelicate 
menaces, blinded our keen-sighted enemies to the fact that we have there almost a 
unanimous nation as our friends — a friendship too tiinid indeeil to be of any practical 
benefit to us, but none the less discouraging and exasperating to our enemy on that 
account. 

But inasmuch as this apprehension of war with the LTnited States does exist, and 
as the American question is subordinate to many (luestions both of domestic and for- 
eign policy, and as the two parties are eipial in strength, the Radicals really control 
the action of the government in regard to American affairs. Nor do I see any causes 
now at work which promise any change in the unjust diplomacy of Earl Russell, or 
justify any strong hope of practical aid from England. Nevertheless, no one, not even 



APPENDIX, XO. 7. 641 

the government itself, can aiitifipatc its action on this i^nbjoct. It may lie reversed 
by the events of a day, aw for a time was liliely to be tlie case when the notorious out- 
rage was ciiniuiitted on board tlie Trent. 

Tlie Northern Government lias been more successful in acting upon jnililic opinion 
in Germany than in other countries, and have many of the German newspapers in 
their interest. It has its agents throughout Germany enlisting laborers to take the 
places of those wlio have joined the army. They profess that they oidy want them 
for this purpose. They have been successful in finding men -willing to emigrate on 
the favorable terms offered; and, as we all know too well, these men have largely 
swelled the ranks of the Northern army. This, combined with other causes, has 
made the lower classes warm partisans of the North. While I was in Eurojie there 
IJrevailed an impression that the Court of Au.stria was most anxious for the ternnna- 
tion of the war, and was not unfavorable to its termination on a basis of Southern in- 
<lependence. The intelligent classes of the people of that empire are certainly in 
hearty unison with wliat was supi)osed to be the sentiment of their government. Not- 
withstanding the hostility of the masses of the peojile of Prussia to us, I think I do not 
go too far in saying that in the court circles and army of Prussia there exist great sym- 
pathy and earnest wishes fijr our success. I believe that these two courts would cheer- 
lully acquiesce in any measure inaugurated bj' other leading powers for our ailmission 
into the family of nations. The Russian Government does not conceal its wish for the 
restoration of the American Union, but professes to be not hostile to the South. Strange 
as it may seem, the relerences to the South in the dijilomatic papers of this govern- 
ment are far less offensive to us as a people than those in the communications of Earl 
Ru-sell, whose object, it seems, is to conceal the pusilanimity of his policy under the 
jioliahed insolence of his words. 

I presume, fellow-citizens, that it is not necessary to dwell at any length upon the 
inclinations of the Emperor of France. [Applause.] His jiroposition to the British 
and Russian governments for a joint mediation in the American trouble, his subse- 
quent otter to the United States Government, the authoritative expression of his read- 
iness to follow England in the recognition of Southern independence, his declarations 
in his speech to the Corps Leylslatif, and the frank, unshrinking avowal of his views 
to ilr. Dayton, would seem to justify the opinion prevalent in Euroiie, that we have 
a warm friend and wellwisher in this powerful monarch and accomplished politician. 

I know that it has been thought by some that the dillerence in the conduct of 
England and France was not so much a difterence of policy and purpose as of diplo- 
macy, or rather, diplomatic manners, and that our gratitude to the emperor is founded 
on rather what we expect than what we have received. But it is no small advantage 
to Iiave the publicly avowed sympathy and moral support of the name of Louis Na- 
poleon. [Apjdause.] Under his sway, France, risen from her fallen condition in 
1.S4S, has again taken the lead in Europe. In all difficulties the eyes of all turn to 
Paris and her emjieror as the recognized arbiter of peace and war. It is the honor- 
able distinction of the Napoleonic dynasty that, under its n'gime, France has been 
the protectress of oppressed nationalities and the friend of peojile struggling for lib- 
erty. It is not to be supposed that he will abandon finally a nascent State, whose he- 
roic people have become, by his kindness, permanently attached to his person and 
the fortunes of his dynasty. 

In the way of his effecting by his own agency what he sought to accomplish in 
combination with other powers, I know there lay some great obstacles. Nothwith- 
standing the emperor has made France more prosperous at home and not less glorious 
abroad than ever before, the elements of opposition still exist, and are in unceasing 
play. When he was elected on his own programme of government in lSo2 by a ma- 
jority of over seven millions of votes in his favor, Paris, it is true, was no longer 
France, and ceased to be the absolute and capricious ruler that she formerly was; but, 
though she lay at his feet a discrowned monarch, she is not destitute of political 
power. She )iartieipates in the universal suffrage in which France rejoices. She can 
no longer bring into jilay her organized emeuU's and mobs and barricades against the 
resolute will, the farseeing intelligence, and firm hand, backed by a devoted army, 
which now holds the power of government; but she has sent to the Corps Legislalif, I 
think, a unanimous delegation in opposition to his policy, led by the orator and his- 
torian, M. Thiers, who is suspected of disguising his hostility to the ri'r/ime under the 
garb of opposition to the administration. The Orleanists oppose his jiolicy, whatever 
it may be. The lawless red Republicans of France sympathize with the lawless 
black Republicans of the North, and are bitterly hostile to us. The philosophers and 
literati are deeply inimical to our domestic institutions, which they imagine to be slav- 
ery as it existed" in the French colonies. The Legitimists and Imperialists are thought 
to be in our favor. 
41 



(542 LVCirS Q. a LAM A 11: BIS LIFE, ETC. 

The domestic difficulties in his way, however, he could easily overcome, but for an- 
other cause affecting the policy of governments, the force and extent of which it is 
difficult for American statesmen to appreciate. The nations of Europe are ii common- 
wealth of States, a sort of federative league, whicli, though it has no central head, is 
so intimate and elaborate as tj subject the action and sometimes even the internal 
atl'airs of each to the combined surveillance and intervention of all. I\o government, 
therefore, except at very great peril, can enter U[>on a policy exclusively its own ; and 
its action in reference to foreign matters is constantly liable to modification, even aft- 
er it has been entered upon. This is the reason why Earl Russell is so deeply en- 
grossed with tlie conferences, rivalries, ami jealousies between the leading jiowers of 
Europe, and manil'ests such profound indiflerence to the fate of constitutional govern- 
ment in America. To thwart some supposed cherislied scheme of aggrandizement on 
the part of Louis Napoleon, or to lessen his ascendency in the cabinet councils of 
European Skites, is in his eye far more impoi'tant than to pursue any jiolicy with 
America, which is regarded as an ahen in the European system. It is yet to be 
proved that this alienage, cheerless and isolating as it now seems, is a national mis- 
fortune to us. For, fellow-citizens, the system of international law as it is enforced in 
Eurojie is not exactly the Christian code. It stands somewhat outside and independ- 
ent of that code, and recognizes in the political order, as the law of nations, not so 
much principles of public right and morality as reasons of State and considerations of 
policy. 

Earl Eussell, in his speech at Blairgowrie, admits that the blockade of the Southern 
ports was not effective, according to the treaty of Paris. Loid Palmerston, in the 
House of Commons, in reply to Mr. Cobden, declared with emijhasis that there was 
no distinction between furuisliing one belligerent with arms and the other with ships, 
and that if the municipal law of'England was not sutlicient to prevent the latter his 
government would never propose to make it more stringent. But the blockade is re- 
spected, and the ships supposed to be for the South are seized; and the law of England 
must be again changed at the dictation of a foreign jiower. This is done, not in hos- 
tility to the South, but because the British Cabinet deem it to be policy to waive the 
rights — aye, and the duties — of a neutral, rather than enforce them by war with tlie 
United States. So with reference to recognition. We assert, what we consider a clear 
and unquestional.)le title to admission into the family of States. The North contests 
it. Europe refuses to look into the question of rigid, and declares it to be a cjuestion 
1 if fact that must be settleil between the contestants and by the arbitrament of arms. 
It is not pretended that the North is justified in attempting to force their government 
upon the South against her consent. It is not denied that the South is justified in 
resisting this pretension of the North; but they hold that, to make good her moral 
right to independence, she must est;\blish it de facto, by drivingoff the Northern ar- 
mies and conquering a peace from the power that asserts dominion over her. When 
we point to the cases of Greece, Belgium, and the Italian States, whose independence 
was not and could not be established de facto, but who were, nevertheless, recognized 
upon theground of right, the rejily is: "These were not cases of rccoirnitlon, but of mler- 
vention, dictated by policy." It does no good to say that such a doctrine discards all 
moral basis for societv, and founds the State on the simple principle of force, on the 
principle that might gives right, and that to be weak is to be wrong; for it is true 
that in nearly all the Continental States authority is maintained by armed force. 

The noble sentiment of lovaltv, and the reverence for authority, outside of England, 
have lost much of their hold" upcin nations. Some of the most eminent men of Europe 
hold that the people have the right, by insurrection, to overthrow the existing consti- 
tution of a government, even in the absence of any tyrannical act on the part of that 
government, provided that they are able to clo so. The most popular opponent of the 
South, in England, who wrote a series of articles over the signature of "Historicus" 
in the Tiiin'!', in one of them ciuoted approvingly the execrable maxim that " rebellion, 
if successful, is sacred; if not, is treason ;" and Earl Kussell, in the speech to which I 
have already alluded, could find but one point upon which he gave his sympathy 
to the South: that is that we are in rebellion. His lordship may economize his 
sympathies, for the Southern people proudly repel the imputation of rebellion. [Ap- 
jilause.] 

It is true that our enemies, and all who hold to the sacred right of rebellion, irre- 
spective of any unconstitutional act of the government forfeiting its legitimtitc authori- 
ty, are estoppe<l from opposing our independence. But our cause rests ujion higlier 
ground than revolution. Our people believed it to be the assertion of legitimate sov- 
ereignty, maile by States, some of whose constitutions are centuries older than that of 
the government which asserts its sujireniacv over them. It is a movement founded 
upon historical right, public law, morality, tihe inviolability of constitutions, and the 



APPENDIX, NO. 7. ()43 

independence of free and sovereign States, in defense of wlucli we have for tliree 
years maintained a war unsurpassed in magnitude, signalizing each campaign by 
grand battles and glorious victories. [Applause.] 

It is clear that the sovereigns and statesmen of Europe are convinced that our 
movement i)0sses.-^es the only condition essential, in their view, to legitimacy. They 
believe, and are actin;; upon" their belief, in the certainty of our success. They regard 
themselves as better judges of the probable issue of the contest than either the North 
or the South. We are In the midst of the conflict, and the>- are calm obserx'erg. 
They have learned to judge of war and its results, for no generation passes in Europe 
without knowing something of its trials by experience. The nations have seen it for 
theuiselves, eacli in their turn, and everywhere its traces are visible. They have in- 
vaded and suifered invasion; overrun, and been overrun. France has seen the victo- 
rious banners of her enemies wave over Paris. Austria, Prussia, Kussia, Ital>-, and 
Spain, have seen their capitals surmounted by the eagles of France. They liave 
learned to appreciate what it is so dillicult for our enemies to understand: that a 
people determined to be independent are not subjugated oven when they areoxerrun 
by the superior forces of their enemies. The policy uf the English Government is 
avowed Iv based upon the certainty of the dismemberment of the Union and a deter- 
mination that Great Britain shall incur none of the responsibility. I give you, as an 
illustration, what was said in the debates by the opjionents of the motion to recognize 
tlie South. Lord R. Montagu led off in the opposition, and concluded thus: 

"He trusted that lie had proved that it was useless to attempt to promote peace 
among the American States, whether by armistice, recognition, or mediation, until 
those States were tired of war. ['Hear, hear.'.] But there was another point. Our 
troops were scattered over Canada, fifty here and a hundred there, an<l soon; buttlie 
North had a large number of troops; and if they were to attack Canada and take our 
troops, what a very pretty figure we would cut ! [' Hear, hear,' and a laugh.] Then 
England was a great commercial country, and they might do serious injurv to our 
commerce by a few Alabamas. [' Hear, hear.'] But there wasanother point. England 
imports an inmiense quantity of corn. Wliere did this corn come from but from Po- 
land and the Northwestern States of America? But how much corn should we get 
from Poland this year, and must we not look, therefore, to the Northwestern States 
of America for our sujiplies? [' Hear, hear.'] If those States could find a market for 
their corn in England, it would promote a good feeling between them and Canada; 
but if this country went to war with America, that good feeling would be jirevent- 
ed. By such a fratricidal war the eflfusion of blood would not be stopped, but rather 
increased; the liurdens of the people would be augmented, and the somces of food for 
this country would be cut otf." r -n ■ ■ \ 

I give th'is not as a specimen of British eloquence, but as a specimen of British ap- 
prehension of war. 

Mr. Clifl'ord also opposed the motion to recognize us: 

"He said that if any precipitate action plunged this country into hostilities with the 
United States a new feature of horror would be added to those now to be witnessed 
in America. . . . The Southern States could not be said to he waging a war of re- 
bellion, for the constitution which bound the States together distinctly acknowledged 
that for all purposes, except for such matters as the customs and the postoffice and 
eKternal relations, the States were separate sovereignties. . . . Into whatever so- 
ciety one went, high or low, one fouml thatthe general impression was that the South 
was makin<' nroirress, and that its efforts would be ultimately crowned with success. 
That the end' of all this must inevitably be the separation of the two groups of States 
was the conviction of every thinking man in Europe and even in America." 

Mr Gladstone also opposed recognition. Speaking for the government, he said: 
" If we take the case of the Soutliern States, there can only be few who do not sym- 
pathize with a resistani'e as heroic as has ever been offered in the history of the world 
on the part of a weaker bodv against the overpowering and vastly superior forces ot a 
strono-er. [' Hear, hear.'] ." .". Moreover, I believe that a very general union of sen- 
timent andoiiinion exists in this country, not upon every matter relating to the iires- 
ent war, but upon this great question : whether we wish that this warshould continue 
or should cease. Mv belief is that at least ninety-nine out of every one hundred in 
this house— I do not know iudeeil that there is a single exception— earnestly and ter- 
ventlv desire that it should terminate. [' Hear, hear.'] Why, sir, was there ever a war 
of a more destructive, more deploral ile— I will venture to add, of a more hupdess—clmrac- 
ierf ... No man is iustifled in wisliing for the continuance of a war unless that war 



for no object is adequate, no object 
IS lUst, unless it oe aiso auainaoie. L^'^-t^^-J '• >^ "^o ""* believe that the restoration 
of the American Union by force is attiiinable. [Cheers.] I believe that the pulilic 



has a iust and adequate, and an attainable, object; for no object is adequ: 

is just, unless it be also attainable. [Cheers.] We do not believe that the i-estoration 



644 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: lUS LIFE, ETC. 

ojjiiiion of this country is, unanimous upon the subject. [' No.'] Well, almost unani- 
mous. [Loud cheers.] ... I do not think that there is any real or serious ground 
for doubt as to the issue of this contest. ... No doubt my honorable and learned 
friend [Mr. Roebuck] thinks tliat tlie recognition which he projioses would bring the 
contest nearer to a close, l)ut I must venture to join issue with him on that point.' 

The honorable Chancellor then proceeded to argue against recognition on the 
ground of policy alone. 

These extracts, all from the opponents of recognition, show a perfect concur- 
rence of opinion as to the certainty of the success of the South. But have the 
English no eye to the benefit of this event? Let us see. Great Britain is a great 
commercial and manufacturing country. London Is the center of the present 
commercial and industrial system of tlie world. Whenever nations wish to 
make a loan, London is the market where it is offered and taken or rejected. 
Well, both sections have submitted their future to this unerring test of British 
opinion. An agent of the United States was sent for the purpose of putting a 
loan on the market, and failed to effect the negotiation. The agents of the 
Southern Confederacy made the same attempt. A loan for three million pounds 
was put upon the market, and when the books were closed the subscriptions 
amounted to fifteen million pounds sterling; and though, owing to Northern 
bears and bulls, and other causes not connected with our credit, it fell to consid- 
erable discount, it frequently rose and continued afloat, and was at last accounts 
still advancing. This was called a financial recognition, and was regarded at 
the time as an incident of no ordinary significance. 

The Emperor Louis Napoleon is not only a powerful monarch, but also a subtle 
and astute politician, who, when he cannot direct events, knows how to direct 
his policy by them. He has established a French protectorate in Mexico, whose 
durability depends alone upon the establishment of the Southern Republic. The 
acceptance of the throne of Mexico by the Archduke Maximilian, with the ac- 
quiescence of the Austrian Emperor, proves that they look upon the American 
Union as at an end. The Archduke is, I am told, personally one of the most pop- 
ular, as he is most decidedly one of the best informed and most intellectual, of 
all the princes of Europe. His politics are of the advanced liberal school. The 
Archduchess has the reputation of being an ornament to her sex and an honor 
to her distinguished father. King Leopold, of Belgium, whose government will 
not be behind the first to acknowledge the independence of the South. If any- 
thing can restore the greatness of Mexico and give stability and freedom to 
that distracted country, the result will, I think, be accomplished by the Arch- 
duke's acceptance of the crown. 

The interests of Mexico and the Southern Confederacy will be closely united. 
As a Republic, she will Ije at the mercy of the United States; as a monarchy, she 
will be our friend and ally. Will the United States accept and recognize the ac- 
complished fact, and thus maintain friendly relations with France and the new- 
government? I attach luit little impoitance to the resolution reported by Mr. 
Henry Winter Davis, and unanimously adopted by the House of Representa- 
tives at Washington, protesting against such recognition. Mr. Davis is a man of 
great national pride; and doubtless his force of character, combined with the 
fear of their constituents, caused the members of the House to vote unanimous- 
ly for its adoption. But it will be only a repetition of the Trent affair. The 
United States Government will recognize the Government of Mexico, and at 
once proceed to clandestine efforts to overthrow it. But whatever course the 
United States may pursue, the cause of human freedom, civilization, and of the 
Confederacy (assuming our own success as ceitain), will be promoted by the es- 
tablishment of the projected government in Mexico. [Applause.] 

1 have attempted, fellow-citizens, to disclose to you as precisely as I could the 
attitude in which you stand to the nations of the earth. A distinguished South- 
ern statesman (Ge"n. Cobb), in his address at Newnan. is reported to have said: 
"The whole world is against us; we can expect no helji from Europe." As to 
the first remark, 1 differ from that distinguished gentleman, though concurring 
fully in the opinion that we are to expect no aid. In my opinion, the annals of 
nations do not furnish an instance of a struggle which inspired such anxious, 
intense, and even tremulous aspirations for its success as are felt throughout a 
great part of Christendom in our behalf. 

■I'he great task before us, after peace, and one to the performance of which we 
will have to summon all the resolution, intellect, and religion of the country. 
will be to maintain the high reputation which our arms have acquired. Wher- 
ever I went, upon land or sea, I could hear from all ranks and classes of society 



APPEXDrX, XO. 7. 045 

tributes to the unsurpassed valor of our troops, the genius and skill of our gener- 
als, the conservative moderation of our legislation, the high civil and moral qual- 
ities of our President, and the heroism and fortitude of our people; and when, 
standing under foreign skies, I heard these tributes to my dear, bleeding SouLli- 
ern land, my heart thrilled with pride in feeling that I was a Confederate citizen, 
a title I would not barter for this wide world's wealth and all its honors besides. 
[Applause.] 

But, it is asked, what good will all this sympathy and admiration do us if we 
get no practical assistance? If there be any truth in the saying, "A good name is 
rather to be chosen than great riche.^," it reputation is the best part of man's 
and a people's estate, it is certainly no small thing to rise from the degrading 
estimate which our enemies had by their calumnies caused all the nations of the 
earth to form of our character — to rise, I say, to our present exalted position. 
Nor is this favor so unproductive of material results as some suppose. Public 
opinion is a great moral power to which the mightiest and most reckless nations 
must yield sooner or later. Sovereigns and cabinets may refuse to utter its de- 
cisions for a time, but it goes on noiselessly gathering power until it becomes 
mightier than an "army with banners." 

The Pope of Kome, though despoiled of his principal temporal supports by the 
sovereigns of Europe, is still the recognized chief of the greater portion of the 
Christian world; and as a devout and humble Christian he i.3 as much respected 
and beloved by Protestants who come in personal contact with him as by Cath- 
olics. This spiritual head of the Catholic Church, who has never yet lowered his 
crest before the powerful governments that have despoiled him, has risen and, 
in the name of religion, humanity, civilization, and the integrity of States, pro- 
nounced us right, and recognized the title which we have assumed among the na- 
tions. [Applause.] 

I have been frequently asked if my observation of the workings of the mon- 
archies of the old world, in connection with the unhappy end of the American 
Republic, had not somewhat impaired my faith in republican institutions, and if 
I would not be willing to have such a government as that of England, for in- 
stance, established here. I reply that my confidence in republican institutions 
as the normal political state of the Southern people, so far from being shaken, 
is strengthened and confirmed. [Applause.] My opinion is that the well-being, 
stability, and freedom of society depend more upon the essential characteristics 
of the people who compose it than upon its external political forms. The Gov- 
ernment of England is certainly an admirably balanced Commonwealth, in 
which political power and individual freedom are in perfect poise and vigorous 
operation; but the Constitution of England is the history of England. Its gov- 
ernment, its civil and religious and educational institutions, are but external 
structure^ whose roots lie deep in the moral and mental life and social habits of 
its people. It is no machine to be fabricated or imitated by other people. 

If there was any one peculiarity which struck me more forcibly than all 
others, it was the absence of any system whatever. It is practical unity amid 
theoretical contradictions. The two great antagonistic principles which warred 
for the mastery through so many bloody revolutions are now working together 
in the same constitution in harmonious compromise. The hereditary principle, 
as represented in the monarch and the nobility, is prevented from being des- 
potic or tyrannical by the House of Commons; the elective principle, the princi- 
ple of democracy, of the numerical ma.iority, is embodied in the House of Com- 
mons, but is limited and prevented from becoming absolute and oppressive by 
the Crown and the House of T,ords. Now, as we have neither kings nor nobil- 
ity, we can have no hereditary principle with which to check the absolute power 
of the numerical majority. The division of powers between our President and 
Senate and House of Representatives does not effect the object, inasmuch as 
they all are the representatives of the one and same elective principle. It 
would be an easier task to transfer the English people to our soil than the Eng- 
lish monarchy. But the principle of State sovereignty forms in our system the 
balance which the hereditary principle furnishes in the British system. I trust 
that it will never be given up. [Applause.] Indeed, the difference between the 
essential principles of the two governments is not so great as many imagine. 
Ours is a democratic Republic of independent States; theirs is a regal Republic 
of independent estates. Our constitution, like the English, is the growth of 
time, and, like theirs, is the principle of our political being, on whose preserva- 
tion inviolate depend the issues of life and death. 

Nor have the events of this war impaired my faith in republican institutions. 



640 LVCIUfi Q. C. LA.VAli: JUS LIFE, ETC. 

1 do not believe that there Is on earth a single nation which could have sus- 
tained the shock and constant strain to which we have been subjected during 
three long years without the most fearful social convulsions. The attachment 
shown by our people to their constitution during the trensition from the disso- 
lution of the old Union to the formation of the new one — when, though in theo- 
retical abeyance, it nevertheless held undisputed sway over all minds and hearts 
— relieved my mind of all apprehension that our liberties would be lost by any 
act of the people themselves; and I am to-day more confident than ever that the 
great mass of our honest, simple, truthful, law-abiding, and brave-hearted peo- 
ple have just the qualities from which would naturally grow up a constitutional 
Republic, destined to take its stand am.ong the best and most enduring forms of 
human government. 

It is true that, on my return, I see many signs of distress and suffering, and 
that our enemies have made a large pai't of our beautiful and teeming country a 
land of desolation and mourning and woe; but I also discern in our people, of all 
ages and sexes and conditions, a greater capacity of self-sacrifice, a higher tone 
of thought and feeling, greater earnestness of purpose, purer motives of action, 
a deeper moral life. You, my fellow-citizens, are tmconscious of the moral tran- 
sition through which you have passed; but to one who has been absent the re- 
sult is clear and striking. 

It is also true that among some there prevail depression at the thought of fu- 
ture trials and sacrifices to be endured, and impatience at the heavy charges 
which the necessities of our government have forced it to impose upon the peo- 
ple; but even with these, I see the same unfaltering devotion to the cause, the 
same inflexible determination to toil on, fight on, and live on the bare necessities 
of life, in order to maintain our rights, save our honor, and secure a glorious in- 
dependence. [Applause.] 

The efforts to excite opposition and dissatisfaction among the people with the 
measures of the last Congress are certainly to be lamented for the effect which 
will be produced abroad, and upon our enemies, who will not understand their 
spirit and purpose; but of their effect upon our people I have no a)jprehen&ion. 
[Applause.] These measures have been the theme of a message from the Execu- 
tive of Georgia to the Legislature, in which they are denounced, in unmeasured 
terms of bitterness, as unconstitutional and violative of State sovei-eignty. The 
act suspending the privilege of the writ of linhran i-orinoi is characterized as a 
"fell blow," struck "with the assent and at the request of the Executive, at the 
liberties of the people of these States." I have from the first Ijelieved that these 
appeals and recommendations, directly tending to bring the Confederate and 
State authorities Into disorganizing collision, would prove fruitless and unavail- 
ing. [Applause.] The people believe that there has been no violation of the 
constitution, and that their government meditates no blow injurious to the liber- 
ties of its own citizens. [Applause.] 

Fellow-citizens, the privilege of the writ of liahc(!>i corpus is one of those great 
guarantees of English and American liberty whose violation would indeed be a 
most dangerous and oppressive ustirpation of power; but, fellow-citizens, the leg- 
islative power of suspending this privilege, in time of invasion or rebellion, 
when the puldic safety requires it, is coeval with the writ itself. The Governor 
is mistaken in his intimation that the British King has not ordered the arrest of 
any person in civil life, nor suspended or attempted to suspend the privilege of 
this writ, since 1689. This privilege has been repeatedly suspended (not by the 
Crown, it is titie — which has no such power — but bv Parliamenf), and the power 
to arrest has been vested in an officer of the Crown one hundred years since the 
time stated by the Governor. 

The existence of this power in the Constitution of the United States and of 
the Confederate States is no longer disputed, but the constitutionality of the act 
in question is denied: first, upon the ground that the power to suspend the priv- 
ilege of the writ is an implied power, and must, therefore, yield to certain express 
guarantees of personal liberty with which that act is supposed to conflict. In 
my address to the members of the Georgia Legislature (session in March last) I 
could not but express my astonishment, in perhaps rather strong language, at 
this assumption in the message that the power to suspend the writ of liahrfis car- 
/)»•>.■ is derived by implication only from the constitution. I will now take the 
liberty of saying that this astonishment is greatly increased by the sanction 
which this assumption has receiveil from n distinguished statesman (the Vice 
President) whose intellect and character command my highest respect and defer- 
ence. It has been said, however, that the Governor did not put his argument 



M'l'r.SDlX, SO. :. (347 

against this act "upon tlie idea that the power to suspend the privilege of the 
writ is an implied one, or that clearly implied powers are weaker, as a class, ami 
subordinate to others positively and directly delegated." ... He simply 
states a tact, as it most clearly is, that the power to suspend the writ at all is an 
Implied power. There is no positive, direct power delegated to do it. The 
power, however, is clear, and clear only by implication. . . . The language of 
the constitution . . . clearly expresses that the power may be exercised in 
the cases stated, but it does so by implication only, just as if a mother should 
say to her daughter: "You shall not go unless you ride." 

This proposed modification of the argument of the Governor I do not think 
can be sustained. His language is too plain and emphatic. He says: "The 
power to suspend the hiilmix ciirpus at all is derived, not from express and direct 
delegation, but from implication only; and an implication can never be raised in 
opposition to an express restriction. In case of any conflict between the two, 
an implied power must always yield to express restrictions upon its exercise. 
The power to suspend the privilege of the writ of Inilira.i rdrjuoi. derived by im- 
plication, must therefore be always limited by the express declarations in the 
constitution," etc. It is obvious that he here means something more than sim- 
ply to state, as a fact, that the power is an implied one. Such certainly is the 
view of Judge Linton Stephens, who introduced the resolutions in support of 
the Governor's views, which, after amendment, were adopted by the Legisla- 
ture. The first of these resolutions, after setting forth the alleged restriction 
upon the power in question, says: "And this conclusion results from the two fol- 
lowing reasons: First, because the power to suspend the writ is derived, not 
from express delegation, but only from implication, which must yield to express 
conflicting and restricting words." I propose to show that no such reasons ex- 
ist, and that the power to suspend the privilege of the writ of luihcax curpus is 
derived, not from implication, but from positive and express delegation. 

Fellow-citizens, according to our commentators on the constitution, including 
Story, the chief of the Northern school, and Calhoun, of the Southern, "im- 
plied powers" are those which are derived from what is called the discretionary 
clause of the constitution— that is, the grant which authorizes Congress to pass 
all laws necessary and proper to tlie execution of those expressly delegated. The 
Southern school of statesmen regarded these powers with distrust, as doubtful 
and dangerous in their character. The Story and Webster school, on the con- 
trary, denied that "clearly implied powers are weaker as a class and subordinate 
to others positively delegated." But while the opposing schools differ widely 
as to the extent, validity, and dignity of these powers, there was no question 
about the clause of the constitution from which they were derived; and that, I 
repeat, was the clause which authorizes Congress to pass all laws necessary and 
proper to carry into effect those expressly conferred. "They are called implied 
powers," says Story, "because they are incident to, and therefore implied in. 
the foregoing powers" expressly conferred. "They are called implied powers," 
says Calhoun, "because they are auxiliary, being necessary to the execution of 
the powers expressly vested in the government." But can any one call the 
power to suspend the privilege of the writ of hriheas coriiiix a power of this kind? 
To what express power is it an "auxiliary?" To the execution of what inde- 
pendent substantive power is it necessary? Listen to the clause: "The writ 
of liabraf: corpus shall not be suspended unless in cases of rebellion or invasion 
the public safety may require it." Can language be made more positive and 
explicit? How then can this great historic power be said to be implied? Be- 
cause "there is no positive, direct power delegated to do it," says the Vice 
President. It is then upon the mere form of the phraseology — upon the fact 
that the clause does not say: "Congress shall have the power to suspend," etc. — 
that this assertion is predicated. I affirm that many of the most important pro- 
visions of the constitution, many of its most vital powers, are expressed in sim- 
ilar phraseology. The power of the Vice President to give the casting vote is 
expressed in this form of words: "The Vice President shall be President of the 
Senate, and shall have no vote except," etc. The clause describing the qualifi- 
cations of Senators and Representatives is expressed in the same form: "No 
person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the age," etc. The 
clause conferring the power of punishing in cases of impeachment, by removal 
from office, disqualification to hold any office, etc., is expressed in the same way: 
"Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal 
from office," etc. 
The same is true of the clause conferring the power to convict in cases of im- 



648 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

peachment. The power of adjournnient is conferred in negative terms also. 
The power of Congress to make approiiriations of money in the absence of rec- 
ommendation from the President and heads of departments is given in terms of 
the most peremptory negation: "Congress shall appropriate no money," etc. 

Fellow-citizens, the greatest truth that ever burst upon the world was commu- 
nicated in this way. I believe that all denominations of Christianity concur in 
the opinion that the doctrine of spiritual regeneration is expressly taught in the 
Scriptures. That great truth was con^ eyed by the Saviour of the world in these 
words: "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." And 
when it was questioned, he repeated: "Except a man be born of water and of the 
Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God." And then, by way of repetition, he 
says: "Marvel not that I said unto thee. Ye must be born again." Showing that 
in this negative form was contained the most imperative affirmation of the 
great truth wiiich was to thril! the world with joy. 

But I call to my support the very mind in which this constniction originated. 
Speaking of the illegal distillation of grain into spirituous liquors. Gov. Brown, 
in his message, "earnestly requests that an act be passed authorizing the Gov- 
ernor to impress all the stills in the State, which he has reasonable grounds to 
suspect have been used in violation of the law;" "that he be authorized to use 
all military force necessary to accomplish the object, and that provision be made 
for paying the owner just compensation for such stills when seized." He also 
says: "I recommend the enactment of a law authorizing State officers, under the 
direction of the Governor, to make impressments of provisions in all such cases, 
and providing for the payment of just compensation to the owners of the prop- 
erty impressed." 

Now, fellow-citizens, the clause of the Georgia Constitution from which the 
Governor claims the power of the Legislature to pass such laws is almost exactly 
the same in its terms as that in the Confederate Constitution in reference to the 
suspension of the privilege of the writ of IkiJikix rurjiiix. Mark the language of 
each: "Private property shall not be taken except for public use, and then only 
upon just compensation paid to the owner." (Georgia Constitution.) "The 
privilege of the writ of hahcus curpVK shall not be suspended unless when in cases 
of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." [Laughter and ap- 
plause.] 

Now, fellow-citizens, if the power to suspend the writ of lidhcris roritii.i is a 
power derived bj' implication, is not the power to seize stills and impress provi- 
sions also a power derived by implication? [Applause.] And if the power to 
suspend the writ of hiilKOs cdriiKx, being an implied power, is limited by the ex- 
press guarantees quoted by the Governor, is not the power to take private prop- 
erty subject to the same limitation? Now let us see what these limitations are 
which he quotes and reiterates. "Thus," says the Governor, "it is the express 
guarantee of the constitution that the persons of the people shall be secure." 
But that very same clause says that the "effects of the people shall be secure." 
[Applause.] "But," says the Governor, "the constitution declares that 'no war- 
rants shall issue' but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation 
particularly describing 'the person to be seized.'" But that very same clause 
also declares that "no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by 
oath or affirmation, particularly describing the thing to be seized." [Laughter.] 
"It is an express guarantee of the constitution," proceeds the Governor, "that no 
person shall be deprived of liberty without due process of law." But the clause 
which the Governor refers to expressly guarantees something more than that: it 
says, if my memory serves me aright, that "no person shall be deprived of life, 
liberty, or property without due process of law." [Applause.] Every guarantee 
thrown around personal liberty is also thrown around the right of private prop- 
erty. Personal security, personal liberty, the right of private property — these 
are the sacred and august landmarks which stand along the boundary that di- 
vides tyranny from civil liberty; and none of these are more essential to civiliza- 
tion than the inviolal)ility of private property. Now, fellow-citizens, my object 
is to show, not that Gov. Brown has requested your Legislature "to strike a fell 
blow at the rights of the people" of Georgia, nor do I mean to intimate that "en- 
croachment upon constitutional liberty" is a malady which sometimes affects a 
State Executive, no less than a Confederate; but it is to show that upon Gov. 
Brown's own principles this power to suspend the privilege of the writ of hahcav 
(•iirj}iis is not merely an implied power, and that its exercise by Congress involved 
no infraction of the constitution. [Applause.] I do not wish to be understood 
as asserting that the power to suspend the privilege of this writ is not limited by 



APPENDIX, yo. 7. (J4'.) 

the clauses referred to. There is no such thing in o>ir constitution as an unre- 
stricted power, however absolute in its terms. All the provisions mutually limit 
one another, and should be construed together, so that no one may be rendered 
nugatory. 

Now my objection to the nonstruclion placed on these clauses by the Vice 
Presidentis that it seems to me to annul entirely a plain and palpable jjrovision 
of the constitution. His denial of the constitutionality of the .Xct of Congress 
rests upon the ground that this power, being in the original constitution, is re- 
stricted by certain guarantees of personal liberty in the amendments subsequent- 
ly adopted as "further declaratory and restrictive clauses," and that this con- 
struction is applicable to the Constitution of the Confederate States. He then 
groups the power and these guarantees together and deduces this conclusion: 
"With these views, it will clearly appear that under the constitution, courts 
cannot be deprived of their right or be relieved of their duty to inquire into the 
legality of all arrests except in cases arising in the land and naval forces, or in 
the militia, when in actual service — for the government of which a different pro- 
vision is made in the constitution. Under a constitutional suspension of the 
privilege of the writ, all that the courts can do would be to see that the party was 
legally arrested and held, upon proper warrant — upon probable cause, sup- 
ported by oatli or affirmation setting forth a crime or some violation of law. 
Literally and truly, then, the only effect of a constitutional exercise of this power 
over the writ of hahcdx curinis: by Congress is to deprive a person, after being 
legally confined, of the privilege of a discharge before trial, by giving bail, or on 
account of insufficiency of proof as to probable cause, or other like grounds. 
This privilege only can be suspended, and not the writ itself." 

Now in the tirst place 1 respectfully submit that the right of being discharged 
on giving bail is outside of the question. What is the writ of Iiahran rnrpiinf 
The right to bail? Certainly not. It is an order of a judicial officer to the per- 
son holding another in custody to produce the body of the prisoner with the 
day and cause of his arrest, "to do, submit to, and receive" what the judge issu- 
ing the writ may determine. The privilege of the writ is the right of the citizen 
when under arrest to have the writ issued. It is his right, his privilege; but the 
constitution says that this privilege may be suspended in certain cases. Now 
the argument that the right of the citizen to have this writ issued, and the duty 
of the courts to issue it, cannot be constitutionally suspended, is to argue that a 
plain, palpable provision of the constitution is itself unconstitutional. J'^or look 
at the effect of this construction. If the Vice President's view be correct, it fol- 
lows that the constitutional exercise of the power to suspend the privilege of the 
writ of hdhciis rriimin does not suspend the right of the citizen to be free from 
all except judicial arrests upon oath or affirmation. It does not suspend the 
duty of the court to inquire into the legality of the arrest; it does not suspend 
the writ of hfihai>< eoriuiit. It does suspend the right to give bail. Inadmissible 
as such a conclusion must appear, it is rendered more so by the fact that upon 
the principles laid down by the Vice President it cannot even suspend this last— 
the right to give bail. His proposition is that the suspension of the privilege of 
this writ does not .-suspend any of the express rights and privileges guaranteed 
in the amendments to the constitution. Now, fellow-citizens, the right to bail is 
a right guaranteed in those very amendments. Here it is: "Excessive bail shall 
not be required." [Applause.] If this express guarantee may be suspended by 
the exercise of this power, why may not the others? But, to proceed. If the Vice 
President is correct that none of these guarantees can be suspended, it follows 
thar, though the privilege of the writ be suspended, the citizen can rightfully 
claim: first, that he be arrested only by judicial warrant, on oath or affirmation; 
secondly, that he is entitled to have the writ of lialiiax nirpii^i issued so that the 
legality of his arrest may be inquired into by the courts; and thirdly, that he is 
entitled to be discharged, upon giving bail, after the legality of his arrest is es- 
tablished. So that this great constitutional power, granted so formally and with 
restrictions so carefully thrown around it, amounts to nothing — a mere illusion, 
a magnificent unreality. 

I come now to the last objection made to this act. "This act is unconstitu- 
tional," says the Vice President, "not because Congress has not power to suspend 
the privilege of the writ of hnhcrix cnrpiix. but because they have no power to do 
the thing aimed at in this attempted exercise of it." The unconstitutional pro- 
vision is said to be that portion of the bill which vests in the President the power 
to arrest persons not in the military service, and not subject to the rules and ar- 
ticles of war, charged with certain offenses; that the bill thus "attempts to de- 



650 Li'CJiS Q. a LAMAK: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

prive the Judiciary Department of its appropriate and legitimate functions, and 
to confer them upon the President." I have read with attention and interest the 
arguments in support of this view, and I do not thinli them sufficient to justify 
your l,cgislature in denouncing the measure as unconstitutional. Upon this 
point allow me to make a preliminary remark. As there have been no suspen- 
sions of this writ in America previous to the present war, the question of the 
power of the Executive in such cases is a new one in this country. But, as I 
said before this power, just as it exists in our constitution, was derived from the 
British Constitution. The guarantees of personal liberty, which are said to be 
violated by the Act of Congress, were also derived from that constitution. The 
principle of the division of the powers of the government into Legislative, Ex- 
ecutive, and Judicial sprang from the same source. I think, therefore, that the 
action of the British Government in cases of the suspension of the privilege of 
this writ cannot fail to throw light upon this question, and that it is entitled to 
great weight in forming our conclusions. 

But objection has been made by the Vice President to "analogies between this 
country and England, on the suspension of the writ of hiihtas ivrpii.i and the 
effect of such suspension," for the reason that "between their system and ours 
there are several differences," and "none more striking and fundamental than 
the difference between the two tipon this subject;" that "the striking difference 
between their system and ours, which should never be lost sight of. is that with 
them all power originally belonged to the Crown. All rights and liberties were 
granted from the Crown to the Parliament, and through them to the people; 
while with us all power originally belonged to the people, and essentially still 
resides with them." Neither of these statements is entirely accurate. In the 
first place, it is not true that all powers originally belonged to the Crown of En- 
gland. The Crown of England never had, in itself, the power of legislation, in- 
dependent of Parliament; it never had, in itself alone, the powf r to impose taxes; 
nor was the power of making arrests, simply upon the royal order, ever vested 
in the king. It is true that the Kings of England were in the habit of violating 
the principles of the constitution in all these respects, and that a servile court, in 
one instance, sustained an arrest based upon a special order of the king; but it is 
also true that these usurpations were resisted. And hence those grand struggles 
of the English people against the claims of arbitrary power, of which Magna 
Charta, Petition of Rights, Hahras Cnipiix. Acts of Settlement, wrested, it is 
true, by force from the sovereigns, are but the recorded evidence; conflicts from 
which England emerged, furnishing to the world the first example of a great 
people, tree and well governed. 

Eqtially incorrect is the statement that al! power in this country originally be- 
longed to the people. The people of this country were originally British sub- 
jects, and their governments colonial dependencies. Nearly all were under char- 
ters from the Crown, securing to the colonists, it is true, the institutions of Eng- 
lish liberty as they existed in the mother country. When, therefore. George III. 
and his Parliament, in a spirit of aggression, attempted to tax the colonies 
against their consent, they rose to defend their liberties and rights. They 
wrested, by force, from George the acknowledgment of their rights, just as the 
English did theirs from the Tudors. Plantagenets, and Stuarts. But they did 
more than they first intended: they wrested national independence and all gov- 
ernmental power from the mother country and lodged it in the people of the sev- 
eral States, who, in their sovereign capacity, ordained a constitution of govern- 
ment; and in it they incorporated this power to suspend the writ of lii/hnis cor- 
ijiis in the very terms, and subject to the same restrictions, which exist in the 
British Constitution. Hence, I repeat, that in the absence of any precedents on 
the subject in our history, we mav very safely, and with great benefit, consult 
those which have arisen in English history. It is admitted. I believe, that under 
the suspension of this writ in England the power of arrest is vested in the exec- 
utive ministers. This ministerial power of arrest is not intended to rob the 
Judiciary Department of its functions. These arrests are not considered judicial 
or punitive measures; they are executive measures of precaution, designed by 
their promptness in times of great danger to arrest mischiefs and convulsions 
which the tardiness of judicial processes would be inadequate to suppress. This 
view reconciles the seeming conflict between these provisions of our constitution. 
How else are they to be reconciled? Here are two clauses, one giving the citizen 
freedom from arrest, except upon due process of law; the other vesting in the 
government at a certain time the power to suspend the writ by which the enjoy- 
ment of the right is secured. Certainly if "due process of law" means judicial 



APPENDIX, yo. 7. 651 

warrants, issued upon oath or affirmation, the right and the power cannot be 
enforced at the same time. In my opinion, the framers of the constitution did 
not intend that they were to be put into operation at tlie same time. They, or 
rather the Providence under whose superintending care our institutions grew 
into shape and form, have given us a constitution and organization of society 
designed to throw around the person, the liberty, and the property of the citizen, 
every safeguard against encroachments in time of peace, and yet to vest in govern- 
ment the entire command of the power and resources of the community in limes 
of invasion or rebellion when the public safety requires it. [Applause.! And 
that such is the legitimate end of all good constitutions, no one can deny without 
coming in conflict with principles laid down in the very hornbooks of govern- 
mental science. Allow me to fortify myself by the authority of one whose colos- 
sal intellect dedicated all of its unrivaled powers to the cause of liberty, and 
whose great heart broke in the very tensioit of its devotion to the South. I 
mean John C. Calhoun. [Applause.] "In estimating what amount of power 
would be requisite to secure the objects of government, we must take into reck- 
oning what would be necessary to defend the community against external as 
well as internal dangers. Government must be able to repel assaults from 
abroad as well as to repress violence and disorders within." Speaking of wars 
between contiguous communities, he proceeds: "So long as this state of things 
continues, exigencies will occur in which the entire powers and resources of the 
communitv will be needed to defend its existence. When this is at stake, every 
other consideration must yield to it. Self-preservation is the first law as well 
with communities as individuals." 

Is not this our present condition? Are we not engaged in a struggle involving 
our very existence? Is not every State in the Confederacy invaded by over- 
whelming masses of our enemy, waging a war of ruthless vengeance? And if, 
in the opinion of Congress, the contingencies prescribed had arisen, it was the 
duty of Congress to exercise this high constitutional power. The nonperform- 
ance of that dutv would have involved as great a disregard of the constitution as 
the usurpation of a power not granted. A constitution not enforced is a consti- 
tution violated. 

I take occasion here to say that I am not among those who condemn the 
course pursued on this subject by our distinguished Vice President. When a 
statesman in his position believes the measures of his government to be uncon- 
stitutional, oppressive, and fraught with ruin, no circumstance can justify his 
silence It is his duty to speak out and contribute the influence of his intellect 
and character to rectify the policy of the government of which he is an eminent 
and responsible member. While, therefore, I cannot concur in the sentiments 
of his able and eloquent speech, while I deplore the wound that it has inflicted 
on many patriotic hearts, and the injury that it may do to interests dear to us 
all I cannot withhold my homage to the conservative spirit and courageous 
sincerity with which he has spoken what he believes to be the truth and for the 
interest' of the country. [Applause.] In his opposition to the measures of the 
government he expressly disclaims all imputation or reflection against the 
President, and emphatically declares: "I am for no counter-revolution." The 
action of the Legislature, exceptionable as I think it is, upon principle, is quali- 
fied by the same conservative views. It discountenanced that conflict between 
the State and Confederate authorities of which your Governor seems to contem- 
plate the possibilitv with something of the ardor of a champion eager for the 
strife They also by a unanimous vote, evince their confidence in the integrity 
and patriotism of tlie President; and they give practical proof of this confidence 
bv virtuallv turning over to the President, contrary to the urgent advice of the 
Governor what he called the "active militia" of the State. [Applause.] 

As a citizen of this Confederacy, however, I must be permitted to express the 
opinion that its action upon the particular measure now under discussion was ill- 
advised and subject to grave objections. The government of a State certainly 
has the right to protect the reserved powers of the State from violation. Bui 
with what sovereign right of Georgia does this act conflict? The constittition 
savs that the privilege of this writ may be suspended in certain cases. That 
constitution was ordained by Georgia, and every act passed in pursuance of it is 
the act of Georgia Every agent who comes upon her soil to execute its provi- 
sions is doing so in the name of Georgia and by virtue of her sovereign authority, 
and he who resists it is arraying himself in opposition to the sovereignty ot his 
own State. [Applause,] Fellow-citizens, from my early youth I have been de- 
voted to the doctrine of States' rights, and as long as I live I shall support that 



652 LUCIUS Q. c. lamaj:.- his life, etc. 

great doctrine with every power that God has bestowed upon me. But I would 
rescue it from the interpretation of its recent advocatfs. For instance, I saw 
not long since in an able and influential paper, published not a thousand miles 
from Atlanta [AtUinta IiitrUiiiaiccr], that the Confederate Government sus- 
tained to the governments of the States the relation of an agent to a principal. 
It John C. Calhoun were alive, he would be aghast at such a travesty of his doc- 
trine. That great statesman maintained that both governments, State and 
Federal, were coordinate agents of the people of the several States, and co- 
ordinate mem.bers of one great system, and that this principle of coequality was 
essential to the equilibrium of that system. He was considered an extremist on 
this sub.iect, and held to the right of a State to interpose and make null and void 
an unconstitutional Act of Congi-es&. But how? By the action of its Governor? 
No, indeed! It is only of late that Governors have acted upon the principle "I 
am the State." [Applause.] By the Legislature? Never! That is the doc- 
trine of Massachusetts and other Northern States whose Legislatures pro- 
nounced the fugitive slave law null and void. But he held that the power to 
annul an Act of Congress required the interposition of the people of a State in 
their sovereign capacity, in that august and majestic capacity In which they 
ordained constitutions, both State and Confederate; and hence when South Car- 
olina passed her famous ordinance against the tariff of 18.32, it was done by a con- 
vention of the people, to a convocation of which a majority of two-thirds of the 
Legislature was necessary. Even this was held to be not a permanent annul- 
ment of the act, but only an arrest of its operation until an appeal could be made 
to a convention of all the States, to whose decision it was the duty of the nulli- 
fying State to submit. 

The best service that any one can render at this time to the cause of States' 
rights is to sustain and uphold the Government of these Confederate States. 
[Applause.] It was established to maintain States' rights, and is based upon 
that principle. All over the world it is regarded as the embodiment and repre- 
sentative of State sovereignty, against which the Northern Government is wag- 
ing war for consolidated despotism. Every triumph achieved by the Confeder- 
ate Government is a victory for State sovereignty. [Applause.] Every defeat, 
every blow which it receives, is a calamity to the cause of States' rights. With 
its overthrow is involved the common ruin of all the States and grinding oppres- 
sion to the Southern people. Under the old Union, fellow-citizens, the defect of 
the system was its danger of consolidation. The Federal Government claimed 
the supreme power, and denied State sovereignly. Hence its rapid strides 
toward a central despotism which was averted only by disruption. In our Con- 
federacy the central government makes no such claim. State sovereignty is the 
fundamental principle of government written down in the organic law. The 
danger with us is, therefore, in the opposite direction. The tendency which 
must be guarded against is the one common to all confederacies: that of inhar- 
monious action and dismemberment. But it is said that under this act the Pres- 
ident could, if he were so inclined, wrong and oppress our truest and most loyal 
citizens; and we are asked what security we have against such abuse. Well, you 
have the same securities (and some you would not have had) against Gov. 
Brown's using oppressively the power he asked over the entire provision crop 
of the people and the power to seize their property upon what he deems a rea- 
sonalde ground of suspicion that they are using it illegally. I undertake to say 
that your President is not more apt to seize the persons of the people than your 
Governor would be to seize the property of the people upon unreasonable 
grounds of suspicion. [Applause.] You have the same security against the 
abuse of this power that you have against the abuse of any delegated po^er. 
The doctrine that no power must be exercised which is liable to abuse would put 
an end to all human government. The securities against the abuse of this power 
lie in the power of Congress at any time to repeal the law conferring it. and the 
liability of the officer exercising it illegally to impeachment and punishment: in 
universal suffrage, which, with our frequency of electitins and the responsibility 
of the rulers to the ruled, places the government almost as completely within the 
control of the people as if they were directly engaged in the act of legislation; in 
the virtue and intelligence of the people; and, as little as you think of it, fellow- 
citizens, in a slight sprinkle of common honesty and common sense on the part 
of your rulers. [Applause.] And now I will ask you. my countrymen, "Can't 
you trust .Jeff. Davis" with such power as the constitution authorizes Congress 
to confer upon him? [Applause.] When this great movement began, when all 
hearts were animated by a sublime patriotism, the Provisional Congress at Mont- 



AI'I'KXUIX, NO. 7. 653 

gomery — which, in my opinion, embraced the highest intellect and morul worlli 
of the country— trusted him with the fortunes of the new Hei)ublic. These men, 
who knew him well, and had been (many of them) his colleagues in the House 
and Senate of the United States, had faith in the disinterestedness of his patriot- 
ism and the firmness of his principles, and placed the fate of the Southern 
cause in his hands, confident that its mighty intei-ests would never be surren- 
dered to selfishness or ambition. He was then unanimously elected by the peo- 
ple; and from that moment to the present he has been regarded all over Europe, 
all over the world, as the firm, the able, the undaunted chief of an heroic people 
struggling to resist subjugation and tyranny. Even the oldest monarchies are 
struck with admiration and wonder at the firmness and majesty of that resist- 
ance, which, under his Presidency, has repelled the millions of the North and 
conducted the unrecognized flag of our young Republic to a degree of military 
glory rivaling in luster the renown of the oldest empires. As a soldier, you find 
him a knightly hero, gallantly leading his regiment to the charge; as a states- 
man, self-poised in the counsels of his own mind, he marches right up to the per- 
formance of his duty, doing nothing rashly, yet nothing doubtfully or timidly. 
Keenly alive to the perils which environ his country, and saddened by the suf- 
ferings which afflict large masses of his countrymen (especially those of his own 
beloved Commonwealth), he nevertheless allows no dangers nor disasters nor 
opposition nor factious clamors to swerve him from the grand purpose to which 
he has consecrated himself, or to relax the firm hand with which he grasps the 
helm of State. 

To strengthen the armies of his country, to gather up all its resources of men 
and means, to rouse his countrymen to high thoughts and heroic deeds, to re- 
trieve disasters, to recover lost ground, to strike new and heavier blows of re- 
sistance — such is his policy and such are the designs which occupy his mind 
unceasingly; while timid souls brood over reverses, and dissatisfied spirits 
assail him with bitter words. [Applause.] But with all this firmness of convic- 
tion and steadfastness of purpose, I ha^•e never known any man more opposed to 
the exercise of arbitrary power, or more cautiotis and reserved in employing 
that which he considers doubtful. The liabi-dx curpus was suspended in 1862, 
and no one can point to any oppressive use of the power conferred upon the 
President. If it was exercised at all, the acts fell upon the people, like flakes of 
snow, so impalpable that the countr.v was unconscious of the suspension of 
this great privilege. It is said that it was not enforced because the President 
became satisfled that the power was not constitutionally conferred. Very well. 
Take that view, and you have another guarantee of the President's determination 
to conduct his government by the landmarks of the constitution. For one, I be- 
lieve that the highest earthly ambition of .Tefterson Davis is to be instrumental 
in securing the independence of these Southern States, with all the civil liber- 
ties of the people unimpaired and inviolate. [Applause.] 

But we are told that "the objects or motives or patriotism of those who have 
adopted this policy is not the question." "Nor is the probability of the absence 
of the power the question." Now I hold that if the power in question be within 
the limits of the constitution, yet nevertheless a dangerous power, capable of 
being perverted to the purposes of tyranny, oppression, and injustice, the mo- 
tives or objects of patriotism of the person in whom it is vested become a very 
important and decisive question. If he be a man of unsullied honor, unswerving 
truth, high moral courage, distinguished by his devotion to liberty and hatred of 
tyranny, you would decide the question very differently from what you would if 
he possessed the opposite qualities. I believe that nothing can be more injurious 
to the prosperity of a country than the habit, which our violent party contests 
have fixed upon our people, of overlooking the question of virtue and ability 
and patriotism in our public men, and subordinating it to what, in the excitement 
of the conflict, are called "important principles." Fellow-citizens, a distin- 
guished statesman and philosopher, and an attentive student of our institutions 
(M. Guizot), has observed, as a serious fact, "the tendency in free democratic 
society to drive the most eminent men, and the wisest among the most eminent, 
from the administration of public affairs." Alluding, I presume, to the trial of 
feeling, the violence of opposing parties, the denunciations and agitations of fac- 
tious demagogties, the vituperations of a parti.san press, and the fluctuating state 
of public sentiment, he says: "It would seem as if. in this form of society, the 
task of government is too severe for men who alone are capable of comprehend- 
ing its extent and desirous of discharging its trust in a proper manner. . . . 
It is for the honor as well as for the interest of society that such minds should 



6.";4 LVCIVS Q. C. LA.VAJ!: JII.s LIFE, ETC. 

be drawn into Ihe aciministration of its affairs and retained tliere; for no institu- 
tions, no societies, can supply their place." Elsewhere this great writer, speak- 
ing of the things which are essential to the success and tranquillity of Democracy, 
says: "It must believe in the genuine devotedness and moral superiority of its 
leaders." 

It is not to be expected that our Chief Magistrate should be able, in the trying 
exigencies of this great war, to satisfy the wishes of all by the measures of hi'j 
administration. The magnitude of the war, which has scarcely a parallel in 
modern history, has I'equired that the entire resources of the country should be 
applied to the single great purpose of defending our existence as a people. The 
leading feature of the war policy of the United States has been to exhaust our 
strength by the grand scale on which the invasion is conducted. It was early 
perceived by them that their hope of subduing us. by the divisions of our people 
was visionary. By the adoption of the most vigorous war measures they have 
hurled against us their utmost strength, and this has forced upon our govern- 
ment a vigorous policy in defense. Hence arose the Acts of Conscription, the 
Impressment Acts, and the various laws calculated to strengthen and subsist the 
army. The legislation of Congress has been devoted almost exclusively to the 
absorbing objects of the war. They called for volunteers until every man who 
could do so, in justice to Interests at home, responded to the call; but more were 
needed, and the government had to indicate these by law. In the class thus sub- 
jected to conscription were a large part of the volunteers themselves. The law- 
was obeyed Just as the call had been responded to: and in obeying that law they 
showed -the same patriotism which caused them first to volunteer under the im- 
pulse of enthusiasm. [Applause.] One of the best proofs of the capacity of our 
people for self-government is their principle and habit of obedience to law, self- 
restraint, reverence to legal authority, and fidelity to the constitution. It was, 
in part, by men thus subjected to conscription that the victory at Williamsburg, 
the glorious victories in the Peninsular campaign, and those of Fredericksburg. 
Chancellorsville, Bi:ll Run, and Chickamauga were achieved. That this law has 
operated in some instances with great severity cannot be denied. We are told 
of an instance in wiiich a boy who had arrived at military age was carried by 
his father to the enrolling officer; but as he did not wish him to be a conscript, 
he had selected as his company the one to which his brothers belonged. This 
was refused; and, tipon his father's insisting, the boy was ordered to jail, to be 
sent to the camp of instruction, to be assigned to any company his otBcers might 
choose. It was a foul and monstrous outrage. But I know another case in 
which my sympathies have been more strongly enlisted. A rosy-cheeked boy 
had volunteered before he was of military age. He was honorably discharged; 
but soon afterwards, arriving at the military age, he was enrolled as a conscript. 
I saw him start with his new accouterments, burning w-ith ardor to join the 
ranks. He was asked if he did not dislike to go as a conscript. "No," said he; 
"I am bound to fight for my country, and Jeff. Davis knows better than I do 
where I am needed most." [Applause.] Now, gentlemen, it is true that this boy 
does not go scorning conscription; but I believe he will follow his flag just as 
gallantly as the one who, though "scorning conscription," was ready to volun- 
teer. I hope that the patriotism of both these brave youths, together with their 
mothers' prayers, will prove a talisman against all temptation to vice in the 
army. If the one that I speak of be spared to return, and if he does return to 
take his wonted place between his mother and sister, with the same pure heart 
that he now carries to the field, O, who will ask his rank or commission, whether 
he be officer or private, volunteer or conscript? [Applause.] There is no 
height of moral excellence or social position or honorable distinction to which 
such a youth may not aspire, hopefully and successfully. 

It is very probable that the very best that human wisdom is capable of has not 
alv/ays been done, but in judging the policy of our government this consid- 
eration should not be lost sight of: the intrinsic and inexorable difficulty of our 
situation, which no policy could have provided against. Of course it is not diffi- 
cult to find fault under such circumstances; but men can be wace at a distance, 
just as they can be virtuous in the absence of temptation. Perhaps they might, 
if the task of government were assigned to them, find the difficulties somewhat 
greater than they appear. From the very nature of the struggle, there must 
necessarily arise numerous cases of Injustice and oppression to individuals. It 
is painfully true that our people have been subjected to many hardships; that 
the conscript laws and impressment laws and tithing laws, all severe and harsh 
enough at best, have been made more repulsive by the mode in which they have 



APl'KSDTX, NO. ~. 055 

sometimes been administered by inexperienced, incompetent, and even reckless 
agents. Individual instances of outrage have been taken up and dwelt upon; 
and, for one, I would not mitigate the indignation which such recitals excite in 
every freeman's heart. Our pro.vost marshals and military guards are not 
always, I suppose, models of politeness; and the restrictions to which the people, 
in all their pursuits, are subjected, must be onerous to men all their lite acc\is- 
tomed to perfect freedom from restraint. Speculation and extortion, no doubt, 
are rife in the land. The tendency of all such struggles as this is to throw to the 
surface those moral disorders which, in quiet times, lie concealed in the bosom 
of society. But let us bear in mind that we suffer all these evils only tempora- 
rilv, to obtain our liberty and independence. The evils to which this struggle 
for liberty subjects ris seem the greater because they are concentrated within a 
short space of time, and are all seen and felt at once. John Milton, replying to 
the description of the sufferings brought on the English people by the great re- 
bellion, "commanders fleecing their districts, soldiers rioting on the spoils of a 
ruined peasantry, upstarts enriched by the public plunder and taking possession 
of the hospitable homes of the old gentry," is represented by Macaulay as using 
the following language: "Many are the evils of this civil war. It is the price of 
civil liberty. When the devil of tyranny seizes a body politic he departs not but 
with struggles and foaming and great convulsions. Shall he therefore vex it 
forever, lest in going out he for a moment tear and rend it?" Now, fellow-citi- 
zens, the devil of the North has seized the South, and we are now in the throes of 
its exorcisms. They are terrible, but we shall he delivered, and then freedom 
will be a possession and "a joy forever." 

"Independence first., and liberty afterwards," does not, as is asserted, subordi- 
nate liberty to independence; it merely means that one is the antecedent of the 
other. We are told that this is a fatal delusion; "that liberty Is the soul of our 
system of government, and, like the soul of man, when once lost is lost forever." 
True, but suppose in this struggle for existence our system of government per- 
ishes, will not liberty, like that same soul, take its everlasting flight? If we 
lose our independence, will not liberty be lost, and lost forever? Gentlemen, the 
thing to be accomplished now is to make good our defense against invasion and 
to secure the independence of the country. Have you ever, fellow-citizens, 
calmly retlected upon what the independence of your country involves? Such 
reflection would, I think, restrain the contemptuous talk about "not turning on 
my heel tor independence without liberty." 

It means vastly more than Presidents, Cabinets, Congresses, and Armies. Go 
to your homes— that word whose sweetness you will never know tmtil the foes of 
your country despoil you of them. Survey your entire possessions— the land 
which you have plowed and sowed and planted until your own heart has seemed 
almost to take root in its soil. Go into the house and look upon your household 
gods: the wife, the children, and perhaps the aged parents. Recall all the joys 
and sorrows, the hopes and fears, the friendships, the love, the sympathies, and 
tender griefs, which constitute the hallowed associations of your life. Think of 
the neighbors and friends around you with whom you have long exchanged 
friendly offices and interchanged freely your opinions on every subject. Now, 
whenever your enemy makes his appearance, but one result follows. And so it 
will be with you. That land is no longer yours; the very courthouse which con- 
tains the record of your title is razed to the ground, your houses and barns 
sacked and destroyed, your stock taken; your wife and children are no longer, In 
the true sense of the word, your wife and children. You must see them subjected 
to ribald insults without daring to lift your voice, or even an indignant look, for 
fear of greater outrage; your neighbors plundered and scattered. What then 
will become of your poii'tics and your views on Imhcna corpus ? Compressed 
within an oath of allegiance which divests you of your manhood and perjures 
your soul! Here, then, you see what the independence of your country means, 
it means your land, your stock, your father and mother, your wife and children, 
your joysl your griefs, your friendships, your dignity as a man, your rights as a 
citizen. Is any temporary sacrifice, then, too great to save the independence of 
your country?' Suppose the rulers of your own choice tell you that a brief sus- 
pension of the hahrns corinis is necessary to save your country. Are you not 
ready to say: "Let the iuihcas corpus be suspended?" Well, if you are not, 
thank God! "your gallant soldiers, your heroic Joseph E. Johnston and Lee and 
Beauregard and Longstreet and Bragg and Hood, with their no less heroic offi- 
cers and privates, have said: "Let it be suspended!" When the war first broke 
out they suspended the hahins corpus over themselves, and have been for three 



6.5G LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

long years pouring out their libations of blood upon the altar of their counti-y. 
There Is no lidbran i-miius in the army; and surely if its suspension all the 
time and for all causes is not derogatory to the soldier, its suspension for a shore 
time and a few causes ought not to be derogatory to the citizen who is not a 
slave simply because that soldier's arm interposes between him and his coun- 
try's foe. These brave heroes who resist tyranny at the point of the bayonet — 
who fight superior numbers of the enemy, and have won victories on a hundred 
battlefields, these veterans who have, who want, no hahnis carpus: to deliver them 
from arrest — at the end of the hardest military service that ever was endured, 
now voluntarily reenlist till their country is independent. 

It is such conduct as this whicii makes me believe that these Confederate States 
can ne\ er be conquered or subjugated, and that a Divine Providence has ordained 
a brilliant destiny of enduring liberty and happiness for this country. This con- 
viction never deserts me for a moment. I ara sure that if our people were to 
look calmly and firmly in the face their present position they would see causes 
of hopefulness and thankfulness. I have heard men draw doleful contrasts 
l)etwpen the fortunes of the two countries engaged in this war. They have al- 
luded to the fact that the North has been able to send vile mercenaries upon us, 
while we have had to send against them the flower of our youth to be sacrificed; 
that their land has not only been exempt from the ravages of war, but their 
people are rioting in newly gotten wealth: and some have said that it seemed as 
it God were sparing our enemies and frowning upon our efforts to be free. . . . 

O m,v countrymen, cease your repinings: and when you bend your knee to God 
thank him for giving you such a country and your children such a heritage. If 
you love that country, do not complain because she cannot in this mortal strug- 
gle to give you liberty, give you also ease and luxury and gold. Let not the world 
be deceived as to your true sentiments by these seeming dissensioirs: but rise like 
true brothers, as you are, and show that you have the courage to strike for the 
right a braver blow than your enemy dare strike for the wrong. 

During the delivery of the peroration of this address of Col. Lamar the im- 
mense audience exhibited the most intense emotion, and at its conclusion burst 
forth in unanimous and prolonged applause. — Ucpurtcr. 



Appendix No. 8. 

ROBERT E. LEE. 

A Letter to the Vicksburg Committee. 

OxFoKD, Miss., Dec. ."i, 1S70. 
To Coi.. AViLLiAM H. MoCardle, and others, Committee, etc., Vicksburg, Miss., 

Oentlemen: When, on the occasion of Gen. Lee's death, I received youi- invitation to 
deliver an addi-ess on the I'.lth of January next, at the city of Vicksburg, the strongest 
im|)ulses (irompted me to an immediate an<l cordial acceptance. Subsequent reflec- 
tion, however, showed me that I could not so regulate my engagements as to permit 
the making of a positive proniisi' to be jiresent on tliat proudly mournful occasion. 

If my long delay in giving you a filial answer seems strange, consider it as due to 
my anxious desire to avoid the necessity of relinquishing such an opportunity of giv- 
ing voice to the emotions wliich fill my soul wlien contemplating the life that has 
just closed amid the tears of a. nation's sorrow. 

While a career illuminated by every accomplishment of the soldier and schdlar, 
as well as the highest feelings of the patriot and gentleman, is beyond all eulogy, it 
is nevertheless our duty and delight to make every effort to give some expression to 
our sense of its grandeur, just as it behooves us to make every preparation for eter- 
nity, although eternity is beyond the grasp of our comprehension. 

'The day of his death will be the anniversary of the South's great sorrow. But it 
was not //(.s darkest day. I was at Appomattox when the flag which had been borne 
in triumph upon his many battlefields was torn from his loving and reluctant grasp. 
After the terms of capituJation had been arranged, chance brought him to the spot 
where my tent was pitched. 

I had seen him often before. On one occasion, especially, I remember how he ajv 
jieared in a consultation of leading men, where, amid the greatest perturbations, his 
mind seemed to repose in majestic poise and serenity. Again, I saw him immediately 
after one of his grand battles, while the light of victory shone upon his brow. 

But never shall I forget how completely his wonted comjiosure was overthrown in 



APPENDIX, XO. S. 057 

this last sad interview. Every lineament of his grand face wriHied, and the Ijig tears 
fell from his eyes as he spoke of the anguish of the scene tliut lie had just witnessed. 
And yet his whole presence breathed the hero still. A consciousness of a great ca- 
lamity to be greatly endured gave to his face the grandeur of victory as well as the 
moiirnfulness of death; and when he exclaimed, "7^ is worse Hum dciUli!" i could 
easily see how he ■nould have welcomed the grave for himself and all that he loved, 
could it only have averted his country's awful woe. Ah, my countrymen! well may 
you weep over his grave, for there lies one whose heart broke in the very tension of 
its love for you and your country. 

IJetween the characters of Washington and Lee, Dr. Palmer, in a recent address, 
draws a parallel which is no less true than it is eloquent and suggestive. The points 
of resemblance between them were indeed many and striking. Both were Southern- 
ers; both were slaveholders; both, by inclination as well as inheritance, were plant- 
ers; both possessed in an eminent degree those qualities which ennoble and invigor- 
ate the .Southern character; and both were inspired by a heroic devotion to liberty 
and right. But here the parallel ends. As the orbs of heaven are alike in brilliancy 
and grandeur and divinity, while yet "one st;ir diU'ercfh fionr another star in glory," 
so were the wonderful virtues which were common to the souls of both these men 
strangely diverse in their manifestations. Each wasa man suigcnfris. Purely original 
in their characters, neither ever thought of forming his own nature on any proto- 
type or of establishing in himself an archetype for others. This indifference to what 
men generally seek with greatest assiduity — conformity to some recognized model — 
naturally produced peculiarities to some extent alike, but to a larger extent unlike. 

For instance, both were of unflecked social purity. Washiugt(5n, however, was cold 
and austere in his nature. Inaccessible to men, formal to women, no warmth of 
social enjoyment or rational pleasure ever thawed the frigid dignity which enveloped 
him. Lee, on the contrary, was affectionate and genial. Cheerful without levity, 
cordial but not obtrusive, he enlivened the hours of relaxation with a humor almost 
sportive in its fanc}', while the moments of sorrow were comforted by the sympathies 
of a loving heart. 

The soul of Washington was jiure and cold, like au Alpine glacier; the soul of Lee 
was limjiid and warm, like the waters of the Indian ocean. 

Both were just, magnanimous, and modest. Washington, however, was born with 
a love f n- command, and a yearning after it. He fawned upon no one, and he scorned 
to act the part of a demagogue ; but those whom he suspected of disputing his leader- 
ship he denounced with fierce and vehement wrath. Even those who beheld him for 
the first time intuitively recognized in him a master; for the intensity of his will, and 
its calm self-assertion, placed him in authority over men as naturally as the sweej) of 
pinion and the strong grasp of talons place the eagle in the kingship of );)irds. 

To Lee self-assertion was a thing unknown. His growth into universal favor and 
honor was the result of a slov.ly dawning consciousness in the popular nnnd of his 
retiring merit and transcendent excellence, of that affinity which silently draws to- 
gether great men and great places when a nation is convulsed. 

Washington wooed glory like a jiroud, noble, and exacting lover, and won her. 
Lee sought not glory ; he turned away from her. But glory sought him, and oveitook 
him, and threw her everlasting halo around him; while he, all unconscious of his 
immortality, was following after duty. 

Both were born to command, and both led the armies of a mighty struggle. But 
Washington, though in a great measure lie began and conducted to a successful end a 
great revolution, has never had accorded to him by history the title of a great military 
genius. From a want of opportunity or some other cause it was not jiermitted to him 
to make those brilliant manifestations of military capacity which startle the world 
into the acknowledgment of that attribute. 

Lee, by his splendid generalship and grand battles, wrung homage from thelijis of 
his bitterest enemies, and insjiired his armies, always inferior to the enemj' in num- 
bers and apijointments, to endure sacrifices and perform prodigies of valor which ex- 
cited the wonder and admiration of the world. 

AVashington was a man of strictest integrity and sublime virtue, and there is much 
in his writings which evince a profound sense of a Divine Providence in human af- 
fairs; but he could not, I apprehend, be called a pious man. 

Lee, with the same majestic morality, with the same imjiosing virtues of truthful- 
ness, courage, and justice, blended the'sweet and tender graces of a holy heart and a 
Christian life. 

Both were patriots, but Washington stood before the world an avowed revolutionist. 
The movement he led was an acknowledged insurrection against established authority. 
He drew his sword to sever the connection between colonies and their parent coun- 

42 



658 LUCIUS Q. C. LAM All: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

try, l)etweon subjects and tliuir legitimate sovereign — a connection tliat rested on liis- 
toric foundation and undisputed legal rights. 

But there was not in Lee or his cause one single element of revolution or rebellion. 
Conservative in his nature and education and associations, unswerving in his loyalty 
to the piiwer which for him was paramount to all otliers, the cause in defense of 
which lie drew his sword was fuunded upon historic rights, constitutional law, public 
morality, and the inviolable rights of free and sovereign States, many of whose con- 
stitutions were estabUshed and in peaceful oijeration while that of the United States 
lay unthought of in the far-ulf years of futurity. 

It has been said tliat " Gen. Lee's memory belongs to no particular section ; that 
his fame is to be, not that of the Confederate chieftain, but of the great Anurican sol- 
dier." I must confess that I do not believe that this sentiment finds any genuine re- 
sponse in the hearts of our people. True, the war lias closed ; and it is high time that 
tiie evil passions which it aroused should be hushed. Would to God that the mem- 
ories of its outrages and atrocities could be l>anished forever from the minds of men! 
And if the victorious North would aflbrd to the defeated people of the South the ben- 
efits of the Union and constitution, in whose name the desolations of war were visit- 
ed upon them, and permit them to enjoy, in the Union, real union, concord, amity, 
and secni-ity from oppression, the Southern people would be promjit to bury all the 
animosities of the war, to remember only its glories, and to regard the glories won by 
each people as the common property of the American nation. But into this common 
heritage they will never consent to ]iut the name and fame of Ri.ilieit E. Lee. They 
will ever feel that they cannot, and ought not to, surrender him to America. They 
cannot forget that after the war had closed, after tlie South had surrendered her arms 
and submitted to the Constitution of the United States upon the Northern interpre- 
tation of it, after slavery had been aliolished and secession pronounced null and void 
in every Southern State, after the integrity of the Union was established and recog- 
nized in every county, town, house, and hovel in the desolate land, Robert E. Lee and 
his people were, to tlie day of his death, branded as rebels and proscribed as traitors 
to America. By far the greatest military genius on the American continent, his love 
for his country obliged him to witlidraw from the American army and throw himself 
into the breach of its colossal invasion ; one of the most sui>erb gentlemen in America, 
he was proscribed from the higher employments of American society, and compelled 
to earn his living in tlie seclusion of a Southern college; possessed of the highest or- 
der of statesmanship known to America, he was deprived of the ordinary rights of 
American citizenship; and thus his eyes closed in death on America. Purity of heart, 
fervor of religion, might of intellect, and si>lendor of genius, were rendered hateful in 
the sight of those who arrogate to themselves exclusively the title of the American 
people, by the single sin of love for the South, the land of his birth. 

He lias already taken his jilace in history; not as an American, but as a Southern 
jiatriot and martyr, of whom America was not worthy. Every thought of his brain, 
every pulsation of his heart, every fold and fiber of his being, were Southern. Not a 
drop but of pure Virginia blooci flowed in his veins. Virginian, Southern, Confeder- 
ate, secession, fi-om crown to sole, he had no aspiration in common with America as 
America now is, or sympatliy with her works as they now are; and from the day 
on which his venerable State seceded from the American Union there was not an 
hoiu- when he would not have gladly oflered up life and all that life holds dear on the 
altar of Southern rights against American ojipression. 

It has also been said that " Gen. Lee belongs to civilization." Aye, he belongs to 
civilization ! But let it not be forgotten — for such will be tlie record of impartial his- 
tory— that it was the Southern type of civilization which produced him! And now 
thtit a sublime self-immolation has fixed him on the topmost jiinnacle of fame, let 
his immortal image look down forever upon the ages, the perfect representative of 
tlio mighty struggle, the glorious purpose, and the long-sustained moral principle of 
the heroic race from whicli he sprung. Thanking you, gentlemen, for the kindness 
which prompted your invitation, I am, 

Yonr friend and obedient servant, L. Q. C. Lamar. 



APPENDIX, NO. 9. 659 

Appendix No. 9. 

MISRULE IN THE SOUTHERN STATES. 
Speech in the House of Represeniatives, June S, 1S7//. 

The House having under consiiieravion the report of the Committee on Elec- 
tions, in regard to the Louisiana contested election. Mr. Lamar addressed the 
House in support of the right ot G. A. Sheridan to the seat in contest. The 
opening argument, involving matters ot detail purely local, is omitted. After 
showing that Mr. Sheridan was fairl.v and legally elected by a majority of 10,- 
614 votes, Mr. Lamar said: 

Mr. SiKvkn-. I realize fully that the arguments which I have been advancing 
and the arguments which I have been replying to are not the considerations 
which will control the action of this House. The remarks of my friend from New- 
York [Mr. Smith], and the argument which followed in the same course after 
him about the "wicked slaveholders' rebellion" and "the conspiracy in Louis- 
iana to trample down the colored people of that State," show that connected with 
this simple contested election case there is another question of a higher im- 
portance upon which the members of this House are fixing their thoughts, and 
with reference to which their votes will be cast. It is a well-known fact that at 
the time when these gentlemen claim each to have been chosen as a member of 
Congress there was a general election in Louisiana; that at this election John 
McEnerv and his associates were, by an actual count of the ofTicial returns of a 
legal returning board, and as proclaimed by the legal Governor according to law, 
declared to be actually and legally elected; that these persons so elected were 
invested with their respective offices, and would be to-day in the peaceful exer- 
cise of the sovereign power of the State but for their ejection by the military 
power of the United States Government. 

It is also a notorious fact that a body of five men, claiming to be a board of re- 
turning officers, declared W. P. Kellogg and certain other men associated with 
him to be elected to the offices of the State Government for which they were the 
respective candidates; that this declaration was based upon no actual count of of- 
ficial returns: that they had not a single official return before them: that the re- 
sult at which they arrived was manufactured upon r.r jKirtr affidavits, most of 
them forged, oral statements, one-sided reports made contrary to law, and a con- 
jectural "estimate of what the vote ought to have been" by a comparison with 
the votes ot a preceding election, which election was admitted by them to have 
been carried by frauds of the grossest character. 

It is also a well-known fact that to fix them in power, which they could not 
otherwise have held for a moment among that people, a Federal judge, upon a 
bill to perpetuate testimony, issued an order enjoining the legal government of 
the people from exercising its legal functions, and decreeing the defeated can- 
didates into the armed possession of the sovereign power of the State: in pursu- 
ance of which order Federal soldiers seized the capitol of the State, and inaugu- 
rated Kellogg and his I-egislature by force of arms and in defiance of law. In- 
dignant as the members of this House must unquestionably feel at the wrongs 
perpetrated upon the citizens of Louisiana; aghast as they must be at the gen- 
eral overturn of all the safeguards of government, social stability, and security, 
which the present condition of that State reveals, for some reason they recoil 
from casting a vote which may indirectly involve the repudiation of Kellogg's 
government or the recognition of McEnery's claim. There seems to be an appre- 
hension that in the success of the latter there will be the reascendency of a sys- 
tem hostile to the interests ot the Republican party; that the McEnery govern- 
ment represents that class in the South which was engaged in the attempt to 
overturn the government, and among which yet lingers the spirit of disunion and 
slaverv; that Its accession to power means the supremacy of the white race and 
the oppression, or at least the subordination and subjection, in some form, of 
the black race. 

I desire to remove these impediments to a decision of this case upon its merits. 
I do not believe that the interests of the Republican party are identified with the 
maintenance of that so-called government now fixed upon the people of Louis- 
iana, or of the governments of a kindred nature in the Southern States. No 
party supported by the moral sentiment of the American people can long bear 
the responsibility of the infamy and disgrace which these grotesque caricatures 



6(10 LUCIVS Q. a LAMAli: HIS LIFE. ETC. 

of government have brougUt upon the very name of Republicanism. Nor, on 
the other hand, is there anything in the character of the people of that State who 
elected McEnery, or of the people of the Southern States, or anything in their 
history before the war or since, which can justify on the part of Congress any 
suspicion of their designs in once more getting accession to power in their own 
States — nothing, sir, which should cause Congress to regard their restoration to 
the management of their own affairs as a menace against any of the results es- 
tablished by the war, against the safety of the black people of the South, or 
against the security of the so-called loyal men of that section. 

As this subject has been introduced into the discussion by the gentleman from 
New York, permit me. in order to disclose the real position and purposes of the 
original citizens of the South in their true light, to review the events of the last 
few years. 

I am aware, sir, of the fact that the bare mention of these events is calculated 
to excite apprehension that something may be said to revive resentments and to 
inflame passion. I presume, sir, I need not assure this House that such is not 
my purpose. I fear that the two sections can never obtain a genuine and per- 
manently good understanding unless we speak to each other upon these subjects 
in a spirit of open-hearted frankness. Reticence and reserve, persisted in, will, 
it is to be feared, be productive of additional misunderstandings. 

Mr. Speaker, in 1S60 the Presidential election, for the first time in the history 
of this country, placed the Federal Government in the control of a party whose 
organization, candidates, and voters were all confined to one section of the Un- 
ion and animated by a common sentiment of hostility to the slavery institutions 
of the other section; whose leading policy was, not only to exclude those institu- 
tions from the Territories, but also to use the powers of the Federal Government, 
to the extent of its constitutional authority, to effect their extinction in the 
States throughout the Tniou. There is no proposition better settled than that 
the Overthrow of the civil and domestic institutions of a people against their will, 
by a power external and paramount to their own, is, in effect, the subjugation 
and conquest of that people. To the Southern people, therefore, was presented 
one of two alternatives: either to submit to the overthrow of their civil and po- 
litical institutions or to change their political relations. 

Early in 1861 seven of those States, by the action of the people thereof, with- 
drew from the Federal T^nion, and by the same authority established a common 
government, styled the Confederate States of America. 

With this controversy between the two sections about the relations of race 
and labor, other questions arose, among which was one relating to the reserved 
powers of the several States and their relation to the Federal authority. One 
school asserted the doctrine of State sovereignty, and, as an incident, the right to 
secede from the Union: the other theory is that the nation, the United States, is 
the sole indivisible sovereign, and that the Federal Government is charged with 
the duty of using all its powers to maintain the national unity and integrity of 
the national domain. This last question antedated the foundation of our gov- 
ernment, and remained unsettled till 1SC5, when it was adjudicated by a tribunal 
from which there is no appeal. 

Such were the issues staked on the result of the war. Sir, can it be said that 
in such a conflict (in which questions as old as the government had passed from 
theory into fact) between two great sectional organizations, whose armies, larger 
than those of the first Napoleon, stretching their line of battle across the conti- 
nent and maintaining a war of four long years of alternate victory and defeat, 
the crime of treason could attach to either belligerent? I do not mean the tech- 
nical treason that the fortunes of war give you the power to record against the 
Southern people, but the moral guilt that lies in treasonable intent. They cer- 
tainly did not conspire or attempt to subvert your form of government or to de- 
stroy your constitution or to depose your rulers. When their secession was 
consummated, they left the United States, the United States still, a great and 
powerful nation, with its extended seacoast, its teeming population, its vast ex- 
tent of territory, its mechanic arts, its commerce, its constitution safe, its laws 
unobstructed, its administration unembarrassed, its magistracy — Federal, State, 
and local — with unimpaired authority. Do not say, then, that we attempted to 
overthrow your government: for there it stood, after we left you, one of the 
greatest and most powerful nationalities upon the face of the earth. 

There was no dispute between the two sections about the form of government. 
Devotion to the constitution, to the principles of American freedom, was the 
fountain at which both sections drank in inspiration for the stupendous war 



APPENDIX, NO. 0. GGl 

which they maintainecl ; and when that war closed with defeat for the South and 
victory for the North, the controversy was closed also. The result of that vic- 
tory has been to embody in the constitution two great principles: the legal in- 
dissolubility of the American Union and the universality of human freedom on 
the American continent. 

But, sir, the North was not satisfied with these results. Holding that, having 
plucked the black race from the shelter as well as the restraints of existing in- 
stitutions, protection to that race was an imperative duty, and holding that they 
were further bound to fortify the results of the w-ar against further disturbance 
or reaction into the organic law of the Republic, they adopted the thirteenth 
amendment, which was followed in quick and logical succession by the four- 
teenth and fifteenth amendments, for a stricter enforcement of which were s\i- 
peradded your reconstruction measures, whose pitiless provisions sunk the iron 
deep into the soul of the Southern people. I refer to them, not to complain or to 
arraign your policy, but simply to remind you how completely and effectually the 
logical results of the war have been interfused in the very elements of your na- 
tional life. You never comprehended how entirely the South realized that the 
fate of her labor system and her creed of separate State sovereignty were staked 
upon the issues of the war. From the day of the surrender of her armies to the 
present moment, in no part of her vast territory has one single hand of insurrec- 
tion been raised against the authority of the American Union. Nowhere within 
the limits of your great empire has the national supremacy been maintained with 
such absolute omnipotence. Is not this fact, of itself unprecedented in the an- 
nals of civil war. occurring among a brave people, a sufficient gage of their fealty 
to your constitution and laws? Have they not abided in good faith by your pol- 
icies as you have successively established them? 

Sir. my friend from New York read something from a Kuklux report, and in- 
voked from me either an indorsement or a repudiation of it. I cr.nnot. sir, now 
give the language of that quotation, but I tell him that he was quoting not from a 
report of the Democrats on that committee; it was the special report of a single 
member, for which the others should not be held responsible. 

Mr. Smith, of New York: The gentleman will allow me to correct him. It 
bears the signatures of eight Democratic members of that committee. 

Mr. La>i.\r: If the gentleman will read the report, he will find that those par- 
ticular sentiments are those of one individual member, and not of the others. 

Mr. Smith, of New York: Those particular sentiments are repeated four, five, 
and six times over. 

Mr. Cox: I will say that they were the sentiments of Judge Van Trump. I 
was a member of that committee. We never read the report. It was the report 
of a subcommittee: and when it was made several of us took occasion to disavow 
it. We never agreed to retrogression as to African slavery, but simply on the so- 
cial question involved in it. 

Mr. Smith, of New York: I never heard that report retracted heretofore, and I 
am rejoiced to hear it now. 

Mr. Lamar: I am not either indorsing or condemning the views or policy of 
either of the great parties. I think I can respond to the question of my friend 
more distinctly than by repudiating or indorsing a detached sentence, which, to 
say the least of it, is susceptible of different constructions. Mr. Speaker, upon a 
recent solemn occasion I announced on this floor that the Southern people had 
not only submitted to. but would abide, the- legitimate results of the late war. 
Sir, that sentiment has not met one dissent throughout the whole extent of the 
Southern land. The occasion has been criticised by a few persons as not a 
proper occasion to utter it, hut the sentiment itself is the all-pervading senti- 
ment of the Southern people. In reply to my friend from New York [Mr. Smith], 
who has challenged me, I will distinctly enunciate what I conceive to be the po- 
sition of the Southern people on this subject. 

Sir, the Southern people believe that conquest has shifted the Union from the 
basis' of compact and consent to that of force. They fully recognize the fact 
that every claim to the right of secession from this Union is extinguished and 
eliminated from the American system, and no longer constitutes a part of the 
apparatus of the American Government. They believe that the institution of 
slavery, with all its incidents and affinities, is dead, extinguished, sunk into a sea 
that gives not up its dead. They cherish no aspirations or schemes for its resus- 
citation. With their opinions on the rightfulness of slavery unchanged by the 
events of the war, yet as an enlightened people, accepting what is inevitable, 
ttey would not. If they could, again identify their destiny as a people with an in- 



662 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

slitution that stands antagonized so utterly by all the sentiments and living 
forces of modern civilization. In a word, they regard the new amendments to 
the constitution which secure to the black race freedom, citizenship, and suffrage, 
to be not less sacred and inviolable than the original charter as it came from the 
hands of the fathers. They owe allegiance to the latter: they have pledged their 
parole of honor to keep the former, and it is the parole of honor of a soldier 
race. 

I repeat that your policy of securing the results of the war has reached its 
consummation. 

There is no class of people in this country who have more liberty and who are 
more secure from the assaults of enemies than the colored people of the South. 
Every man, woman, and child of them can do precisely as they like without the 
slightest restraints from the whites. 

Every black man of twenty-one years possesses a vote, and exercises the same 
right and the same individual freedom as the wealthiest and proudest white man 
in America. There is not a trace of privilege throughout the land. Morally, 
mentally, politically, negro liberty is universal, thorough, and complete; and 
their equality before the law is without an exception. To go further is to make 
it a privileged race. Would it not be wise and statesmanlike to pause before you 
push your policy to further extremes, and see the results of it as time will dis- 
close them? 

But, sir, is it true that in the establishment of the Union and the enfranchise- 
ment of the black men American statesmanship has exhausted its resources and 
absolved itself from all obligations growing out of the tremendous conflicts 
through which the country has passed? Is no regard to be had for the white 
population in these Southern States, for the seven million men in whose veins 
runs the blood of the races that uphold the Christianity and civilization of the 
world; a population in which reside the intellectual culture, the moral strength, 
the materia! interests, the skilled labor, the useful capital of that entire section, 
as well as its political experience; a population which, whatever heated parti- 
sans may say of it, has in every period of your country's history furnished its 
due proportion of Presidents for your Federal Republic, ministers in your cabi- 
nets, judges upon your bench, statesmen in your National Legislatures, generals 
in your armies, and troops of unsurpassed bravery upon your battlefields; a pop- 
ulation whose leaders guided your country for sixty out of seventy years of her 
existence, and only fifteen years ago s'.irrendered her to your control, to use the 
language of one of them upon that occasion, "without a stain upon her honor, 
matchless in her glory, incalculable in her strength, the pride and admiration of 
the world?" 

But in a speech, to which I believe by the rules of this House I am not allowed 
to refer more particularly, it is said that, statesmen as they were, "they were en- 
gaged in a wicked rebellion to overturn the government which was intrusted to 
their hands;" and, "though they have surrendered their arms, they are rebels 
still, cast in the mold of rebellion, and cannot bend." — "You can no more concil- 
iate them by giving them back their privileges than you can conciliate the rattle- 
snake by restoring to it its fangs." And another, to which I am precluded from 
alluding, says that "things are in a bad way down in the South, but it is the 
legitimate fruit of their own misconduct. They have sown the wind, and they 
must reap the whirlwind." — "It is said that the black people have governed 
badly, and are of a lower order of intelligence; but give to me the lower order of 
intelligence that is loyal, rather than the higher order of intelligence that has 
derived its culture from the blood of the Republic." 

Sir. the inevitable effect, if not the direct object, of such views will be to fix 
upon the government a policy that works the degradation, humiliation, wretch- 
edness, and torture, for its own sake, of the Southern people; but I believe, sir, 
that this spirit is passing away even from the minds of my friends on the other 
side. It is condemned by the spirit of the age. You can find no sanction for it 
in the ethics of Christian or American statesmanship, and the authors of the 
sentiments might have learned even a nobler lesson from the allegories of 
heathen mythology. When Prometheus was bound to the rock, it was not an 
eagle, the proud bird of .Tove. hut a vulture, that buried its beak in his writhing 
frame. This is not the spirit that animated your Northern people to war upon 
the South, nor was it the spirit that fired your brave men to follow McClellan 
and Grant and Sherman. 

Sir, the issues of the war are well defined. The people of the South believed 
that if the States of this Union, whose institutions were so discordant that they 



APPENDIX, i\0. .9. 6«j3 

could not live together umler a common government, "part slave and part free," 
could divide into two great American Republics, each pursuing its own destiny. 
the freedom, the progress, and the gi'eatness of its own people, without interfer- 
ing with the other, it would furnish the grandest example and the grandest argu- 
ment in favor of tree institutions that the world had ever seen. The North be- 
lieved that such separation was death to the Americanism of government; that it 
was dissolution to the whole system, and it proclaimed and waged war to give 
effect to the principle that the people of each State and every section must pursue 
their freedom and their gi-eatness and their glory only in the freedom and 
greatness and glory of the American Republic, which would make tliem freer 
and greater and more glorious than they would become in two separate con- 
federacies. And the whole theory upon which your war was fought was that it 
was as much for the good of the Southern people to fail in their cause of seces- 
sion as it was for the good of the Northern people to succeed in the cause of the 
Union. 

If this be not so, then you must admit that you were waging a w-ar of aggres- 
sion upon the Southern people to bring them back into the Union for your own 
sectional aggrandizement, and that the terms "constitutional liberty" and 
"American Union" were empty subterfuges. Assuming that it is your desire 
and your aim, having brought us back into the Union, to give to the Southern 
people the blessings of good and honest government, to secure to them the pros- 
perity and well-being that ought to be enjoyed in this great Union. I ask you — 
not by way of complaint — I ask you if such a desire has been realized or such an 
aim been attained in that unhappy country. 

I do not propose here to enter upon any detailed description of the condition 
of our people. I shall do so if the opportunity occurs on some future occasion. I 
prefer to-day to take the language of a Northern gentleman, not because he is 
Northern nor because he is Republican, but because when I first read his words 
they struck me as solid and thoughtful and wise, exhibiting a maturity of judg- 
ment and a tremulous anxiety for the welfare of his country which I did not ex- 
pect from so young a man: "For the last few years the infamy and disgrace of 
certain Southern State governments have been constantly on the increase. 
There have been corrupt electors and corrupt elections; there have been cor- 
rupt I^egislators and corrupt legislation; there have been double Legislatures, 
double Governors, double Representatives in this House, and double Senators 
year by year in many States, there have been bad men in these States who 
have bought power by wholesale bribery, and have enriched themselves at the 
expense of the people by peculation or open-handed robbery. Corruption and 
anarchy have occupied and possessed these unfortunate States." 

I read from a speech delivered by the gentleman from Maine [Mr. Hale], In 
1872, at the second session of the Forty-second Congress. Now. Mr. Speaker. I 
have heard gentlemen allude, with some significance of manner, to the fact that 
the pains and penalties of treason have not been inflicted upon the South; that 
their leaders have not been hanged or exiled or subjected to confiscation. I ask 
you, gentlemen, can a greater calamity, a more awful curse, be visited upon a 
people than to commit them to the possession of anarchy and corruption? Con- 
fiscation passes away with its victifiis and its authors; but anarchy and corrup- 
tion entail ruin, wretchedness, and blood upon untold generations. 

[Here the hammer fell.] 

Many members: Go on. 

Mr. Sypiieh: I move that the gentleman's time be extended. 

The Speaker: If there is no objection, the gentleman will proceed. 

There was no objection. 

Mr. L.\j!ar: I was saying that confiscation is not the worst of evils when it is 
followed by good government, for then it gives you security for the present and a 
promise of guarantee for the future; but anarchy and corruption are the linger- 
ing death that brings decay with life enough to realize its own loathsome degra- 
dation. 

We have, indeed, as a bare recital of facts — known to many and denied by 
none — would show, a condition thei-e that even the eloquent words of the gen- 
tleman from Maine fail to depict. Language is inadequate to convey a distinct 
conception of it. There is, however, one mistake which I must correct before I 
leave this topic. The evils of that condition are in no way. as is so often alleged, 
the result of a terrible civil war and the social convulsion produced by the aboli- 
tion of slavery. Those States were far removed from the field of invasion, ex- 
cept for a short time and to a small extent. They were never torn by civil strife 



66i LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: Ills LIFE, ETC. 

imtil the desolating furies of peace came among them; they were not subjected to 
intestine commotions. They were united during all the war. But, sir, the 
border States — Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri — were the iield upon 
which the great armies of the two sections met. They were the theater of the 
conflict. They passed through the same social transformations, and were besides 
ravaged by the war of factions locally intermingled. Yet those States, their 
affairs restored to the control of their own people, rebels as they were, have stag- 
gered to their feet, and are exhibiting a degree of prosperity and progress re- 
markable when compared with the blight and ruin of their unfortunate sisters 
farther South. 

Why this difference? If I have not trespassed too long upon your time, I will 
give you a brief analysis of the cause. Mr. Speaker, the point at which govern- 
ment affects most vitally the interests of a people, for weal or woe, is its fiscal 
action. "The fisc is the State," once said a great French statesman. The func- 
tion of collecting and disbursing the revenues places the entire resources of a 
community at the command of those in whom it is vested. It has in all ages 
been the machinery by which arbitrary governments and those who rule them 
can plunder a people and raise themselves to the greatest degree of riches and 
splendor. According to the views of a great American statesman and profound 
thinker, Mr. Calhoun, even in the best regulated governments the action of this 
part of the system naturally divides society into two antagonistic classes: those 
who pay the taxes and bear the burdens of government, and those who receive 
the taxes and are supported by the government ; the latter class being interested 
in swelling the revenues and expenditures to the highest amount, and the former, 
in keeping them down to the lowest figure. There is but one principle by which 
the people who bear the burdens of taxation can keep themselves from being de- 
spoiled and mined by those who impose and consume the taxes; that is the prin- 
ciple which will not permit taxes to be imposed except with the consent of the 
taxpayers — or, in other words, which makes the tax-consumers, the men who im- 
pose and receive the taxes, responsible to the men who pay them. 

Such was the relation of these two classes of the South before the war. The 
men who imposed the taxes were responsible to the people who paid them. The 
consequence was that their governments were models of republican simplicity 
and prudential economy and virtue in the administration of affairs. 

Sir, the events since the war have reversed these relations. When, in order to 
consummate your policy, you divided the Southern country into military dis- 
tricts, your military commanders, distrusting the purposes of the Southern peo- 
ple, and knowing that the negroes were incompetent to manage the affairs of gov- 
ernment, called to their aid and installed into all the oflSces of the States, from 
the highest to the lowest, a set of men from the North who were strangers to our 
people, not possessing their confidence, not elected by them, not responsible to 
them, having no interest in common with them, and hostile to them to a certain 
extent in sentiment. 

I nm not going to characterize these men by any harshness of language. I am 
speaking of a state of things more controlling than ordinary personal character- 
istics. Even if it were true that they came to the South for no bad purposes, 
they were put in a position which has always engendered rapacity, cupidity, cor- 
ruption, grinding oppression, and taxation in its most devouring form. They 
were rulers without responsibility, in unchecked control of the material re- 
sources of a people with whom they had not a sentiment in sympathy or an in- 
terest in common, and whom they habitually regarded and treated as rebels who 
had forfeited their right to protection. These men, thus situated and ttius ani- 
mated, were the fisc of the South. They were the recipients of all the revenues. 
State and local; not a dollar of taxes, State or local, but what went into their 
pockets. The suffering people on whom the taxes were laid could not exercise 
the slightest control, either as to the amount imposed or the basis tipon which 
they were laid. The consequence was that in a few short years eight magnifi- 
cent Commonwealths were laid in ruins. This condition of things still exists 
with unabated rigor in those Southern States; for when, by your reconstruction 
measures, you determined to provide civil governments for those States, the ma- 
chinery by which these men carried their power over into those civil govern- 
ments was simple and effectual. Under yotir policy generally — I repeat that 
my purpose to-day is not arraignment — under that policy you disfranchised a 
large portion of the white people of the Southern States. The registration laws 
and the election laws in the hands of these men kept a still larger proportion 
away. 



V; 



Y 



APPENDIX, NO. 9. 1)05 

But there was an agency more potent still. By persistent misrepresentation a 
majority In Congress was made to believe that the presence of the United States 
Army would be necessary, not merely to put these governments in force, but to 
keep them in operation and to keep them from being snatched away and worked 
to the oppression and ruin of the black race and the tew loyal men who were 
there attempting to protect their riglits. Thus was introduced into those so- 
called reconstructed civil governments the Federal military as an operative and 
predominant principle. Thus, with a quick, sudden, and violent hand, these 
men tore the two races asunder and hurled one in violent antagonism upon the 
other; and to this day the negro vote, massed into an organization hostile to the 
whites, is an instrument of absolute power in the hands of these men. These, 
governments are in external form civil, but they are in their essential principle 
military. They are called local governments, but in reality they are Federal 
executive agencies. Not one of them emanates from the uncontrolled will of the 
people, white or black: not one of Ihem rests upon the elective principle in its 
purity. They have been aptly styled by a distinguished statesman and jurist in 
Mississippi, Hon. W. P. Harris, "State governments without States, without pop- 
ular constituencies;" for they are as completely insulated from the traditions, the 
feelings, the interests, and the free suffrages of the people, white and black, as if 
they were outside the limits of those States. Where is the public sentiment 
which guides and enlightens those to whom are confided the conduct of public 
affairs? Where is the moral judgment of a virtuous people to which they are 
amenable? Where is the moral indignation which falls like the scathing light- 
ning upon the delinquent or guilty public ofHcer? Sir, that class and race in 
which reside these gi'eat moral agencies are prostrated; their interests, their pros- 
perity, jeopardized; their protests unheeded; and every murmur of discontent 
and every effort to throw off their oppressions is misrepresented here as origina- 
ting in the spirit which inaugurated the rebellion. Sir. the statement that these 
Southern governments have no popular constituencies is true, but they neverthe- 
less have a constituency to whom they bear a responsibility inexorable as death. 
It is limited to the one point of keeping the State true and faithful to the admin- 
istration; all else is boundless license. That constituency is here in Washington; 
Its heart pulsates in the White House. There is its intelligence, and there is its 
iron will. I do not exaggerate when I say that every one of these governments 
depends every moment of its existence upon the will of the President. That will 
makes and unmakes them. A short proclamation backed by one company de- 
termines who is to be Governor of Arkansas; a telegram settles the civil magis- 
tracy of Texas; a brief order to a general in. New Orleans wrests a State govern- 
ment from the people of Louisiana and vests its control in the creatures of the 
administration. Sir, even conceding that the decision in one or two of these 
cases accorded with the rights of the people, there stands the startling fact that 
all the rights, peace, and security of those people han.g upon the precarious tenure 
of one mans will or caprice. Is it wonderful that beneath the chill shadow of 
such a colossal despotism the hope and enterprise and freedom of that people 
should wither and die? 

Mr. Speaker, my heart has on more than one occasion thrilled under the trib- 
utes of applause paid by Northern members, who were F^ederal officers in the 
w-ar, to the valor of Southern troops and the fortitude of Southern people during 
the war. Sir. if the conquest over self is the greatest of all victories, then that 
people deserve a still higher meed of praise for their conduct in peace; for, sir, 
they have borne unprecedented indignities, wrongs, oppressions, and torture, 
with unexampled patience and dignity. 

It is true, sir. that in a few districts, for a time tortured, goaded, and maddened, 
there were nei.ghborhoods in which misguided men rose up. sometimes disguised, 
and inflicted bloody retaliations. And. like all such blind vengeance, the blow 
fell upon the innocent instead of the guilty; and it served only to call down upon 
the naked and defenseless heads of the people of the South the wrath of this 
government, which misunderstood the outbreak, considering it as the indication 
of the temper of the Southern people, when it was only the indication of tlteir 
agony. These outbreaks that flamed up here and there, without concert and 
irregular in their succession, were but signal guns of distress. 

Sir, the condition of these States is fully illustrated by the events out of which 

this contested election originated, and but for which it would never have existed. 

I have before me the Hovise document referred to by the majority report. The 

official dispatches contained in that report show that the executive department 

of the Federal Government, by its own hand, in a time of profound peace, hurled 



6(36 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

out of existence the civil government of Louisiana — I mean tlie Warmotli gov- 
ernment — whicti itself had recognized as legal and constitutional, and created 
another in its stead. We have often heard it said that all the President did in 
Louisiana has been to enforce the decisions of the courts. Sir, these dispatches 
show, on the contrary, that the entire plan of establishing Kellogg's government 
by the military power was in advance communicated to the Federal authorities 
at Washington, from the very first step to its final consummation, in every detail, 
and that this plan received their full sanction and promised cooperation. Strong 
as this statement seems, you will be satisfied that it Is simply just if you will 
briefly examine with me the record in this document. 

On the 27th of November. 1S72, W. P. Kellogg writes to Attorney-General Wil- 
liams a letter, in which he recites certain measures of Gov. Warmoth, whose pur- 
pose is to have "the result of the recent election declared in favor of the Republi- 
can party," letting fall, however, the remark: "The details of his action in this 
particular you are probably familiar with : if not, some of our members of Con- 
gress, who have just left for Washington, will post you fully." 

Then, referring to his application for an injunction against Warmoth (of 
which the Attorney General had been informed eight days before), he unfolds the 
first step in his scheme of having himself and the other candidates who were re- 
jected by the people of Louisiana installed in the offices of that State: "I inclose 
herewith a copy of the bill marked E. This application is being now elaborately 
argued before the court, and I am of the opinion that the court will maintain its 
jurisdiction." 

Now. sir. here is the whole case — the measures of Warmoth, the bill of Kellogg 
to thwart him, and Durell's anticipated action— all laid before the Attorney-Gen- 
eral of the United States. But what, sir, is the next step in the scheme? He in- 
forms the Attorney-General that "the Supreme Court is known to sympathize 
with tis, and has incidentally passed upon the legality of our returning board." 

Again he says: "Our returning board being held as the legal returning board 
and as in no wise affected by the promulgation of the i-ecent election bill, may 
make the returns required by law, which will show the Republican State ticket 
elected, and a Republican majority in the Legislature." But he proceeds to dis- 
close the third step in this monstrous scheme of perfidy: "I ought to mention 
that the Supreme Court will next Monday pass upon the ease of Bovee, ejected 
over a year from the office of Secretary of State by Gov. Warmoth, without any 
legal right or showing. They will reinstate him in the office. . . . Under the 
State election law the returns of the canvassing board come to the Secretary of 
State, and he makes a return of the members elected to the Legislature to the 
Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House, who are both Republicans. 
You will at once appreciate the full effect of this point." 

But. sir. all these steps accomplished, one more yet is Indispensable to consum- 
mate the scheme of placing himself and his confederates in possession of the gov- 
ernment of Louisiana. That final step he does not hesitate to propose. Here it 
is, sir, with the reason for making it prefaced: "I say to you frankly that this 
fight is extremely distasteful to me, and I would be glad to get rid of the whole 
matter; but T feel bound, in the position in which I find myself, to do all that I 
can to avert a condition of things such as will ine\itably follow the accession of 
the Democratic party to power in this State. I therefore respectfully suggest 
that Gen. Emory, who I think appreciates the necessity and sympathizes with the 
Republican party here, be instructed to comply with any requisition that the 
United States Courts may make upon him in support of its mandates and to pre- 
serve the peace." 

Sir. what is the response which comes from the law officer of the President's 
Cabinet to this disgraceful disclosure and this infamous proposal for his aid and 
cooperation in carrying it out? 1 give it without a word of comment: 

"DEPAi!T>rEXT OF JtfSTif K, December 3, 1S72. 
"S. B. Packard, Esq.. United States Marshal. New Orleans. La. 

"You are to enforce the decrees and mandates of the United States Courts, no 
matter by whom resisted: and Gen. Emory will furnish you with all necessary 
troops for that purpose. George H. Wtli iajis, Attorney-General." 

Sir, at once the plot began to be carried out, without the omission of a detail, 
in the precise order in which they are given beforehand to the Attorney General 
of the United States. Durell did maintain his jurisprudence; the Supreme Court 



AiTKyoix, so. 7. ()(;7 

iliil "decide ouv returning board to be ttie legal returning board:" "our roturning 
board" rfi(/ so count the returns — and tliat, too, without having a single one be- 
fore them — as to show the Republican ticket elected, and a Republican majority 
in the Legislature; the Supreme Court did decide in favor of Bovee, and rein- 
stated him as Secretary of State; Bovee did make a return of the members 
elected to the Republican Secretary of the Senate and the Republican Clerk of ^/ 
the House; Durell did issue the anticipated mandate, and that mandate unix exe- 
cuted by the United States troops under Gen. Emory. Hear the result; 

"New Oulf.an.s, December G, 1S72. 
"Presidkxt GitA.\T: 

"Marshal Packard took possession of Statehouse this morning at an early 
hour with military posse, in obedience to a mandate of the Circuit Court, to pre- 
vent illegal assemblage of persons under guise of authority of Warmoth's return- 
ing board in violation of injunction of Circuit Court. Decree of court just ren- 
dered declares Warmoth's returning board illegal, and orders the returns of the 
election to be forthwith placed before the legal board. The board will probably 
soon declare the result of the election of officers of State and Legislature, which 
will meet in Statehouse with protection of court. The decree was sweeping in 
its provisions, and. if enforced, will save the Republican majority, and give 
Louisiana a Republican Legislature and State government, and check Warmoth 
in his usurpations. . . . J.vmes F. Casey." 

"New Orle,\ks, La., December 9, 1872. 
"Hon. GEonriE H. Wileiams. Attorney-General; 

"Senate, by vote of seventeen to five, have resolved into high court of impeach- 
ment. Senator Harris elected President of the Senate, Lieut. Gov. Pinchback 
being now Governor. S. B. Packabd, United States Marshal." 

Have I not made good the statement that the legal and constitutional govern- 
ment of Louisiana was destroyed by the Federal Executive by military force? 
There was not a member of that lawless cabal who was not an officer of the Fed- 
eral Government. And, sir, is it not manifest that these criminals would never 
have dared to do what they did but for the assurance given them of aid and co- 
operation from Washington? Would that besotted judge have dared to debase 
his court as he did if the Attorney-General, knowing beforehand what he would 
do, had not instructed Gen. Emory to sustain his acts and enforce his mandates? 

But, sir, that government thus set up and put in operation had no power to 
sustain itself. On the very first day of its existence it appealed to the President 
for military protection. It was a lifeless thing, incapable of movement except 
when galvanized into action by the military power which created it. Here is - 
the appeal : 

"New Orleans, December 9. 1S72. 
"President Gr.vxt; 

"Having taken the oath of offlce. and being in possession of the gubernatorial -^ 
office, it devolves upon me to urge the necessity of a favorable consideration of 
the request of the General Assembly, as conveyed in the concurrent resolution of 
this day telegraphed to you. requesting the protection of the United States Gov- 
ernment. Be pleased to send the necessary orders to Gen. Emory. This seems 
to me a necessary measure of precaution, although all is quiet here. 

"P. B. S. Pinchback, Lieut. Governor, Acting Governor of Louisiana." 

What do they want protection against— violence? Not at all, for he expressly 
declares that "all is quiet here;" and on the next day he telegraphs; "I do not re- 
gard any outbreak imminent." What is it. then, that causes these conspirators, 
in the very moment of their success, to tremble, and to send eight dispatches in 
one day urging the President to recognize them and to send the military of the 
United States to protect them? You will find the cause in the following dis- 
patch. It seems that the ghost of the murdered legal government will not down 
at their bidding; 

"New Orleans, December 11, 1872. 
"Hon. George H. Williams, Attorney-General. Washington. D. C; 

"The Warmoth Legislature is now in session at the City Hall, in defiance of the 
restraining order of the court. S. B. Packard, United States Marshal." 



668 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAli: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

But what possible danger can possibly arise from the mere meeting of a body 
of men divested of all otMcial authority if "no outbreak is imminent?" The true 
danger is revealed in this dispatch, sent on the same day: 

"New Oui,eanr, December 11, 1872. 
"President Grant: 

"Parties interested in the success of Democratic party, particularly the New 
Oihdiis Tiiiicx, are making desperate efforts to array the people against us. Old 
citizens are dragooned into an opposition they do not feel, and pressure is hourly 
growing. Our members are poor, and adversaries are ricli; and offers are made 
that are difficult for them to withstand. There is danger that they will break 
our quorum. The delay in placing troops at disposal of Gov. Pinchback. in ac- 
cordance with joint resolution of Monday, is disheartening otir friends and cheer- 
ing our enemies. If requisition of Legislature is complied with, all difficulty will 
be dissipated, the party saved, and everything go on smoothly. If this is done, 
the tide will be turned at once in our favor. The real underlying sentiment is 
with us if it can but be encouraged. Gov. Pinchback is acting with great discre- 
tion, as is the Legislature, and they will so continue. 

"James F. Casey, Collector." 

Well may this Federal collector characterize as "our quorum" this miserable 
contrivance that needs the presence of United States troops to prevent its disso- 
lution from sheer imbecility and poverty. 

But, sir, the legal government of Louisiana, though disseized of its capital and 
deprived of its insignia of political authority, still asserts its existence and its 
right. In the name of justice to an outraged people, it lifts its voice in imploring 
invocation to the President at least to give their cause a fair hearing through the 
Governor of their choice and a committee of a hundred of their best citizens. 
Here is the response they receive: 

"Department of Justice, December 13, 1S72. 
"Hon. John McEkery, New Orleans, La.: 

"Your visit with a hundred citizens will be unavailing so far as the President 
is concerned. His decision is made, and will not be changed: and the sooner it is 
acquiesced in the sooner good order and peace will be restored. 

"George H. Wii.liajis. Attorney-General." 

Sir, can anything be more imperial in its tone than this? "The President's de- 
cision is made, and will not be changed!" He does not want to hear from the 
people! Let them acquiesce in his decision! But, sir, they came in spite of this 
imperial ukase. An investigation in Congress began. The conspirators shrunk 
from the threatened exposure; they began to talk of a compromise with the gov- 
ernment which they had subverted, a compromise which promised at least peace 
and tranquillity to the State. But. sir. the idea was discountenanced. The fol- 
lowing private dispatch was sent, and afterwards .got into the papers: 

"Washington, February 26, 1873. 
" T. W. DeKlyne, Deputy United States Marshal. 

"Tell Kellogg to keep his shirt on. His talk of a compromise only irritates au- 
thorities. The only compromise is for members elected to go in and take their 
seats in the Legislature, and that excludes all contest. The McEnery govern- 
ment must be broken up as soon as Congress adjourns. S. B. Packard." 

This command was obeyed to the letter. All thought of compromise was 
abandoned. After Congress adjourned "the McEnery government" was "broken 
up" and dispersed by a brigade of metropolitan police backed by the United 
States troops, 

Mr. Speaker, the real issue pressing upon us for decision did not originate with 
this Louisiana case. It underlies our political system, and in its results we are 
to find solved the great question of self-government, not for the South alone, but 
for every part of the Union, I know, sir, that in the blind fight of factions the 
great peril is lost sight of in the presence of the evils that more immediately 
affect the contestants: but there is that involved in the real issue which is of in- 
finitely greater importance than questions of races or the material interests of 
many generations. 

The antagonism of races, as to the cause of which I differ so widely from my 



APPENDIX, \0. JO. G69 

friend from New York [Mr. Smith], cannot last always. With thirty-seven 
millions of white people, increasing not only by the ordinary laws of population, 
but by the tides of immigration pouring in from Europe, to only four millions of 
blacks continually falling off in its percentage of growth, with no supplies from 
any foreign sources, it does not call for a scientist to calc\ilate how long it will 
take for the weaker or smaller race to disappear before the more populous and 
stronger. 

So, too, the prosperity of the South may be utterly destroyed, and with it no 
small part of that of the North, whose present distresses are, in my opinion, not 
so much due to the contraction or expansion of the currency as to the rapid clos- 
ing up of the North's best market and the impoverishment of her best customers; 
but, sir, the land and climate of the South will still remain, and long after we 
have passed into oblivion her deep, rich soil will respond to the wants of human- 
ity, and the great Mississippi will bear whole continents in solution to the Gulf, 
depositing and creating wider and richer fields for cultivation. 

But the people of the United Sates cannot afford to have destroyed the prin- 
ciples of constitutional government and representative liberty. I need not waste 
your time nor my strength in eulogies upon our political system. What it was 
previous to the late war we all recognize and rejoice over. What it is to be we 
cannot tell, for we are in the midst of one of those great political transitions in 
which a people, deceived by the retention of the form, are in danger of losing the 
substance, of free government. Because their rights and liberty have to be won 
by bloody and violent struggles it is difiicult for them to realize that those very 
rights and liberties may silently disappear through the subtle, insidious usurpa- 
tions of power and the unseen and covert attacks of political chicanery and 
fraud; yet such has been the history of the failure of republican institutions in 
all ages. 

Were not this so, the wrongs, the usurpations, and the undisguised tyranny so 
forcibly depicted in the record I have just read were not possible. That which 
has happened to Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas. Alabama, and South Carolina, 
originates in an abuse of power that is applicable to Massachusetts, New York, or 
Ohio. The appeal which I make for my own unfortunate section I make for the 
entire people of the United States. In what I have said I mean no assault upon 
the character of the President. It is the system which I protest against, a sys- 
tem which is not merely centralizing all powers in the general government, but is 
also permitting one department to usurp and hold them, to the utter ruin of the 
other two. I deplore the acquiescence of Congress in these usurpations. 

There are in our constitution important checks upon Presidential power and 
ample and efficient means by which Congress can protect the States and people 
against the unconstitutional action of executive administration. 

It is only the consent of Congress that makes it possible for the will of one man 
to wipe out all State authority, and with that authority all vestige of free govern- 
ment. 



Appendix No. lO. 

Lrttcr from a Prominent Colored Pqovhlican Officelioldrr to Col. Lamar. 

ViCKSBiiRG, JIiss., April 2,i, 1874. 
Hon. L. Q. C. L,\>i.\r. 

Dmr Sir : Not liaving the pleasure of a personal acquaintance, but being a Missis- 
sippian, anil one that would sacrifice everytliing to her greatness and glory, you will 
pardon me for this intrusion uiion your valuable time, though not a member of the 
political party to which vou belong. 

There is a bill pending before the Congress of the United States known as the Civil 
Riglits Bill. The passage of that bill at the present session will prove the utter anni- 
hilation of the carpetbagger in this State and the other Southern States. In the can- 
vass next vear thev willhave nothing to go before the people with but their damn- 
ing records and outrages perpetrated in the Legislature under the name of party. 
Tlieir plea last vear was that if the Democrats got in power their civil rights would 
be taken awav'from them in this State. The great majority of our party are very 
ignorant, and'it is an easy matter for the carpetbagger to work upon their prejudices 
and passions. If the Southern men in Congress are truly and dispa-ssionatelv without 
preju.lice, looking to the interest of the South, they will use their united efforts and 
influence to secure the passage of that or some other bill that will settle this question 



670 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: iUS LIFE, ETC. 

and take it out of Southern politics; and tiiose cormorants and thieves with whicli 
all the Southern Sbite governments are afflicted will go out of the South with it. To 
me the end to be achieved justifies the means. Your constituents, Ijitter though some 
may be, the great majority would indorse you. Have not those thieves, with Ames at 
their head, taken entire control of our property and, under a law from which there is no 
ai)peal, assessed values to be raised hundreds of millions, and no reduction of the p*?)- 
ceatuin on taxation? We are to be robbed outright, and will you and those claiming 
to be friends of the South i^tand by and see the life's blood of the people sapped out 
before you unbend from some of your prejudices? In the last few months I have 
talked with over a thousand Democrats (and some of them very prominent onesj upon 
this question and the ruin that stares us in the face, and they agree with me fully. 
Through this lies our only salvation. Maj. Barksdale, Generals Lowry and AVirt 
Adauis, JlcCardle, and quite a number from your district, urge the passage, or, at 
least, put no stumljling-blocks in the i-oad. The carpetbagger from the South will look 
out for that, for its passage is death to them. The acts of the last Legislature have 
opened all the paths to fraud and corruption. Our State Government is run by John 
B. liaymond, Public Printer and business manager and lirst clerk in the Treasury 
Department ; Auditor Ciibbs ; and 0. C. French. Tliis is the Cabinet, and with a few at- 
taches rests all that once belonged to proud, now degraded, Mississippi. Again ask- 
ing pardon for this lengthy intrusion, I have the honor to subscribe myself 

Your obedient servant, H. C. CAinEii. 



Appendix No. 1 1 . 
CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

Speecli in the House of Represenlalives, January 25, 1S76. 

The House, as in Committee of the Whole, having under consideration the bill (H. 
R. No. 514) relating to the centennial celebration of American independence, Mr. La- 
mar said: 

^fr. Chairman: It is only within the last few moments that I have consented to [lar- 
ticipate in this debate, although I have i.'iven the subject that calm and earnest rellec- 
tion which its importance demands. I have listened with riveted attention to the ar- 
guments of gentlemen upon the other side controverting the constitutional power of 
this bodv to pass this measure. While I perhaps am unable to point out the fallacy 
which I think lurks in their reasoning, it has failed to bring me to the conclusion 
which they have reached. I concur with them in the importance and gravity of the 
constitutional aspect of this question. Profoundly conscious of the importance of this 
measure, anxious for its success, painfully apprehensive of the misconstructions and 
unhappy influences which its defeat may produce, yet if I thought it even construc- 
tively violated the constitution of my country, I would vote against it. 

I agree with the gentlemen that the shaping of the destiny of this country lies in 
the supremacy and inviolability of its organic law. Every act of this government 
which does not bring around it the clear and complete sanction of that instrument is 
a lawless act, and estalilishes a precedent which, if persisted in, would result in the de- 
struction of constitutional government and constitutional liberty. 

Believing this, I have attempted to give full consideration to the argument which 
impugns the constitutionality of this measure. I desire here to say that I concur in 
many of the canons of constitutional construction wliich gentlemen have laid down. 
I believe that this is a government of limited powers, and that it can exercise no 
power whatever or do any act which the constitution does not expressly authorize, or 
which is not necessary to the execution of some expressly granted power. 

I also concur in the view of the gentleman from Virginia ['Sir. Tucker] that that 
clause which speaks of the common defense and general welfare contains no substan- 
tive or afflrmative grant of power to Congress. I go further than the gentleman from 
Virginia. In my opinion that clause is a limitation, is a restriction upon the powers 
which are grouped around it, and it means that Congress shall have power to lay and 
collect taxes, duties, etc., only for the objects therein prescribed: the common defense 
and general welfare. The powers conferred are thus limited, and the government is 
prohibited from doing the acts therein enumerated for any other purposes than those 
of the common defense and the general welfare. 

While I hold these views as strictly as my friend from Virginia and other gentlemen 
upon this floor, I do not think that they touch the real issue of this controversy. In 
attempting to demonstrate the power of Congress to act upon this measure it is not 



' APPENDIX, NO. 11. (571 

my purpose to go into the question wliether the Constitution of the United States 
originated from a compact between tlio several States as independent suvcrei.Ljnties or 
whether it emanated from the will of the American people as one vast indivisible sov- 
ereign society and couununity. 1 say tluit that qnej-tion is not involved. \\ betlier 
it originated in tlio one or tlie otiier, the constitution is the supreme law of llie land 
in either event; the divisions of power are the same; the distribution of jiolilical func- 
tions in oursvstem between the States and the Federal (iovernment, and between the 
different departments of the latter, is all the same upon either theory; and the discus- 
sion of the theory U| ion this question is sterile in its uses and fatal in its iibuses. The 
question before us has relation only to the existence and residence of this power, 
whatever may have been the origin of the constitution. 

There is one ]ioint ujion which J pri'sume there can be no diflerence of opinion; 
that is, that there is one division of delegated powers to tills government which ig 
broad and marked unmistakabl\-. It is liUe some lofty mountain whicli has two 
watersheds, indivisiblv connected and yet sloping in opposite directions. One is the 
side that looks to internal administration, and the other is the side that looks to ex- 
ternal relations. Now all the principles which my friend from Virginia [^Ir. Tucker] 
has laid down relate to internal adnduistration.' Nearly all the powers under this 
system for internal atlairs are given l)y the constitution, or, if the gentlemen prefers 
the expression as I do, are reserved umler it to the States singly and severally. 

All matters att'ecting individuals or citizens in their relations within the States con- 
cerning all private rights, personal security, and liberty; the enforcement of contracts, 
the tenure of real jwoperty, the devolution of estates real or pereonal, marriage dower, 
inheritance, the jurisdiction of private wrongs, and the supervision of acts of vio- 
lence—all these are conferred upon the States in their separate character. The powers 
given to the Federal Government on that side are but few and general, tending to the 
regulation of commerce between the States and the questions growing out of interstate 
communication. 

But, sir, when vou turn to the other side of the constitution you see a phenomenon 
of an entirely dili'erent character. You see there (whether the United States be a na- 
tion or be a bodv of States united under a compact) that the whole political authority 
of our system, 'in all its plenitude, is conferred upon the Federal Government. 
Whether you consider that government an agent, or whether you consider it a su- 
preme power, makes no difference. The powers of the entire political organization in 
its foreign relations are in the Federal Government, and the States have either di- 
vested themselves or have been divested of every single attribute of government m 
their relations to foreign powers or in any extra-territorial relation whatever. Is it 
not true, sir? In that direction they do not possess, and have never under this con- 
stitution exercised, a single power of a sovereign State. . 

Not a State has had a flag, w^hich is one muniment of sovereignty recognized by 
foreio-n nations. Thev have never made a treaty; they have liad no control over 
foreign commerce or interstate commerce. They cannot coin money or establish a 
postoffice; they cannot send or receive embassadors, or enter into an agreement or 
compact with another State or with a foreign power. Sir, theyhave not as full a 
measure of power over their external affiurs this day as the colonies of Great lintain 
in Canada or Australia which did not revolt; for these can tax the commodities ot 
foreign countries, and even those of the parent country itself. , , . , • ,• 

Here is the condition of these State governments in their external relationship: di- 
vested of all authoritv. In connection with this 1 will mention one single iact that 
has been brought to mv attention bv the gentleman from IMassachusetts LMr- .WoarJ. 
Lono- ago the State of'Vermont passed a law which looked to the extra, itioii, or 
ratlier the intradition, of fugitives from justice from Canada. The law was that these 
fugitives should be taken by the authority of the State and earned to the lim-, where 
thly would be delivered over to the Cana.lian authorities. The Supreme Court of 
the" United States deci.led that that law of Vermont was unconstitutional, because it 
partook of the nature of a compact; it was something like an alliance, soinethiiig in- 
volvini' a reciiirocal understanding between that State and a foreign State, a lurisdic- 
tion ofwhich the States were divested or had divested tliemselves. On the other 
han.l, all the political powers, bv the constitution strictly construed, have l)een 
transferred to this Fe.leral Goverii'meut; and the specifications of power in this con- 
nection which are found in that instrument have reference to the distribution ot 
power between the different departments of the Federal Government, reserving none 

whatever to the States. , . , t ^ i^ *i •* . ,,w 

In confirmation of the argument just submitted, I quote from an autliority pro- 
nounced bv no less a man than John Stuart Mill to be one of the most advanced 
thinkers of the nineteenth century upon subjects of political philosophy. 1 read trom 



672 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

Mr. Calhoun's work upon government, which sustains iirecisely the view that I have 
been trying to present upon this subject. I omit his discussion of the powers which 
belong to the States in their sovereign capacity; for this is a <juestion with which we 
have notliing to do here, because wliether the government originated in compact or 
otherwise does not afl'ect practical administration in any way. Some of the strictest 
constructionists I have known were advocates of tlie national theory, while the most 
latitudinarian and liberal constructionists liave Ijeen the adyocates of the compact 
theory. Mr. Calhoun proceeds to say : "This leading principle embraced two great 
divisions of power which may be said to comprehend all or nearly all the delegated 
powers, either directly or a-: a means to carry them into execution." 

Now I ask attention tn the next paragraph: " One of them "— that is, one of these 
divisions ol jwwer— "emljraces all' the powers appertaining to the relations of the 
States with the rest of the world, called their foreign relations; and the other, of an 
internal character, embraces such as appertain to the exterior relations of the States 
with each other. It is clear that both come within the leading principle, as ea<h is 
of a description which tlie States, in their separate character, are either incompetent 
to exercise at all, or, if competent, to exercise consistently with their mutual ]>eace, 
safety, and prosperity. Indeed, so strong and universal has this opinion been in refer- 
ence to the powers appertaining to their foreign relations, that from the Declaration 
of Independence to tue present time, in all the changes through which they have 
passed, the Union has had exclusive charge of tin-; great division of powers. To the 
rest of the world the States composing this Union are now and ever have lieen 
kn.)wii in no .ither than their united, confederated character. Abroad— to the rest 
of the world— they are Ijut one. It is only at home, in their interior relations, that 
they are many ; and it is to this twofold asjiect that their motto, E plaribus unum, ap- 
propriately and emphaticallv applies." 

Now, Mr. Chairman, the ciuestion arises, with this authority in the hands of this 
Federal Government in its utmost |>ossil)le extent, can gentlemen say that there is 
constitutional incompetency in the Congress of the United States to invite the coin- 
missioners of foreign countries to bring over here articles of commerce, art, and in- 
dustry for international exhibition, and for the advancement of commerce, science, 
art, and the progress of mankind? Sir, was it unconstitutional in the President to 
give the invitation which this law authorized and invoked him to make? If not, the 
power is clear and unquestionable to appropriate the means for tliis purpose. 

My friend from Virginia [Mr. Tucker], in giving the grounds for several acts which 
constitute precedents in the line of this legislation, uses this language: "The explora- 
tion of the Polar Sea is legitimate either uniler the power to pi'ovide and maintain a 
navy or the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations." 

Mr. Chairman, is an exiiloration in the Polar sc;as not i-ather a greater strain upon 
that grant— exploring the Polar seas for some contingent amelioration of commerce 
in the future— than this act which brings the commerce of the world to our own 
shores, and which must result not only in its regulation, but its improvement and ad- 
vancement all over the world? . 

Well, sir, I therefore am in favor of this measure upon the clear, indisputable 
ground of constitutional iurisdiction, and I have the right to look around and see 
what the benelits are whicli the exercise of this established jurisdiction will produce. 
I do not agree, however, with the distinguished gentleman from Maine [Mr. Frye] 
that this Constitution of the United States, this charter of our Union, the rule of its 
de.stiny and the law of its bein'jr, is an unintelligible enigma. I must say that it is a 
perilous doctrine for gentlemen representing New England States to advocate apon 
this floor. I tell vou that the ground of political power in this country is shifting, 
and a day may come when their only reliance will be upon these constitutional guar- 

Mr. Hoar: The gentleman from Maine is not in his seat. I understood him to say 
that tills enigma was not in the constitution, but in reference to certain interpreta- 
tions of the constitution given by gentlemen on this floor. 

Mr. Lamar: His expression was that " the constitution is an enigin.a. 

Mr. Hiiar: He referred to the various constructions of the constitution. 

Mr. Lamar: Upon the gentleman's represent;;ti(in, then, of what he did say, the 
gentleman from Maine [Mr. Frye] would have the right to call the Bible an enigiiia 
on account of the various constructions of its inspired oracles. [Laughter.]_ It is 
onlv by virtue of constitutional guarantees that New England to-day stands in this 
great, powerful government, with but three millions of ]ioiiulation, possessing six 
times as much positive and allirmative power as the State of New York with four 
millions. Where does she get it? Where, except by the guarantees of the constitu- 
tion? And, sir, if the people of this country were to rise up in their might and the 



Al'PEXIiIX, .\(). 11. (373 

states uiiiuiimouslv, saving only lierwlf, were to ileinaiiil lluit Miiino should bo 
strickou Hum lier equal right of ivpiesenlatioii in the United States, what would the 
gentleman from Maine do buthoM up this eonstitution, not as an enigma, but as a 
clear, radiant shield whicli should protect the sovereignty of Ins State? [Applause.] 
Standing upon that simjile guarantiee, she would be upon a roeU, and an eartlujualie 
could not shake her. 

An enigma, .sir! Are the three constitutional amendments adopted and ratified bv 
the States of this Union enigmas — these amemlments uiiirh clothed in the twink- 
ling of an eye four millions of people, whose immemorial condition had been that of 
domestic servitude, with freedom, with citizenship, with sull'rage, and with iiarticipa- 
tion in American sovereignty? It was no enigma, but a grand, august, imposing real- 
ity. I could go on, sir, with these illustrations, but 1 must speak of some of the ben- 
efats which result from the exercise of this power. 

The motive wdiich prompts me is one which lias been the law of my career since I 
have been in Congress. It is my desire to see the pacification of these sections— to 
see my people of the South restored to the proud position of dignity and eqiiahtv in 
this Union to which, under tlie constitution, they are entitled; and to do that 'it is- 
necessary that these Representatives of the North", and if not tliey, then their constit- 
uencies, the people of the North, should become satisfied of the longing and desire of 
our people to live with them in peace and perpetuity in a restored and frateiiial 
Union. Before that clierished purpose and inspiration all others with me sink into 
insignificance. [Applause.] 

I see I have the attention of the distinguished gentleman from New York [Mr. 
Townsend], who, in his jealous surveillance of the conduct of our newly enfranchised 
members from the South, seemed to oliject botli to their mode of gesticidation and the 
poise of then- head while they were in the heat of argument. He spoke, sir — and I 
was pained at the allusion — of Preston Brooks. Jlr. Cliairman, I shall not even make 
an inquiry as to the object of that allusion. I will not believe, sir, and certainly will 
not express the belief, that there lurked one motive in his breast less pure than patri- 
otic love for the whole country; but the inevitable efl'ect of the taunt was, I tell him, 
to excite passion, to indame animosity, and to madden the hatred of sectionalism. 
Sir, the gentleman, unconsciously to liimself doubtless, gravitated into a plagiarism. 
It was not the first time that this taunt has been contemptuously hurled. Another 
distinguished gentleman flung it upon another distinguished occasion, when the ob- 
ject of it was not a Southern, but a Northern man. Sir, when Charles Sumner stood 
up for amnesty, for concord, and for the equal rights of all, this same taunt was lanced 
at him from a distinguished source ; and he was told that he was associating with seces- 
sionists, with the men who upheld and sustained Preston Brooks in his brutal assault 
and attempt to commit murder upon him. Sir, I trust that the gentleman from New- 
York will allow me, not to make a reply to his jeer, but to repeat; to him the words of 
Charles Sumner, as if the spirit of that great philanthropist, that statesman, that 
sympathizer with human rights and human sorrow, were here present in my place. 
Here, sir, is what Mr. Sumner said as to that: " You entirely misunderstand me when 
you introduce an incident of the past, and build on it an argument why 1 sliould not 
support Horace ilredey. What has Preston Biooks to do with the Presidential elec- 
tion?" And what, sir, has he to do with this discussion? "Never while a sufferer 
did any one hear me speak of him in unkindness. And now, after the lapse of more 
than h,ilf a generation, I will not unite with you in dragging him from the grave 
where he sleeps to aggravate the passions of political conflict and arrest the longing 
for concord. And here is the essential difference between you and me at this junc- 
ture. I seize the opportunity to make the eijual rights of all secure through jieace 
and reconciliation; but this infinite boon you would postjione. Seven years have 
passed since we laid asirle our arms; but unhappily during all this jjeriodi there has 
been a hostile spirit toward each other, while the rights of our colored fellow-citizens 
have l)een in pei'iietual question. Seven years mark a natural jieriod of human life. 
Should not the spirit lie changed with the body? Can w-e not, after seven years, com- 
mence new life, especially when those once our foes repeat the saying: 'Thy jieople 
shall be my people, and thy God my God?' " [Applause.] 

I will not say that on account of these patriotic utterances, but certainly after them 
and in spite of them and lor having proposed to strike from our national banners and 
the archives of our country the records which would assail the sensibilities of his con- 
quered brethren, Charles Sumnerw-as deposed from the chairmanship of an important 
committee, the honorable (losition he had maintained for so many years, by tlie men 
whose party he had built up, and was censured by the Legislature of his own Com- 
monwealth in a joint resolution. And, sir, those who knew liim best knew that, with 
his noble and loftv spirit, such an act inflicted upon him a martyrdom whose agony 

43 " 



67-± LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: IILS LIFE, ETC. 

was greater than that which any personal assault could give. It was the grief of his 
life, only alleviated bj' the magnanimous act of another Legislature of the same State 
when it obliterated from its records this assault upon his sensibilities and this impu- 
tation upon his honor. 

Now, sir, I might advocate tliis scheme simply because it comes up in the spirit which 
this great man exjire-sed — the spirit of ])eace and conciliation ; and I believe, sir, that it 
will be carried out. 1 do nut believe that this measure will be defeated. It is, sir, 
something like an image of the feelings of our people which demand that the alienation 
hitherto existing between the two sections of the Union shall no longer disturb the 
])eace and the happiness of the American Repulilic, nor obstruct tlieir prosperity and 
greatness an<l glory. I say "hitherto existing," for 1 do not believe that this alien- 
ation any longer exists; and I do believe that if each of the two sections could be 
brought to see and understand the inward feeling and inspiration of the other the 
real fact would be developed that at no period since the inauguration of Mr. Jeft'er- 
son liave the entire body of the American j^eople been animated by such a universal 
and common sentiment in favor of harmony and fraternal unison, or by a |>urer, in- 
tenser, broader, and more universal patriotism. 

I know, sir, that this sentiment, this aspiration, has not found full expression and 
development here in this hall. It has been kept under and stilled by the strong net- 
work of an intolerant political organization, and its voice unheeded amid the clamors 
of impassioned jiartisans. But in the political as well as in the natural world the 
agencies which are the most powerful are not the noisiest. Violence, passion, fanati- 
cism, and animosity, can always tind voice and rend the air with their factious clam- 
ors; while deep and earnest conviction lies unspoken in the heart of a people. The 
currents of ]iassion and of feeling may flow hither anil thither under extraneous influ- 
ences and forces, like the dash and roar of waves lashed to fury by the storm, while 
the great sea, the unsoundeil depths of a common humanity, a common ho|ie, a com- 
mon interest, and a common patriotism, lies \oiceless but almighty beneath.* [Much 
applause.] 

Appendix No. 1 2. 

IN RESPECT TO THE PRIVILEGES OF PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEES— 

THE BELKNAP CASE. 

Speech delivered in tlie Houae of Representatives on. the 7lh of Marcli, 1S76. 

Mr. Clymer having risen to a c|uestion of privilege in relation to a subpoena issued 
bv the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia and served upon the members of 
the Committee on Expenditures in the "War Department, commanding them to bring 
certain papers and testify in relation to the charges pending in that court against Wil- 
liam W. Belknap, late Secretary of War, Mr. Lamar said: 

I have a resolution to offer. 

Mr.. Ka.sson: I have one to offer, if any are to be offered. 

Mr. L.\m.\r: I have no doubt that the gentleman will concur with me. 

Mr. Clysier: I trust that the resolution may be reported. 

Mr. L.\m.\k : Before my resolution is reported I slioukl like to make a remark or two. 
I do not think this is a question pertaining merely to the delicacy or jiersonal privi- 
lege of members, nor is it one upon which there should he any party feeling or ex- 
citement. In tlie presence of such solemn events as are now throwing their shadows 
over this House it .seems to me that the voice of faction for a moment at least should 
be hushed. 

I regard tliis mandate or summons or sul->i)n'na, whatever it may be called, which 
has been issued to the members of that committee by the Supreme Court of this Dis- 
trict as an outrage upon the privileges of this House in the jiersons of the members 
of that committee. I do not say that such was the object of the court, nor do I mean 
to intimate— I mean to disclaim any intimation of the sort — that it is pronjpted by 
any jiurpose to hush up or to suppress investigations. The question is one purely 
of parliamentary privilege, whether or not the members of this House and of the 

*0n the next day Mr. Tjam.ar saiil : " r am reported (In the Record), and no donht coiTectly, as 
h.aving said that in re.spect to our Ii>rcij.ai ull'iurs tlie States or people had divosted themselves of 
iheir entire Bovereiftntv and delei;ati'il it to llie Feder.al Government. I intcndid tn say, and 
thimght r did sav, that t'hev dele^-aled to that covernment the authoi-ity to cxen-ife all the powers 
of sovereipnty. "[ do not wish to be understood as sayinst that the sovereignty inherent in a society 
or a State or ii people can be delegated or pledged away." 



APPENDIX, NO. 12. 675 

committees of this House are amenabU; to the processes of the criminal court forthe 
puri^ose of testifying and bringing tlie jnipers and the records that are in the various 
committee rooms Itefore the courts lor investigation and for revision. 

Mr. Blai.ne: Nobody says they are. 

Mr. L.\m.\r: " Nobody says tliey are," says the gentleman from Maine [Mr. Blaine]. 
Then if nobody says tliey are, ought not tliis House to talce some measures to protect 
tlie privileges whicli have been invaded by tliis summons? 

Mr. Blaine: It is no violation of privilege. 

Mr. L.\jiar: No violation to issue a sunnnons to a memljer of this House command- 
ing him to bring all the records of a committee of tliis body before that court, and to 
command him there to remain and not depart until the court or the district attorney 
shall allow him to do so! Suppose tliat a member of this House should waive Ids 
privilege; suppose lie should no there and take these pajiers. How long would it be 
before the district court, if it should choose to do so, wuuld relieve us of the power, 
and forever deprive our committees of the opportunity, to investigate? 

Mr. Blaine: Allow me a question. 

Mr. Lamar: Certainly. 

Mr. Blaine: Does not the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Lamar] see, and does 
not the entire countrv see, that, having possession of all the evidence upon which an 
indictment can be found, having everv fact of the guilt of this party in its possession, 
this House puts itself behind its privilege wlien it says this court shall not view that 
evidence, ami throws itself across the indictment of Belknap, and that to-ilay this 
House stands as tlie obstacle, and the sole obstacle, in the way of the indictment of 
the late Secretary of AVar? 

Mr. Lamar: Neither "the gentleman from Mississippi," nor the country, nor the 
gentleman from Maine, sees any such thing. 

Mr. Blaine: I see nothing but that. 

Mr. Lamar: It is everything but that; thatdoes not touch it anywhere. The ques- 
tion is simply this: Can this House permit its records to be at the beck and call ot 
the district court? Shall it do it? There is no doubt about the fact that when an 
investigation is completed, when the articles of impeachment are presented and the 
case is gone through with, it is within the discretion of this House to permit the courts 
of the country to come in and act upon that evidence; but that any court lias the 
right pendente tile, while the investigation is going on, while the committees are taking 
their testimony , , . , , ^ mi j 

Mr. Blaine: Not in this case ; for the committee, when they reported last I hursday, 
stated that the case was closed, and they dismissed the witness and reported all the 
facts to the House. And now, according to the doctrine of the gentleman, they pro- 
pose to keep possession of all the i)apers and testimony concerning the guilt of this 
man, and shut the doors of the Congressional committee room under this miserable 
pretense of i^rivilege, and shield him against criminal prosecution ; for that is the eflect 
of the action proposed here to-day. ^, ^ , ., ., *i 

Mr. Lamar : Such is not the effect of it, and no one knows that better tlian the gen- 
tleman from !Maine. 

Mr. Blaine: I know nothing else. 

AIr Lam\r- The statement is utterly destitute of foundation; and the gentleman 
from Maine, if lie does not- know it, ought to be sufficiently advised of parhamenhiry 
procedure to know that when a tribunal of the country has jurisdiction of a case, when 
It is proceedim.' with that case, it is not within the power even of a coordinate tribu- 
nal especiallv an appointee of the Executive, to come in and order the entire records 
of that committee to be taken from it, and the members of that comniittee to appear 
before it; otherwise what would be the effect? Every single investigation could be 
suppressed in limme. I do not sav that that is the object; I do not even suggest that 
such is the purpose; but to sav 'that this House is bound to allow its papers the 
members of the House, the members of its committees, to be called away from their 
duties to go before a court and reveal each step they have taken, is a proposition not 
only monstrous, but it is preposterous and ridiculous. 

Mr. Blaine: Allow me a moment. 

Mr. Lamar: Not now. 

Mr. Blaine: ,Iust one moment. 

Mr. Lamar: I would be glad to finish my statement. „„t;,.oU. 

Mr. Blaine: If the gentleman will permit me one moment, I agree with him entiiel> 
that to interrupt the proceeding in Umine is a thing that would not be tolerated, no. 
has the court of the District of Columbia any power whatever to go to a committee 

room, either, when the investigation has begun 

Mr. Lamar: This court has come to the committee room. 



676 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

Mr. Blaise: The couit has iio power whatever in the matter. This House is su- 
preme. The question is wiiether the House will permit tliat testimony to go. The 
House can lefuse it or it can send it tliere. I dare, I dare that side of the House to 
refuse it. [Loud applause on the Republican side; cries of " Order!" on the Demo- 
cratic side.] 

Mr. Lajiar: gentlemen, you are doing yourselves injustice by making such dem- 
onstrations upon a pure question of constitutional and parliamentary law. 

Mr. White: I ri-se to a questidii of order. 

The Speaker: The Chair will entertain no motion until the House is in order. 
[After a pause.] The gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. White] w-ill now state his point 
of order. 

Mr. White: My point is that this clapping of hands is all out of order. [Laugliter.] 

The Speaker: The gentleman from Mississip]n [Mr. Lamar] will proceed. 

Mr. Lamar: I hope that the jioint of order will be ovenuled. This demonstration 
is about the only forcible thing that I have yet beard presented in opposition to this 
assertion of the privileges of this House against an attempted invasion. I do not blame 
gentlemen for applauding, for it is about the only thing that I have heard yet on that 
siile that has any jioint in it. 

In reply to the defiance of the gentleman from Maine [.Mr. Blaine], I will tell him 
that no threat or menace, either of language or manner on his jiart, or any challenge, 
can ijre\"eiit me or the gentlemen with whom I am associated from asserting our con- 
stitutional rights in this House as a body. I present a resolution which asserts those 
rights, and which I hope will maintain them. 

There can be no question abnut the right of the criminal courts to cany on their 
prosecution of an offender at the same time that we prosecute him by impeacliment; 
but they have not the right to invade the precincts of this House — this House which 
can impeach that judge himself Suppose, sir, that in the |irosecution of this "safe 
burglary " case matter should come up which would touch the honesty and integrity 
of a member of the court, and he should at once issue his mandate upon the commit- 
tee sitting here investigating that matter, ami as soon as the witnesses were dismissed 
order that committee to come before him and to bring all their papers, all telegrams, 
all testimony, all receipts, everything that any witness had said before them ; would 
the gentleman from JNIaine get up then, and, in that way which is characteristic only 
of himself, cry out: "I dare you to withhold the information?" Sir, this House, I 
presume, dares to do what is right, dares to do what is honest, dares to maintain its 
constitutional privileges, and to continue the prosecution of this investigation. 

Sir, I have presented a resolution which I had supj>osed would meet the assent of ev- 
ery gentU'nian present. This case has not been finished. Other testimony must come 
before the committee. One of the witnesses, fi-om caui?es whicli have lieen variously 
alleged, has disappeared. Other testimony will have to come liefore the committee. 
It is impossible that these investigations should go on if they are to be subject to the 
vexing and constant interposition of the criminal courts. I ask that the resolution be 
read and adopted. 

Mr. Pacje: I would like to ask the gentleman from ^Mississippi [IMr. Lamar] one 
question before the resolution is read. I wish to inquire whether he knows anyway 
by which Mr. Belknap, late Secretary of War, can be indicted for his crimes except 
U]X)n the very testimony now in possession of the committee. 

Mr. Bi.ackbukn: I will say to the gentleman that there is not an atcnn of testimo- 
ny now in the possession of the committee. 

Mr. Lamak: He can be indicted, of course, by the production of the witnesses. 

The clerk read as follows: 

" Whereas the Speaker of this House di<l, on the 20th of December, 1875, appoint 
the following Committee on Expenditures in the War Department — to wit: Hiester 
Clymer, William ;\I. Robbins, Joseph C. S. Blackburn, Lyman K. Bass, Lorenzo Dan- 
ford ; and whereas thereafter, on the 14th of January, 187(5, this House adopted the 
following resolution: 

"'Rexolnd, That the several committees of this House having in charge matters per- 
taining to appropriations, foreign afiairs, Indian affairs, military affairs, naval affairs, 
postoftice and postroads, public lands, jmlilic buildings and grounds, claims and war 
claims, be, and they are hereby, instructed to inquire, so far as the same may properly 
be before their respective cominittees, into any errors, abuses, or frauds that may ex- 
ist in the administration and execution of existing laws atfecting said branches of the 
public service, with a view to ascertain what change and reformation can be made so 
as to promote integritv, economv, and etheiency therein ; that the Committees on Ex- 
penditures in the State Department, in the Treasury Department, in the War Depart- 
ment, in tlie Navy Department, in the Postoffice Department, in the Interior Depart- 



AFPKNDIX, yo. 13. 677 

ment, in the Department of Justice, and on Public Buildings, lie, and they are hereby, 
instructed to proceed at once, as required by the rules of the House, to examine into 
the state of the accounts and expcuditurcs of the respective dc|iarUi[pnts submitted to 
them, and to examine and report partii'ulaily wlietlicr tlie expcntlilurcs of the respec- 
tive departments are justified by law; whetiier the claims from time to time satisfied 
and discharged by the respective de)iartments are supportetl by sulliciont vouchers, 
establishing their justness both as to their character andamount; whetlu^r svich claims 
have been discharged out of funds appropriateii therefor, and whether all moneys 
have been disl)ursed in conformity with approin'iation laws; whetliei' any, and « hut, 
provisions are necessary to be adopted to provide more peifectly fnr tlie pi-ojier appli- 
cation of the public moneys and to secure the government from dcinauds unjust in 
their character or extravagant in tlieir amount ; whether any, and what, retrenchment 
can be made in the expenditures of the several departments, without detriment to 
the public service; whether anj', an<l what, abuses at any time exist in the failure to 
enforce tlie payment of moneys wliicli may lie due to the United .States from public 
defaulters or others, and to I'eport I'rom time to time such provisions and arrange- 
ments as may be necessary to add to the economy of the several departments and 
the accountability of their oflicers; whellier any offices belon'jing to the branches or 
departments, respectively, concerning whose expenditures it is their duty to inquire, 
have become usele^^s or nnnecessary ; and to report fj'om time to time on the expediency 
of modifying or abolishing the same; also to examine into the jmy and emoluments 
of all offices under the laws of the United States and to report from time to time such 
a reduction or increase thereof as a just economy and the public service may require. 
And for the pm'pose of enablitig the several committees to fully comprehend the 
workings of the various branches or departments of government, respectively, the 
investigations of said committees may cover such period in the past as each of said 
committees may deem necessary for its own guidance or information or for the pro- 
tection of the public interests, in the exposing of frauds or abuses of any kind that 
may exist in said departments; and said committees are authorized to send for per- 
sons and papers, and may report by bill or otherwise. 

" ' Resolved furlJier, That the Committee on Public Expenditures be instructed to in- 
vestigate and inijuire into all matters set forth in the foregoing resolutions in the 
legislative departments of the government, except in so far as the Senate is exclusively 
concerned, particularly in reference to the public printing and binding, and shall 
have the same authority that is coiiferred upon tlie other committees aforesaid.' 

"And whereas in the clischarge of the duties imposed by said order the said Com- 
mittee on Ex]ienditares in the^Var Pepartment did enter upon an examination into 
the said accounts of said department and into the administration thereof, and did 
send for persons and papers to investigate certain acts of William AV. Belknap, late 
Secretary of "War, on which being reported to this House by said committee, it has 
taken action to impeach the said William W. Belknap of high crimes and misde- 
meanors ; and whereas the Supreme Courtof the District of Columbia, by process bear- 
ing date March 0, 1876, has commanded Hiester Clymer to bring all pajicrs, docu- 
ments, records, checks, and contracts in your possession, or in the possession of the 
Committee of the House of Representatives on Expenditures in the AVar Department, 
in relation to t!ie charge against said defendant of accepting abril-)e or bribes while 
Secretary of AVar of the United States, and to attend the said court immediately to 
testifv oh behalf of the United States, and not depart from the court without leave of 
the court or district attorneys; and whereas the mandate of said court is a breach of 
the jirivileges of this House: 

"liemhed, That the said committee and the members thereof are hereby directed to 
disregard said mandate until the further order of this House." . _ . 

Mr. Lamar: INIr. Sjieaker, J pioijose now to bring back this discussion to the legiti- 
mate limit to which it should have been confined during the progress of the debate. 
AA'hat are the fiicts of this case? A committee regularly appointed by the Speaker 
of the House under its order proceeds with an investigation, which results in charg- 
ing against a Cabinet officer the crime of malversation in office, accepting bribes for 
the bestowal of offices within his gift. Pending these proceedings, a criminal judge, 
an appointee of the executive department of the government, issues a mandate to 
members of that committee, ordering them, not "inviting" them, as the gentleman 
from Iowa [Mr. Kassoii] states; not makina a polite request, but ordering the mem- 
bers of that committee to bring into that court all the jiapers, all the contracts, all the 
testimony in its possession touching this charge against this former Cabinet officer. 

Mr. Fort: It is a subpoena in the usual form. 

JIr. Lamar: Yes, sir; the subpoma is in the usual form, and that is the objection 
to it. Now the question arises whether or not it was projier for the gentlemen who 



078 LUCIL'.S Q. C. LAUAli: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

are thus subpienaed to bi-ing before the i.'Ourt the papei'S in their custody, to obey 
tliat suinraons or to come before this House fur instructions. There is no other ques- 
tion ; and all this debate, with all the passion that has been tlun.i; in here, is irrelevant, 
and simply tends to conveil a pure question of constitutional and jiarlianientary law 
into an idle logomachy — a war of words and of passion. \\ hich can but obscure the issue. 

The gentleman from INIaine, as soon as these gentlemen modestly, temperately, and 
properly make their report to the House, says here in debate that he cannot see 
where the "delicacy" about their action should come in. Upon their report I intro- 
duce a resolution expressive of the opinion tiiat this mandate of the com-t calling 
upon these members of the House and members of the committee — not individuals 
who have seen a crime committed, tlie case with whii'li the gentleman from jMaine 
has tried to analogize it, but these members of a committee, as such — to bring before 
the court the official proceeiiings of this boily in that committee room. Kow I ask 
whether that was not a breach'of the privileges of this House in the person of its 
membei's. 

Sir, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Hoar], who never expresses any opin- 
ion differing from my own upon law or the constitution without my feeling more 
like revising my own opinion than cunecting his, rose in his ]ilace after reflecti'm on. 
the subject, and not oidy stated that these gentlemen did right in coming here and 
asking the action of the House, but that they did wrong in going before that court 
and asking it to suspend its action until they" could get the instruction of the House. 

Mr. Hoar: The gentleman will allow me to explain. I said that in waiving their 
privilege tliey did wrong. That is it. 

Mr. Lamar: I understand it; and without complaining at all of the gentleman's 
interruption, I hope he will not correct me again, because I do not think 1 have mis- 
stated his position. 

Mr. Hoar: I thought you did. 

Mr. Lamar: The waiving of the privilege was the reason the gentleman gave; but 
the fact that they did wr(.>ng in going before that court is the statement which he 
made. He regarded it as a contempt of the House. 

Mr. Hoar: If the gentleman will allow me, I can explain the matter in six words. 
The connnittee themselves said, as I understood them, that they waived their privi- 
lege. I said that if they did they did wrong. 

Mr. La.mar: O yes; if they di<l. 

Mr. Hoar: And thev said thev did. 

Mr. Robbin's, of Kor'th Carolina: They only waived their privilege so fiir as to ap- 
pear before the court and make their statement. 

Mr. Lamar: For the purposes of truth— and I know that the gentleman from Massa- 
chusetts has no other purpose in these interruptions— for the ]iurposes of truth, I am 
willing for all these explanations to come in. The position is that if these gentlemen 
did waive their privilege thev committed a contemjit of this House. But suppose 
they waived no privilege, butonly went before the court and informed it that they 
intended first to take the instruction of this House before they respondedto the 
summons. The gentleman nmst see that in this case there is no waiver of privilege, 
either express or implied, but the privilege is reserved subject to the instruction and 
authoritv of the House. 

Then what, sir? I came forward with a resolution which states all the circum- 
stances and then simply asserts the jurisdiction of this House over the subject-mat- 
ter, over the person, over the papers in this great imiieachment trial, the most august 
and imposiuL' trial known to the constitution and laws of our country, in the i)rcs- 
ence of which these passions, these thoughts about Presidential succession and party 
triumph, actually, sir, fatigue mv contempt. 

Wliat, sir, is the purport of niv resolution? Simply to assert the authority of this 
House. What else? To t.dl those meiidjers not to regard that summons until its 
further order. Gentlemen sav that it is suppression of the prosecution and of the 
testimony. No, sir; it is simply to protect the jurisdiction to which we are entitled 
and which, I undertake to sav, has been invaded by this court. If a precedent is 
established, if it is allowable for members of our committees to be detailed without 
coming and seeking the instructions of this House to go before that court, you may 
at once dismiss all j'our investigating committees. As I illustrated it before, matters 
proceeding in this court are now the subject of investigation. Has it the right, and 
is it trifling, is it skulking, for this House to assert at once its authority that tliese 
members shall nt>t go before that court with transactions which occurred in its com- 
mittee until the further order of the House? The House does not refuse the testimony. 
It does not refuse to allow testimony, but it does call upon members of that committee 
that the summons shall be disregaiVled until it orders otherwi-e. 



APPENDIX, yo. n. (J7<J 

And, sir, the KOiitleman from MassaoluiSftts [Mr. Hoar] sustains Jiie. Wliat is it, 
he says, these gentleinen were guilty of? Of contempt in going there and offering 
to testify, and lie proposes the action of this House to authorize them to go and tes- 
tify! Now, if it is not trifling with the dignity and privileges of this House to au- 
thorize members to go and testify before that "court, how can it be trifling with its 
dignity simply for this House to act precisely on the other line, and sav that you shall 
not go there without our order? 

What is the ease before the House? It is not a case of personal privilege ; it is not 
a case whetlier members can waive their personal privilo;.'e ancl go there, but simply 
whether this House shall exercise its unquestioned and uuciuestionaljle antliorily of 
restraining them from waiving their privileges as members. It is the privilege of 
this House, that body in the connected chain of linked responsibilities from the 
President down which holds all the other departments of the government responsible 
to it, invested with the authority of examining, criticising, and impeaching them. 

If this subptena was recognized, recognized, sir; if the memlicrs had done thi' 
thing wliich the gentleman from Maineseemed tothink that they ought to have done, 
it would have been competent for that court, if they had disobeyed,' to punish them 
witli personal attachment. I am ready here to take the responsibility of meeting 
this thing ill liiaitie. These papers, this evidence, this testimony, are in the possession 
of tliisHouse through its committee; it has exclusive control and custody of them; 
and if it allows a judicial triliunal to take them from its control, you are dispossessed 
of them, and that, too, while this impeachment trial may be going on. 

Now another point. William "\V. Helknap is in the custody of this House, sir. He 
is undergoing trial. 

Mr. Blaine: I hope the gentleman- 

Ml!. Lamar: Wait until I get through my sentence. 

The Speaker pro U'lnporc: The gentleman from Mississippi declines to be inter- 
rupted, and the gentleman from Maine will observe that fact. 

Mr. Lamar: I repeat, sir, he is in the legal custody of this House, under its consti- 
tutional control. If the gentleman from Maine means to say that ^^■e have not the 
bodily possession of him by arrest, so be it; but we have got control of him. 

Mr. Slaixe: 'We ne,ver intended to arrest him. 

Mr. Lamar: AVe may arrest him, and will do it if it is necessary, and can do it. Do 
you deny our competency? 

Mr. Bi.aixe: Undoubtedly in an impeachment; I deny it, and say that it is perfectly 
absurd. 

Mr. Lamar: You also said that it was absurd to say there was anything punishable 
in an impeachment; and wdien my friend from Tennessee [Mr. Bright], the distin- 
guished gentleman from that State, sjioke of two concurring jurisdictions, one having 
already acquired it by initiating the jiroceeiling it could not be ousted, the gentleman 
inflicted wpon him that most terrible of all punishments, the forfeiture of his respe<'t 
for him as an attorney. [Laughter.] I trust that the gentleman will survive; and, in 
full view of that penalty myself, I assert, sir, that it is true, and that an imi)eachnient 
is a penal trial; that there is judgment, conviction, and, in the very words which llie 
gentlemen used, "punitive punishment." 

Mr. Blaixe: Then the gentleman takes the ground that the man could be twice 
punished for the same oSense? I say that impeachment is protective, ami that the 
criminal jurisdiction is punitive. That is what I say, and I go on to say further that 
there never has been an impeachment in the United States in which there was any 
attempt to po-^sess tlie body because of the impeachment. The jiossessiou of the 
body is of no account in impeachment. The judgment which deprives the man of 
the right to hold office is just as eftective if the man were absent as in the case of his 
being present; and there never was an arrest of a man for impeachment in this 
country. 

Mr. Lamar: Are you sure of that? 

Mr. Blaine: Yes, sir. 

Mr. Lamar; Then let us form this issue, plain and comi)Iete. The gentleman says 
that there cannot be two punishments inflicted on an individual for tlie same offense. 
The same oft'ense. Here is the constitution, which says that the officer shall not only 
be removed from office on impeachment and disqualified to hold office thereafter, but 
that he shall be suliject to indictment, conviction, and jmnishment by a jury, besides. 

Now, sir, there is the constitution. That answers the question of the gentleman; 
and I am afraid that the gentleman will lose his respect for the constitution when it 
responds to his question by saying that a man guilty of an impeachable oflense shall 
be punished not only by removal from otiice, not only ))y disqualification to hold 
office, but also Vjy indictment, conviction, and punishment. 



680 LUCIUS Q. C. LA MA J!: JUS LIFE, ETC. 

Mk. Blai.ve: Read it. Read it from tliu oinstitntiuii. 

Mi;. Lamau: Here it is, sir: 'Mudgmeiit''— 

Mit. Blaine: "Judgment," not " panishment." Go on. [Laughter on the Demo- 
cratic ('.■') side of the House.] 

Mr. Lamar: The gentleman's oracular wisdom calls forth a laugh. Before; we are 
through the laughter will be at him instead of with him. The gentleman say.s 
" judgment," and wishes me to explain the word "judgment." " Judgment in cases 
of impeachment shall not extend fuither than to removal from office and disqualifi- 
cation to hold and enjoy any ottice of honor, trust, or profit under the United States." 
Is not that one punishment? 

Mr. Blaink: I'unishmeut is not mentioned there. Now, read on. 

Mr. liA^rAu: You say that is not a punishment? 

Mr. 15LAINE: Go on. 

Mr. Laniar: I put the <iuestion to the gentleman because of his interruption. Is 
not removal from office and disqualification to hold office a punishment? 

Mr. Blaine: If the gentleman speaks of its being a moral punishment 

Mr. Lamar: Xo, sir. 

Mu. Blaine: If he speaks of its being a moral punishment, he may lie right; but a 
legal punishment it is not. 

Mr. La5IAr: I ask tlu- gentleman, nut whether it is a moral ]mnishment or not, but 
is it not a legal punishment? 

Mr. Blaine: It is not. 

Mr. Lamar: Then the gentleman says that a removal from office, a disqualification 
to hold office, while a moral retribution <ir something of that kind, is not, in the 
contemplation of the law and the constitution, a penalty, a legal punishment. Very 
well. 

Mr. Blaine: Now read the next part. 

Mr. Lamar: I am coming to the next part. That is one thing. Then this i>royi- 
sion of the constitution goes on to sav: " I'.ut the party convicted"— What, sir? 
"The party convicted?" It is not "judgment" this time; it is conviction. And 
what is conviction, sir, but the judgment in a penal trial? Very well. I will carry 
you further directly: "But the party convicted shall nevertheless lie liable and sub- 
ject to indictment," trial, judsment, and punishment according to law." 

Now notice this language anaiu. Perhaps I can convince the gentleman: "Judg- 
ment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to remo\al from office 
and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the 
United States." , , ^ , 

Very well. Now, sir, the gentleman says that that is no punishment, and that the 
only punishment in the eye of the law is" that which this provision speaks of in the 
second clause. I have too much respect for him as a lawyer to tell him that he is 
under a mistake on that iwint, but there are men who hold a difi'erent opinion on 
that. IVIav I have the attention of tlie gentleman and of his admiring acclaimers 
and aniilaiiders to the authoritv which is almost as high upon questions of constitu- 
tional" law as himself? I read"from Wallace's Supreme Court Reports. Now notice. 
The court is speakins; of certain constitutional disabilities impo.sed, and uses this 
language: "The deprivation uf any rights, civil or political, previously enjoyed, may 
be punishment." 

Mr. Blaine: "Mav be." 

Mr. Lamar: Well,'vou arc nearly run to the ground. The gentleman has got to the 
"mav be." Well, I suppose his position is this; that the removal from office and 
perpetual disqualification from office thereafter "may be" a punishment. lUit 
whether it mav be or not, the officer impeached shall "nevertheless" be liable to 
indictment, conviction, and punishment accordiu;; to law. I have got him to the 
•" may be " now. He said a moment aw that it was not so. Now he injects an inter- 
ruption, and savs " it may be a punishment." That is promising. Perhaps I can lead 
him on a little" further. " [Applause.] "Disqualification from olfice may be punish- 
ment as in cases "— I have a great mind, sir, to let my friend oft'. ■\^ liat do you say, 
gentlemen? Shall I co on? [Cries of "Go on!" "Punish him!"] "Disqualification 
from olfice mav be punishment as in cases of conviction upon impeachment." 

Mr. Blaine:' Let me state what I mean. The gentleman read the opinion of the 
Supremo Court, which said that disability may be punishment. Well, that is just as 
gentlemen take it. The centleman from Mississippi did take it as a punishment, 
l)ut another gentleman from Mississippi, Jefl". Davis, regards it as no punishment. 
[Cries of" O! " " O ! " on the Democratic side of the House.] 

Mr. Lamar: " Mav be punishment." Does the gentleman mean to say that it is pun- 
ishment or not as th"e recipient considei-s it? Is that what this decision means ? \\ ell, 



APPENDIX, .\0. 13. ()81 

sir, let us sec what it says: it says tliat " ilisqualilication fioiii (illi<'e may bo punish- 
ment as in cases of conviction ofimpeailuuent." It may not be ]Hinislmient in otlicr 
cases, but it is in cases of conviction upon impeachment. Note tlie language of tlie 
court: "The ilisabilities c-reated by tlic conslitutiim of Missouri must be rcfiardeil as 
penalties; they constitute punishment. We do not agree with the counsel of Mis- 
souri, that 'to |iunish one is to dei)rive him of life, liberty, or projierty, and that to 
take from him anything less than these is no jiunisliment at all.' Tin- learned coun- 
sel does not use these terms — 'life, lilierty, and property' — as c()n]))rehendinj; every 
right known to the law. He does not include under liberty freedom from outrage on 
the feelings as well as restraints on the person. He does not include under jiroperty 
those estates which one may acquire in professions, though they are often the source 
of the highest emoluments iind honors. The deprivation of any rights, civil or polit- 
ical, previously enjoyed, may l)e punishment, the circumstances attending and the 
causes of the deprivation determining this fact. Disijnalification from otlice may be 
punishment, as in cases of conviction upon impeachment." 

Now, sii-, here is this trial going on, the trial <jf a former Secretary of War. The 
process of impeachment is not complete. All of the testimony has not been collected, 
and that which has been collected has been rendered useless by an accident or any- 
thing you may choose to call it. But, sir, while that grand trial is going on, here 
comes a small criminal court ordering the committee to come before them. AVhat 
for? To bring with them all the papers in their jjossession to impeach and to try 
this man, William W. Belknap. It was not my purpose to go into that question, l:ut 
I will do it for an instant. 

Mr. Speaker, there was not a particle of testimony before the committee, or before it 
now, on which an indictment against "William W. Belknap can be found. I say it as a 
lawyer. I rei)eat that as against William W. Belknaji there is not any evidence or any 
testimony or anvthing on which auv grand jury can base an indictmetit against Wil- 
liam W. Belknap. There are papers there w hich, taken in connection with the testi- 
mony of Mr. aiarsh, might do it. But, sir, there is another fact to whicli I invoke, 
the attention of mv friends on this (the Republican) side of the House, for whoin I 
have the kindliest "feeling; and inasnuich as the gentleman from Maine [Mr. Blaine] 
has referred to it, I will state here that toward the Rei>ublican party of the country 
I have no personal animositv or ill feeling. I am indebted to that party for the right 
of standing here on this floor to-day as a Representative in part of my State; and I 
say that it was an act of magnanimity on their part to extend to me that privdege, 
whatever may be my opinion as to the wrong done me and my people in imjTOSing 
these disabilities upon us. Viewing it from your standpoint, it was a magnanimous 

Therefore, sir, gentlemen of both parties, I proclaim to you, and I do it as a lawyer, 
that there is not onlv no testinionv before this committee on which a criminal court 
could indict or convict William AV. Belknap, but there is testimony there upon which 
Marsh could be indicted, and nobodv else but JIarsh. Now, gentlemen, we have all 
the proceedings which have been taken in this House and all the testimony which lias 
been brought before it against AVilliam W. Belknap ; but with Marsh absent it is use- 
less and there is no wav of criminally proceeding against AVilliam AV. Belknap. The 
onlv effect will be to indict, trv, and convict IMarsh, the confessed accomplice, who gave 
his'testimony against Belknap. Sir, the question is whether we shall permit this tes- 
timony to go or hold it until, in the discretion of this House, the members of the in- 
vestigating committee shall be ordered to go before that court and testify. 

I believe there is no Republican on this floor wdio has any disposition to screen this 
distinguished general wdio has recently been exposed in this terrible crime. Tlie ca- 
lamity is so great, the hideous ruin into which he has fallen is such as to make him 
sacred from attack; and all that we can do is to let the law take its course, feeling no 
sentiment of indignation against the unhappy man, no sentiment other than that of 
commiseration; but in the meantime it behooves the House of Representatives, and 
I invoke its action to-day, to see to it that its constitutional rights and its powers are 
respected.* [Applause.] 

I now call the previous question. 

* After I ooncl.i.led mr remarks Mr. Sr,nu>son. of Iowa, c^eto ray l«/:'^,f^n^l ^^/^'^f ;'„™y,'Jf,^f4™ 



682 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAK: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

Appendix No. 13. 

THE POLICY OF THE REPUBLICAN PAETY IN THE SOUTH, AND 
THE CONDITION OF SOUTHERN AFFAIRS. 

Speech ill Oie House on the ~d of Auguxi, 1S7€. 

The House being in Committee of the Whole on the bill (H. R. No. 2592) to trans- 
fer tlie conduct of Indian affairs from the Interior Department to the War Dejmrt- 
mL'ut, Mr. Lamar f:aid: 

Mr. CItairinan: I listened early in the session with great pleasure to an interesting 
and suggestive speech delivered by the gentleman from Massachusetts upon the prop- 
osition to amend the constitution so as to make the President of the United States 
ineligible to a second term of service. I was struck with the views which he jire- 
sented upon the subject of the relation of this proposed amendment "to the corrujit 
and debasing practices which have crept into the public service of the country." I do 
not propose to discuss that subject fully now ; it is too large ; but I may say as to the 
whole subject of civil service reform that no cure can be siiccessfuUy applied which, 
does not secure that removal from office shall be made only'for cause, and tliat the 
tribunal which decides that cause shall, by its freedom from all interest or feeling as 
to the result, guarantee the good faith and impartiality of its decision ; and my object 
on this occasion is to discuss in this connection certain great agencies which, through 
this service, affect the public interests. 

]Mr. Chairman, it cannot be asserted that the practices and jieculiar system of meas- 
ures adopted by the present administration for several years past command the ap- 
probation of a majority of the people of this country. On the contrary, the assertion 
may be ventured, with entire confidence in its accuracy, that the sentiment with 
which the greater ].iortiou of the American people regard the conduct of our public 
affairs is one of decided dissatisfaction and despondency. This sentiment is irrespec- 
tive of the hostilities of party. Inside of the dominant party itself, among those in 
entire sympathy with the political principles which brought it into power — that is to 
say, among Republicans of earnest purpose, self-abnegating patriotism, and unbiased 
intelligence — there is an anxious protest again^'t the methods of administration, the 
tone and character of the public service, and the principles of legislation which have 
marked the action of the government for many years past. It must also be ailniitted 
that this sentiment, so pronounced and so jiervading, has not produced its legitimate 
effect upon the action of tlie giivernment, has wrought no change in the administra- 
tion either as to character or jiolicy. 

This is a noteworthy fact in American politics. 

In every country enjoying tlie privilege of representative government such a condi- 
tion "f public sentiment would have found its active political exjjression. In En- 
gland, whence we have derived our parliamentary instincts and habits, in spite of the 
checks upon the pojv.ilar will to be found in a hereditary peei'age and monarchy, such 
a condition of puljlic sentiment would produce a change in the adndnistration in 
twenty-four hours. How, then, is it tliat in our government, the completest represen- 
tative of the popular will in theory that has ever existed, with no check or hin- 
drance upon tlie prompt and free expression and ajiplication of public opinion to its 
machinery, depending for its vitality upon its ready and sensitive sympathy with the 
public conscience, such a condition of public sentiment fails to impress itself upon the 
administration? What is this nn'sterious and invisible influence which, paralyzing 
the free activities of the American people, prevents them from bringing the action of 
the government into conformity with their will? AVe must believe that the moral 
character of our peo]>lo is sound, that they enter upon the second century of their na- 
tionality with increased moral earnestness, with higher standards of public virtue and 
official rectitude, and with a mure solemn sense of the needs of restoring tlieir gov- 
ernment to the tone and purity of the earlier days of the Republic. The que.stion 
then grows in urgency: What is it that prevents the sentiments of a free people from 
finding realization in "the character and policy of its government? I desire to give a 
single example which is typical of the general condition that I am trying to illus- 
trate. 

r.nt a short time since a convention of the Republican party of Massachusetts was 
called in T.oston. The president of that convention, upon taking the chair, uttered 
the following significant remarks. After referring with eloquence to the proud 
achievements with which the ]iarty named was identified, he warned the convention 
" against the mistake of fighting the battles of the future upon the issues of the past." 



AiTF.NDix, xo. /.;. t;8:j 

"In the year when a glail and patriotic people swells the ehorus of a nation's jubi- 
iee, it is not by lighting again the canii) fires of eonHicts tliat are ended, it is not by 
kindling anew passions that ought to snhside, it is not by )iostponing the linal hour 
of peace and reconciliation, that victories deserve to l)e won. ... 

" Speaking as a Republican to fcUow-Reimblicans, I shall od'er no apology for jilaiu 
and honest words. Xo one who has watched the current of recent political events 
has fiiiled to see a deep, widespread, and growing dissatisfaction with the manage- 
ment of national affairs. ... 

" Ha\e you any lunger a doubt as to tlie i-auses W'hich have wrought this change in 
our fortunes? i^urely we have not abjured our creed. Our distinctive policy and 
aims were never more clearly affirmed, our traditions and the names of our great lead- 
ers never more reverently held. ... 

"jS'o, gentlemen, the protest is n<it against the record or the creed, but against the 
methods of administration ; against dominant influences and tendencies tliat have de- 
based the character and tone of the pulilic service; against a leadcrshii) that has 
wielded power and patronage for its own ends, and not lor the |inljlic good; againsta 
partisanship— narrow, intense, and violent— that has usurped llu' iilace of a broad and 
enlightened statesmanship, and repelled accessions of recognized character and abdity 
as an element t<jo repugnant to be tolerated ; against a code of financial niorality that 
has corrupted the standards of oflicial honesty and turned places of jmlilic' trust into 
opportunities of private gain or jiublic plunder. ... 

" Observe with me for a moment, gentlemen, some of the forces of opinion and sen- 
timent that indicate the drift and demand of the hour. Xote first the anxious look- 
ing for relief from the long-continued depression that rests upon the material inter- 
ests of the country and the feeling that some change, some new dispensation, is essen- 
tial to such relief." . • /• .1 

It will be i)ercei\ed that this gentleman here arraigns the vices and practices ot the 
national administration, its lawless usurpations, the corruption which revels in its 
high places, the trifiing witli the important interests of finance and curreni-y, the 
prostitution of pu1)lic office to personal gain, in language which, if uttered ujion this 
floor bv a Democrat, would he regarded as the exaggerations of partisan animosity. 
Yet, singular as it may seem, that convention was held in the interest, exclusively, of 
the'great political organization under which these evils, thus characterized and thus 
held up to the reprol>ation of the American people, have been fastened on our gov- 
ernment. And these gentlemen, the members of the convention and the president 
of it and perhaps large portions of their constituents, with all their talents and moral 
influence, are in active cooperation with the administration so denounced in the sup- 
port of a 'political party which has indorsed that administration and has in return 
been indorsed by it. o j- j • . 

Now what is the influence which thus sweeps vast masses of a free and virtuous 
people into a course of conduct in direct contravention of their most solemn convic- 
tions and their most earnest purposes? 

More than a quarter of aeenturv ago one of tlie greatest of the great statesmen ot 
America, Daniel Webster, declared that the power of the Executive of our national 
government had increased until it had become dangerous to liberty: and he jiredict- 
ed that if ever the President, who was the head of the nation, should become the 




! people, unless tnai majomy oecanic tun ..11^....!..^^ ... •■•^ 

taneous action liy some great excitement only short ot civil revolution. 

Another .^reat statesman, from another extreme of the 1 nion, belongiiigto a ditter- 
ent school of politics, and vet his peer in intellect and patriotism, Mr. Calhoun, de- 
clared that tl,e patronage of this g.n-ernment at that time-and it w.as nearly half a 
century ago— in the liands of the President was too great a power for the ( hief -Mag- 
istrate of a free people; that it was imperial in its character giving him absolutely to 
the extent of that power more control than the autocrat of Russia; and he Predicted 
that when the corps of officeholders nn.ler this government should i;each one 1>'"«1 « 
thousand the people might almost as well surrender thoir bbcrty. The f""*--^* would 
be too unequal; for the party thus intrenched m power could show a vast ^^-'r^"""*^ 
over the two-thirds of a popular majority scattered over the country unorganized and 
acting upon difl'erent grounds of opposition. , , j «i „„„.,.r(n1 

In the predictions of these two great statesmen we see .leveloj.ed the po« cr ul 
agency which now nullifies the sentiment of a free peo,,le_and prevents ''■; »1'I' 'l;'" 
tlon tb the machinery of this government of that great social force m .all free go^ern- 
inents, public (jpinion. 



684: LVCICS Q. V. LAMAR : 11 LS LIFE, ETC. 

All intermediate au<l irresponsiljle body kiKjwii as " tlie Pai't}- " has interposed itself 
between the people and their government; a body unknown to tlie constitution, hav- 
ing no part in the civil apparatus of society, yet tyrannizing with selfish and relent- 
less energy over botli people and government, converting the agents of the one- 
aye, its highest otiicers. Cabinet officers— int(j the willing and active instruments in the 
advancement of its ambitious designs, and employing the passions of the other as the 
servants of its partisan and mischievous purposes. Tliis centralized party organiza- 
tion, forming, as I said, no part of the government, yet fastened upon it, intrenched 
in its interior departments, extemling and ramifying its network of selfish power 
and dishonest influence to the remotest points and the obscurest neighborhoods of 
the Union, garrisoning with an army of one hundred thousand ofliceholders and a 
reserve of another one hundred thousand expectants every department, every po.-t- 
office, and every customhouse in the land, tempting men from honest industry into 
the dependence and servilitv of officeholding and office seeking, welded by a single 
will into unitv of purpose and concert of action— this monstrous perversion of popu- 
lar liberty is the great and insuperable obstacle to the reforms which the peoi)le de- 
mand, and which tlireatens to make this government in all its departments the in- 
strument of an irresponsible and despotic power. 

But, sir, this, while it is the chief oljstacle inthe way of the harmonious cooperation 
of all the elements in iaxov of reform, is not the only one. There are thousands of vot- 
ers, too honest to flatter power, too independent not to speak their condemnation of 
its abuses, and brave enough to unite in the efl'ort to overthrow their own party for 
the good of the country, who yet hesitate, in view of the uncertainty and responsibil- 
ity attacliing to the next step. They are reluctant to accept and cooperate with the 
Democratic "jiarty as the instrument for inaugurating the system of measures which 
good government, demands. Their objection to such a course is based on the appre- 
hension that an improvement in the public service and reform in the methods of 
administration cannot be guaranteed by a mere change of iiai'ty relations, by bring- 
ing the Democratic party into the administration from which the other party has 
been expelled, with the same system at work, with the same amount of patronage, 
subject to the same tendencies,'with the same control over its vast machinery, and 
addicted, as they cliarge, in the past periods of its power, to the same use of the 
patronage in its hands. . . , .■ 

Sir, whether this apprehension be well founded or not, there is one consideration 
touch'im' this subject wliich should not be overlooked. It practically gives up the 
demand"'of the people for a reform in tlieir government; it is a virtual abandonment 
of the struasile. For, though it may be possible or probable that the change of ]«irty 
mav not insure this reform, it is unquestionably certain that no change at all \\-ill eml 
all hope of reform. Sir, it is utterlv imi.ossible that the reforms desired can be eflect- 
ed by continuing in power the party whose debasement of the civil service of the 
country and corruption of its administration are tlie things to be reformed. And the 
reason'is obvious. This result arises from the fact that such vicious tendency is the 
predominating influence, the strongest principle of the political organization which 
controls the government; while the counteracting element of purity and reform is 
weak and subordinate. 

If this be sc-)— if the controlling spirits of a party organization be those who represent 
its worst tendency, if they are the men of action and resolution, aggressive and domi- 
nant- while those who represent the other element are passive and inactive, aciimes- 
cent and submissive— it is utterly impossible that such an organization should reform 
itself bv its own inherent and self-evolving energy, as impossible as it la for an 
in-iane iniml to restore its own reason by its own will. In adihtion to this, the suc- 
cess of this party at the polls will of itself give immunity to the cormpt practn-es 
which are the subject of such universal condemnation. If the people of this country, 
at the ballot Ijox, in view of tlie great evils complained of, in view of the issue imde 
a"-ain«t the present administration and the bold acceptance of that issue by the Cm- 
ci'nnati convention, decide or indicate their feeling that they have other objects jiara- 
mount to that of reform, such action is equivalent to a ratification of the existing sys- 
tem in all its enormity, and closes all opportunity for overthrowing it. To say, tben, 
that bv a change we liave no assurance of a better state of things, is tlie policy of de- 
spair, of abnegation. It is the surrender of lilierty to power which Webster and Cal- 
houn contemplated with such pungent apprehension. 

On the other hand, if this sreat Republican party with its imposing achievements 
of the past is hurled from ]iower bv the American people on account of the abuses of 
its civil service, on account of the practice of using the patronage of the government 
for the purpose of consolidating party strength and controlling elections, such adeft'at 
for such a cause will of itself inflict an incurable, if not a mortal, wound upon this 



AJ'j'i:xinx, xo. iA 685 

pernicious system. It will of itself give to the successors in poHcr ;i practical warn- 
ing of a like fati' if they pursue u like policy, "^licse will conic in hohling their new- 
ly acquired power under a tenure of ollicc, which tenuie is an alislinence from the 
coui'ses of tiieir predecessors. 

I do not overlook or unilcrvalnc the declarations of the l\c[inblican candidate for 
the Presidency. I believe that tliey are sincere. 1 a|)plaud the sentiments and honor 
the author. But their siirnilicancc must be measured, not by what hi' is willin<< to 
promise as a candiilate, but by what he will be permitted to jierform as a President. 
Sir, rarely in history have we seen the man who had the com-age and resolution to 
put down the exacting tyranny of his own party, to imp<i;-e uiion it the impress of 
his own will, to infuse into it a higher life, and say to the selfish and ambitious poli- 
ticians who had chosen him as their tool: " Ijchold your master!" 

The character and fixed policy of the party of which he has consented to be the 
representative, the inlluences which are nowcombined in his support, are in direct 
opposition to tliose declarations. While these ])romises of the candidate are held out 
to the ear, the administration which su])ports him itself is in every moment of its ex- 
istence breaking them to the hope. While the Keiiublican candidate declares that 
there shall be no appointment as a reward forparty service and no removals for party 
disservice, the administration is eliminating from its own organization every element 
of reform that has l^y the mutations of appointment found its way there. 

But there is an avenue of reform, availaljle ami effective, which a cliange of parties 
will open. One of the greatest sources of the abuse of patronage and the corrui>tion 
of administration is to be found in the enormous revenues and exjienditures of 
government, making necessary this extravagant number of officers and agents to 
collect this re\enue and dispense these expenditures. A system of retrenchment 
and reform, cutting down the revenues and expenditures to the most economical 
needs of the government, would at once deprive the Executive of a large percentage 
of this patronage. To that policy the Democratic jjarty is not only pledged, but it 
has signalized its past aihuinstrations by a faithful adherence thereto, as a compari- 
son of Democratic administrations with that of the party now in power will abun- 
dantly demonstrate. 

Sir, tlie olijections which the people of this country have hitlierto had to the reas- 
cendency of the Democratic party ha\e never grown out of its administration of the 
fiscal concerns of this government; they are based upon its use of the powers of 
this government for what was supposed to be the maintenance of the interests of the 
slaveholding sections of the country. All the lawies-s usurpations and nususe of 
powers of government charg^ against tlie Democratic party have reference to those 
subjects, and to those alone/^' Upon all other subjects and in all other interests, when 
the Democratic party surreiidered the government into the hands of their ojiiionents, 
it was, in the language of one of its most eminent men, "without a stain U]ion its 
honor, matchless in its splendor, incalculable in its strength, the wonder and admira- 
tion of the world." The power which the nation showed in the great civil conflict, its 
resources of men and material, its vast appliances, manufacturing, mechanical, and 
commercial, were but the rich harvesting of a period of sixty years under Democratic 
rule out of seventy of the country's existence. 

But, sir, there are other influences still more controlling which obstruct the ten- 
dencies of the people to change their administration of government. One of them is 
the apprehension of a large class of voters that the Presidential election involves, not 
merelv questions of ailministrative reform, but political principles of vital importance 
to the' country. They believe that the great social and political translbrmations in 
the South which have resulted from the war of secession shouM be guaranteed a suc- 
cessful and peaceful working, undisturbed by adverse influences; and they fear in the 
advent of the Democratic party to power an influence unfavfirable and dangerous to 
their stalnlity and permanence. These misgivings, based upon their estimate of the 
past career "and pur])Oses of the Democratic party, are strengthened by the fact to 
winch tliey point: that the people of the South are united against the party which 
established the new order of things and in support of the iiarty which opposed it, 
thus threatening the reestablishment of that Southern sectional domination so rejnig- 
nant to the sentiment and the purjioses of the Northern peojile. They therefore are 
not prepared, for the sake of correcting the disorders of administration, to jieril the 
newly established condition of things by placing it in the hands of those who were 
oritdnally inimical to its institution. 

Without questioning the sincere acquiescence of the Democratic jiarty in tlie 
changes wrought by the constitutional amendments, they do not regard that party as 
sufficiently identified in its views and purposes with the objects of those amendments 
to guard them against the dangers of reactionary movements. They consider the 



686 LUCIUS Q. a lamah.- his life, etc. 

supervision and intervention of tlie Federal autliority as necessary to the exercise 
and jirotection of tlie rights whicli tliese amendments guarantee to the newly enfran- 
chised race at the South, and that, should the Democratic party succeed, this necessa- 
ry supervision will be withilrawn. 

I have attempted, Mr. Chairman, to state these views fully in order that the South- 
ern people, the jieople whom in part I rejiresent here, shall be fully apprised of the 
precise character and force of the public opinion which bears upon their present con- 
dition and their futuredestiny. I shall endeavor, as a representative of the South, to 
appreciate the value of these grave apprehensions. In doing so, I shall speak as one 
who feels that he represents in part a people who even in their desolation are no un- 
important element in the national life; wlio have accepted with manly sincerity the 
changes which the war has brought; who know that they have the confidence of the 
country to regain, but who are ijssured that, with a fuller and truer knowledge of 
their condition, their motives, and their purposes, to which it is our duty here to con- 
tribute, they can claim, and will receive, that restored trust and affection which can 
alone Ijind the great sections of this Republic in the unity of the spirit and in the 
bonds of peace, that peace which in these days of misei'able discord almost passeth 
the understanding. 

I believe that the apprehension growing out of the united Southern support of the 
Democratic party is wholly unfounded, and should not stand in the way of the asjii- 
rations of a great peojile for progress and reform in their government. The idea that 
the South under any combination of parties will ever again obtain the control of this 
giant Republic and wield its destinies against the will of its mighty people is of all 
ideas the most visionary and baseless. 

Sir, if such an idea has any efi'ect whatever with the North, no such hallucinati()n 
inflames tlie imagination of the South. The Southern people are a ]iidstrate peojile. 
They have lieeu defeated in war, and they have been made to know and feel that the 
sacrifices, the humiliation, anil helplessness of defeat are theirs: wlnle the Xorth 
have i-eaped the rich results of a victorious war, and have interfused them into the 
very elements of the national life and constitution. Their institutions, political and 
social, have lieen destroyed as completely as if an earthquake had overwhelmed 
them; their agricultural industries are disorganized; their fertile soil sterilized by an 
all-devouring taxation; their educational institutions languishing; their population 
impoverished and so inferior in numbers as to ])lace them in every department of the 
govermnent in such a hopeless minority that, so far from ruling tiie interests of other 
sections, they are impotent to protect a single interest or right of their own. 

Sir, even if such a dream were in their mind, the occasion for it is gone. The con- 
flicts in the past grew out of questions connected with slavery, its area, and the main- 
tenance of its constitutional right, its political jjrivileges, and its property interests. 
These questions have been eliminated from the proljlem of American politics, and 
with them have gone all the passions and antagonisms to which they gave rise. Nor 
is there any influence or incident oonneeted with their present condition which 
makes them not fully homogeneous with the wliole American peoyile, nor anything, 
excejit harsh and ungracious admiuisti-ation, to jirevent their sym[>athy and identity 
with the interest and destiny of the American nation. She feels that she must be 
either part of the nation or its province, must lie part of the government or lield in 
duress under it. With her people national patriotism is a philosophy, a moral and 
political necessity. ' To obey the law of tlieir country, and to recognize its authority 
over themselves and their society as a mere matter of force and comjiulsion and fear, 
would be, as they well know, degrading to tlieir character. As Southern men, they 
know that to keep up the high moral standanl of a high-spirited people, obedience 
must emanate from patriotic love, and not from ignoble fear. Their very sectional- 
ism, which has hitherto tended to insulation, now identifies them with the national 
life, and makes them cultivate that wider and bi-oader ])atriotism which is coexten- 
sive with the Union. They have no aspii'ations not bounded by the horizon of that 
Union, no p\n-pose adverse to the national instincts, no scheme tliat looks to the dis- 
turbance of the elective franchise as it exists in the constitution. 

In acting unitedly with the Democratic party they are simply obeying the impera- 
tive law of self-])reservation. It is not that they desire to reverse the policy of this 
government as fixed and fortified in the fundamental law by the victorious forces of 
the Union, but sinqily because they desire to escape from the practical grievances 
and suflerings which the hostile and oppressive policy of the Republican party 
brings upon them. 

No, sir; the great constituency of a Democratic administration, as must be seen by 
consulting the statistics of po)nilation, will lie national, and not sectional. The Pres- 
ident wiir be a citizen of the State of New York. The Vice President will come from 



APPENDIX, XO. la. 087 

the mighty West. The pulilic sentiuient which will he brought to bear upon its con- 
duct ofjiublic atl'airs will come from that quur.er in whi<'h tlu5 i)hysical and political 
jiower of the country so overwhelmingly preponderates, that which is the seat of pop- 
ulation, conuuerce, the mechanic arts, and all scientilic and material development. 
All that the South can hope for is such an intiuence as a moral and intellectual 
elevation will give her Representatives and a representative share of the benefits and 
responsibilities of the common government, according to tlu; measure of her resources 
and population. 

E«iually unfounded, I think, sir, is the apprehension that the results of the war as 
embodied in the constitution are unsafe in the hands of the Democratic party. AVhat- 
ever may be the future administration of this country, freedom, citizensliip_, and suf- 
frage are established institutions, embodied in the fundamental law, recognized in all 
statutes, Federal and State, enforced by courts, accepted and acted on by the people. 
To say that these conditions will be periled by trusting them to the party which 
opposed their original establishment is to contradict tlie philosophyof history, and, 
if acted upon, wo\ild in every free government keep the administration of its aP.airs 
always in the hands of one single jiartv. There has not been a single great measure 
in the constitutional history of England, not a single great reform, which after its es- 
tablishment by one party was not in the course of time, and a very short pi^ricd, 
]daeed in the hands of the party originally opposed to it. Eejieated instances might 
be given; indeed, no instance to the contrary can be found. The repeal of the corn 
law^s, the great measures for law reform, the more recent measures of parliamentary 
reform which brought England to the verge of revolution and came near sweeping 
from the English constitution the House of Lords where the Tory party had its great- 
est strength,"liave, bv the suflrages of the English people, over and over again been 
placed in the hands of that Tory party with perfect confidence of security. Indeed, it 
is considered the very highest policy, after securing reforms adopted and pushed by 
the party of progress, to mature and consolidate them by placing them in the hands 
of the -party of conservation and opiiosition. The Democratic party, when these 
measures were proposed, stood by the inviolability of the constitution, and opposed 
them on that account; but this very principle of devotion to the constitution which 
forced that party into opposition, niakes them now the safest custodians of those very 
innovations wh'ich by the vote of the people have become established parts of the 
constitution itself ■.■ . 

Xow, sir, is there anything in the relation of the Democratic party to this subject or 
its creeil or its ]>ast conduct which would justify any such apprehension? Its reliic- 
tance to adopt the measure referred to has simply been a little later than that of the 
Eeiiublican party. Its advocacy of slavery and all its incidents, its pledges to the ex- 
ercise of the powers of government for its protection where it existed, were simply 
maintained for a short period after its Republican ojiponents changed their policy. 

Events have galloped upon this subject, and both parties have been more or k>ss the 
subjects of prodigious revolutions of' sentiment. It was but a short time since (in 
1861) that a Rei)ul)lican House of Representatives by a large majority adopted reso- 
lutions in fiivor of the enforcement of the fugitive slave provision of the constitution 
and called upon the States to enact laws for remanding all fugitive slaves to theircon- 
dition of servitude. It was but a few days prior to the publication of the proclama- 
tion of emancipation that the illustrious author of that historical document declared 
in a public letter that he would lie in favor of establishing slavery if the doing so 
would save the Union. It was but a short time previous to the incorporation of these 
great amendments into our constitution tliat State after State in the Korth, by over- 
whelming popular majorities, recorded what, seemed to be an intlexilile hostility to 
granting to this newly emancipated race any of the rights of citizenship. As late as 
IStJo the most distinguished war governors of the North were unequivocally opposed 
to the policy of incorporating the four millions of emancipated slaves into the politi- 
cal system of the country and investing them with citizenship and the right of voting. 
I will next address mvself to the obiection that the accession to power of the Dem- 
ocratic party will suspend the habitual supervision by national authority over the 
<;onductof aliairsin the Southern States, and that such a sus|.ension of that super- 
vision and intervention will involve great peril to the enjoyment of the newly ac- 
quired rights of the race recently enfranchised in the South, and that the Republican 
party, with all its misconduct and misgovernment, is still an evil necessary to be en- 
dured for another Presidential term in order to secure these rights and the conditions 
upon which they are based. , . . 

'Sir, I ask a patient, charitaljle consideration of the reply which it is my duty as a 
Southern Representative to make on this subject. I think, sir, if the gentlemen will 
accompany me into an examination of the causes which produced the present condi- 



688 LUCICS (J. C. LAMAR: JUS LIFE, ETC. 

tion of things in tlie South they will find that it does not grow out of any natural or 
necessary conflict of race or any desire to abridge the rights, political or personal, of 
any class of American citizens. 

The fiist to which 1 would call attention is the s^udden incorporation into the po- 
litical system of the South of an element, not only incongruous with the political hab- 
itudes of our people and to the established conditions of their old society, but impos- 
siljle except through time and education to be raised to that level of ordiiiary citizen- 
ship to which a century's training of freedom lias elevated the white citizens of the 
country. The magnitude alone of this new element — four millions of people made 
citizens, eit;ht hundred thousand of them voters, made such in the twinkling of an 
eye— was of itself sufficient to shock and shatter the political order of any community 
on earth. 

Mr. Chairman, but a short time since, when it w-as proposed to admit the distant 
and sjiarsely settled Territory of New Jlexico into our Federal community of States, 
the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts [ilr. Hoar], v.lio addressed the 
House to-day so impressively and so earnestly, objected strenuously to the measiire 
upon the ground that that feeljle population of one hundred and twenty thousand in- 
habitants, largely composed of ^Mexicans ami Indians, because they could not read or 
speak the English language, was disqualified to exercise tlie privileges of citizenship, 
ami should not therefore Tie admitted into the community of American States. 

Mr. Hoar: My point was that a community made up of such people ought notto be 
admitted as a State; not that the individual" should not be allowed to exercise the 
rights of citizenship. 

Mr. Lamar: Did the gentleman understand me as saying that? 

Mk. Hoar: The gentleman used the phrase tliatsuch jiersons were disfranchised, or 
should be disfranchised, from exercising the rights of citizenship. 

Mr. Lamar: No, sir; the gentleman puts into my mouth a word which I did not use. 

Mr. Hoar: I so understood the gentleman. 

Mr. Lamau: I rejieat my proposition. The gentleman's ground, as I understood, was 
that a liody of that sort, composed of people speaking the Spanish language (not be- 
cause tliey si)oke that language, but because they could not read nor write the English), 
was as a body unfit and disi|ualified, or rather unqualified, to discharge the duties of 
American citizenship, and therefore as a community should not be admitted into our 
Federal system. 

Sir, but the other day a distinguished Senator from the Pacific Coast made a most 
striking jirotest against the further immigration of Chinese into the community there, 
and still more recently both parties seemed to lie vying with each other as to which 
should iio furthest in preventing this admixture of the Mongolian race with ours. To 
illustrate the disturbing force of this measure, let ns suppose that in the six New En- 
gland States and the States of New York and New Jersey, whose poimlation corre- 
sponds most nearly to that of our Southern States, in one night four millions of unac- 
customed, incongruous population, such as Mexicans and Chinese, should be incor- 
porated into thepolitical system of those Commonwealths, and by some jiaramount 
power outside of those States should be so compacted together as to gain control of 
all the departments of their government, of all the offices, all tlie institutions. State 
and municijial — in a word, invested with the entire sovereisnty of their body politic 
—I ask you would not the repose of society be disturbed? Woiild not all assurance of 
law, of healthful industry, of business arrangements and investments, would not all 
confidence give wav to dismay and perplexity, to restless fears, wild passions, and 
bloody scenes? Why, sir, the more splendid their political civilization, the more 
complex their system of laws, and the more perfectly adjusted their social and eco- 
nomic forces, and the Iiigher the moral tone of their society, the more hideous would 
be the ruin and the more refined the agony of the people subjected to such a catas- 
troiihe. 

But the case as supposed is not as strong as the case which actually occurred m the 
Southern States. The four millions of people who by a scratch of the pen were made 
citizens and crushed into our political system, the eight hundred thousand voters and 
officeholders and legislators anil magistrates, had just emerged from the immemorial 
condition of slaves. 

The fearful experiment was regardeil by tlunking men all over tlie world with the 
profoundest concern and misgiving. It was viewed with disfiivor I>y a large majority 
even of the Republican party. Its most aide and its most extreme leaders looked 
upon it as committing society to the sway of Ignorance, servility, corruption, and tyr- 
anny; and such was their sentiment until the conflict of the Republican party with 
President .Johnson and one other cause, which I shall notice before I close, seemed to 
sweep away every consideration of reason and justice. 



APPENDIX, SI). 13. 689 

In 1865, the year in which tlicie was in tlie South certain legislation which has 
been tlie subject of much denunciation of tlie South and tlic occasion and excuse for 
the oppressive and huuiiliating methods which have been applied to her i>eople— I 
say, iu that year Mr. O. 1'. .Morton, in a message to the Legislature of Indiana, used the 
following language: 

" It is a fact so'manifest that it should not be called in question by any that a peo- 
ple who are just emerging from the barbarism of slavery are not ciualified to become 
a part of our political system and take jjart, not only in the government of themselves 
and tlicir neighbors, l)ut of the whole United States. 

" So far from believing that negro suffrage is a remedy for all of our national ills, I 
doubt whether it is a remedy for any, and'rather believe that its enforcement by Con- 
gress would be more likely to subject the negro to a merciless persecution than to con- 
fer upon him any substantial beneiit. 

" By some it is thought that suffrage is already cheap enough in this country ; and 
the immediate transfer of more than half a million men from the bonds of slavery, 
with all the ignorance and the degradation upon them which the slavery of gener- 
ations upon Southern fields has produced, would be a declaration to the woild that 
the exercise of American suffrage involves no intellectual or moral qualifications, and 
that there is no difference between an Ameiican freeman and an American slave 
which may not be removed by a mere act of Congress." 
[Here the hammer fell.] 

The Chairman: The time of the gentleman has expired. 

Mr. Garfield: I ask that the gentleman's time may be extended, hoping that the 
same courtesy may l)e granted when the other side shall ask to be heard. 
The Chairman: If tliere is no objection, the gentleman's time will be extended. 
There was no objection. 

JIr. Lamar: Now, sir, in a speech which this gentleman made in Indiana before 
these people became invested with anv political rights, here is his language: 

" I believe tliat in the case of four'million slaves just freed from bondage there 
should be a period of probation and )ireparation before they are brought to the exer- 
cise of political power. . . . What is their condition? Perhaps not one iu five 
hundred— I might say one in a thousand— can read, and perhaps not one in five hun- 
dred is worth live dollars in property of any kind." 

Now, sir, notice the language of Mr. Morton in the following sentences: 
"Can you conceive that a body of men, white or black, who have been in this con- 
dition, and their ancestors before them, are qualified to be immediately lifted from , 
their present state into tlie full exercise of power, not only to govern themselves and 
their neighbors, but to take part in the government of the United States? Can they 
be regarded as intelligent and independent voters? The mere state of facts fur- 
nishes the answer to the question. ... To say that such men— and it is no fault 
of theirs; it is simply a misfortune, and a crime of this nati(Ui— to say that such men 
just emerged from slaverv are qualified for the exercise of political power is to make 
the strongest proslavery argument I ever heard ; it is to pay the highest compliment 
to the institution of sluvei-y." _ 

Then he goes on with his objections to clothing these people with the rights of citi- 
zenship and suffrage. Savshe: 

" The right to vote carries with it the right to hold office. You cannot say that the 
negi-o has a natural right to vote, liut that he must vote only for white men for office." 
Then, after demonstrating that point, he makes this conclusion: 
" If you enfranchise all the negroes in these States, you will have at least twenty ne- 
gro votes to one white vote; and in the work of reconstructing the States of South 
Carolina, Alabama, and Florida you will have a larger proportion, jierhaps thirty col- 
ored votes to one white. Now, I ask you, what is to be the effect of that? The first 
effect will be that you will have colored State governments." 

After going into'a long argument to prove tliis fact, he reaches this conclusion: 
" They will have colored governors and colored members of Congress and Senators 
and judges of the Supreme Court, etc. Very well ; and supjwse they do send colored 
Senators and Representatives to Congress; I have no doubt you will find men in 
the North who will be willing to sit beside them, and will not think themselves de- 
graded by so doing. I have nothing to say to this. I am simply discussing the polit- 
ical effect of it. In every State where there is a colored State Government, a negro 
for Governor and a negro for Supreme .ludge, white emigration will cease; there will 
be no more white emigration to any such State. You cannot find the most ardent 
antislavery man in Wayne County who will go and locate in a State that has a colored 
State Government." . . 

Now, sir, why ascribe to the conduct of the people of the South this exclusion of 

44 



690 Lucivs q. c. lamar: ins life, etc. 

immigration when here is predicted beforehand the result of tlie state of things which 
haa occurred? Here is his conclusion : " I submit, then, however clearl\- and strongly 
we may admit the natm-al right of the negro— I submit it to the intelligence of the 
people— that colored State governments are not desirable; that they will bring aljout 
results tliat are not to be hoped for; that finally they would threaten to bring about, 
and I believe would result in, a war of races." 

Those are his predictions in ISfio. Now what is his remedy? Here it is: "If I 
had the power, I would arrange it in this wa\': I would give these men a probation 
and preparation; I would give them time to acquire a little property ami get a little 
education, time to learn something aliout the simplest forms of business and prepare 
themselves for the exercise of jiolitical power." 

Well, sir, that looks amiable and friendly toward these men. But why put them 
under this system of probation? For the benefit of the race? In order to elevate 
them? That is not the motive which upon tliut occasicm he declared. Here is what 
he says: "At the end of ten, tifteen, or twenty years"— Sir, that time has not 
elapsed. What would he do at the end of ten, tifteen, or twenty years? "At the end 
of ten, fifteen, or twenty years let them come into the enjoyment of their political 
rights."— Why then?— "By tliat time these States will have been so completely filled 
up by emigration from the Xorth and from Europe that the negroes will be in a per- 
manent minority." There is his devotion to the colored race. Keep them ten, fif- 
teen, or twenty years out of the enjoyment of their political rights, until under the 
influence of immigration the negroes shall lie in a permanent minority ! 

Mr. (i.utKiELD: At what time of the year was that speech delivered? 

Mr. Lamar: September 2!t, ls(i). Why would they be in a permanent minority? 
"Because the negroes have no emigration, nothing but the natural increase; while 
we "— He actually identifies himself with the whites of the South. 

A Member: He was a white-liner, then. 

jNIr. Lamar: He goes here further than the white-liners: "While we have emi- 
gration frinn all the world, and natural increase besides." He would put them under 
probation and kee]) them outof their rights, as he calls them, ten or fifteen ortwenty 
years, by which time tliev will be in a permanent minority; and there will be no 
danger of a war of races, "because they cannot elect their own people. "Thus by 
postponing the thing," said he, "only to such times as the negroes are quahfied to 
enjoy political rights, the dangers which I have been considering would have fully 
passed away. Their influence would no longer be dangerous in the manner which 
I have indicated, and a conflict of races would not be more likely to happen than it 
now is in Massachusetts. In Massachusetts the negroes have exercised political 
rights for twenty-five years, and yet tbei-e has been no ilisturbance there, no conflict 
ofraces. AVliy? Because the negroes have been in the minority." 

I ask, sir, to' append the continuous extract to my remarks, and one also from Gov- 
ernor Andrew, of Massachusetts. . 

Now, sir, if this terrible prospect struck this distinguished statesman m Indiana 
wUh such alarming effect, what must have been the shock to the people of the South 
upon whom the thunderbolt fell! If he foresaw this terrilile avalanche and warned 
the people of Im.liana who were bevond its destructive sweep, what must have Vieen 
the appalled feeling, sir, of the Southern society upon whom it was to be let loose! 
Such was his advice in Indiana. Now suppose him to be in the South; take IMr. 
Morton from his gubernatorial cliairin Indiana and put him in 18(io among the people 
of the South, and what would have been his advice? What, in point of fact, uas his 
advice to the people of the South? What was the thing that the people of the South 
were called ii|>on to do at that time by this distinguished gentleman from the North 
as well as by a distinguisheil Governor of Massachusetts, whose views I ask permis- 
.«ion to print with my remarks? His advice was: "You must not ailmit these people 
into the political system of this government. They are not qualified to vote; tliey 
must not take part in the government of themselves or the government of tlicir 
neighbors, or anv participation in the Federal Gr)vernment of this country; and to 
kee'ii it from thoin you must fix upon them a svstem of probation wliich will hold 
them down and keep them outof your political system until they are in a perma- 
nent minority." , ,. „ c. ^i ■ ^ 

That being his advice, is it strange, I repeat, that tlie pcojile ot the South, just_ re- 
turned from the war, all their society in ruins, fall of wretchedness and disapjiomt- 
ment, this race emancipated lying upon their plantations, neither slave nor citizen, 
and without any indication of the national sentiment that they were to become citi- 
zens- in disorder, without law— for the slave laws were abolishe.l, and they were 
at that time not within the jirovisions of the civil code which applied to the white 
race— is it strange, sir, that in improvising legislation under this terrible pressure, 



APPENDIX, NO. IS. G'Ji 

this appalling calamity, these bewilderiug changes, which have followed one upon 
tlie other with such rapidity, is it strange tliat that system should have some of the 
incidents of tlie i.ild system? 

Sir, is it to be aiiayed ajiainst them until the end of time as an evidence on their 
part of a purpose to remand that people to the si'rvitude of slaviTv'.' JMeasure these 
people by what the sentiment was at that time, and not by standards that you liave 
erected at this time. It was not a system which was well advised or well executed; 
for, sir, it was repealed by the Legislatures which passed it the very moment the 
public sentiment of the Soutli could reacli those who did pass it. 

It is worthy of special atteiitinn that Ucivcrnor Jlorton predicts the results of this 
policy which have actually followed its adoptinn. If, sir, that policy furnishes an 
adeijuate and inevitable cause of tlicse disorders which he Ijeforehand said it would 
do, why now seek to attribute them, when they come, to a dillerent cause? Why 
send investigating committees to the South, to charge them upon the murderous and 
rebellious purposes of the whites? 

This policy, so repugnant to Mr. Morton's sentiment and view of public interest, so 
suggestive of tlie alarming results which have ai'tnally ensued, could not possibly 
have been less acceptable to the Southern j>eopK-. With no jirejudice against the 
negro, they regarded this clothing of him with the awful powers of govi'rninent as 
exposing tb.eir society to the wildest disorder; but when the policy was fastened 
upon them they knew tliat they had a more tremendous stake in itis well working 
than any other" people. They knew that the attempt to reverse or obstruct it would 
1)6 ruinous; and they set to work with an earnestness for which I know they do not 
get credit to adjust their ruiitured relations to the new order of things, and give it a 
free, fair, and successful development. It might have had such a development. 
There were agencies at the Soiitli of which Mr. Jlorton took no note, and which it is 
difficult fronihis standpoint tn appreciate. Undi^rneath the ruinsof our political and 
social order we had uninjured the old civil institutions of Anglican and Amerii'an 
liberty, the ]>riuciples of tlie old common law, the mother of freedom and pojiular 
government, and that Anglo-Saxon race of which we hear so much, so indestructible 
and invincible, accustomed to the handling of these institutions and trained in the 
discharge of the high duties of representative government. 

True, we had those four million blacks, just emerged, as Mr. IMorton would say, 
fn.im the barbarisui of slavery, now free and invested with citizenship, sufl'rage, and 
eligibilitv to pulitical power. But though a distinct, it was not an antagonistic ele- 
ment. Harmonv, friendship, and conQdence existed between these two races. In- 
describable sympathies, old memories, kindly services mutually rendered, ties of 
childhooil, of' \-outh, of manhood, days of labor, days of battle, nights of watching, 
nights of anguish, had so intertwined" the lives of that generation of Southern men 
and women, white and black, that at the close of the war there was scarce a black 
man, woman, or child who did not have some endearing relation with a white man, 
woman, or chilil, and was not also the object of a reciprocal attachment. 

Under the operation of these benign influences, these friendly relations, and the 
workinss of local self-sovernment, there was a well-founded hope that society at the 
South might be reconstituted, even though it would have to be done with the cll.yecta 
membra of the old broken-ui> svstem. There was one difficulty in the way. The con- 
flict between the Republican" party and Jlr. Johnson began. I do not wish to say 
anything against his memory; but his championship, or seeming championship, of 
the South seemed to me more damaging than his hostility had been. 

The result of tliat conflict was that the Federal Government assumed, as a political 
necessity, the exclusive prerogative of reconstructing government in the South. 
The policy of reconstruction ex'cluded the wliite rac-e (on account of its suspected dis- 
loyalty) as the basis of the new order; but as the black race was considered as incom- 
petent to manage the new structures built for them, military power, for the first time 
in the historv (jf the American Government, was employed as the force to put and 
keep in operation the machinery of civil government. I do not projiose to discuss 
this policy, Ixit simply to call special attention to one feature of it. All the measures 
in the fur'therance of that policy: the Freedman's Bureau, which cut all connection of 
the two races sheer asunder, whose agents and officers were made judges to try and 
punish offenses by the whites against the rights of freedmen, without jury or the 
right of judicial appeal; the act dividing the South without reference to State lines 
into militarv districts, and vesting the power of appointing all civil otlicers in a coin- 
nianding general; the acts for restoring civil governments— were all basid upon this 
one idea~of protecting the enfr.anchised black race asraiustthe wrongs anticipated from 
the disfi-anchised white race. And, as a matter of fact, therefore, this reconstruction 
legislation, as conceived and enforced, actually arrayed the two races into distinct and 



692 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

opposing classes, and drew the color line as distinctly and perfectly as if such race dis- 
tinction had been enjoined in the constitution. The very first principle of govern- 
ment whicli your new-made citizen saw in operation was the principle of race dis- 
crimination; the very first lesson iu civil government which they learned was the pro- 
scription of the white race as an object of political distrust and i-esentment. 

The strange spectacle of these two races locally intermingled, bound togetlier by 
the strongest ties of interest and atlection, yet as completely separated politically as 
if a deep gulf had sunk lietwoen tliem; the passions incident to party contests in 
which the "contestants dilTer, not in conviction, Ijut in race, and now chai-ged as one 
of the heavy items against the South — find their authorship and origin in the legisla- 
tion of the'aovernmentand the action of its agents. One moment's consideration 
will convince any fair mind of this. The measures devised for the sole benefit, pro- 
tection, and ascendency of one race, will surely conmiand the supportof that race ; and 
if the same irolicy disfrancliises the other race, hurls it from its proud tradition into 
a condition rife with all the elements of humiliation, and dejirives it even of its an- 
cient guarantees against the oppression of arbitrary power, the inevitable effect is 
perforce to drive that race into opposition to those measures. Thus, I repeat, l:)y 
a policy which drew one race to its support and drove the other into opposition, 
the seiiaration of the two was produced without the voluntary agency of either, and 
against the natural tendencies of both. 

The report of every investigating committee sent to the South coniij-ms this; for, 
sir, the South has been subjected to an ordeal that no other conununity iu the world 
has ever been subjected to. It has been uncovered and subjected to a microscopic 
investigation into all the details of its society. I hold in my hand a report made by 
Messrs. Hoar, Frye, and Wheeler, in which, speaking of the state of things in Louis- 
iana, one of the causes there mentioned is the fact that the administration party is 
made up by massing togetlier almost entirely the black vote with a few whites, large- 
ly from other States. These few whites largely frcjm other States are a class of men 
who came as agents of the Freodman's Bureau, thence transferred to the military de- 
partment, from which thev were carried over by the bayonet to the reconstructed civil 
government. And there "they have been maintained by the power of the Federal 
Oovernment ever since, gorging themselves with the spoils of that plundered people, 
until recently their grasp upon our throats has been broken by the protecting force of 
an enlightened public sentiment at the North and West. It is notniy purpose to de- 
scribe the character of the governments which resulted from this iiolicy. I call atten- 
tion simply to two principles which they embodied. Gibbon, iu his " History of 
Rome," sjieaking of Egypt, savs that the most absurd and oppressive system of gov- 
ernment that can be conceived of is that which subjects the natives of a country to 
the domination of its fiwn slaves. John Stuart Jlill, in his work on representative 
government, says that a government administered liy rulers responsible to the gov- 
erned may be a good government according to the character of the constituency which 
it represents, but that a government administered by rulers who are not responsible 
to the people of the government, but to some other community or power, is one of the 
worst conceivable systems of government; and, sir, these hideous structures in the 
South were a composite of thosi' two vicious systems. The peciple there were subject- 
ed to the domination of our former slaves ; we were ruled over by men not responsible 
to the people governed, but to the Federal Government. Gov. Chamberlain and ( iov. 
Kellogg come here to make their reports and to get their instruction'^, and they 
neither tliink of nor care for the people of Louisiana or South Carolina. 2vo man has 
ever had the temeritv, since I have been here, to defend or apologize for these gov- 
ernmeuts. I shall cite only Republican testimonies as to their character. 

Now, sir, but a short time ago a great cry was raised that the elections of Louisiana 
were carried by intimidation and fraud aiid violence and by organized niunler, and 
a subcommittee was sent to Louisiana for the purpose of investigating and bring- 
ing before this bodv what had occurred in that State. Well, the committee 
went, and they came back with a report. It was composed of two Republicans and 
one Democrat. I see attached to the report the name of the gentleman from Ohio 
[Mr. Foster] who addressed the House the other day. His name was the first in 
the order of signatures to the report, and I presume that he ])reseiiteil it. Here are 
his statements in relation to the condition of thini:s in Louisiana. After speaking of 
one of the parishes that were taken as samples of these intimidations, taken bv Re- 
publicans, and selected as the worst cases that could be brought before the committee, 
Mr. Foster savs: . . . 

"It so happens that that parish was taken as a sample parish of intimidation. 
Many witnesses from both jiarties were examined in reference to it. They show be- 
yond question that there was a free, full, fair, and peaceable election and registratmn 



APPENDIX, SO. 13. 693 

there. There was no evidence of nny intimidation of voters practiced on the day of 
election, altliough it was asserted that intiniiilation of colored men before election 
had been eft'ected Ijy threats of refusal to employ them, or discharfjc them, if they 
voted the Republican ticket. No evidence either of discharge or of refusal to employ 
was produced. Certain witnesses, themselves every one otliceholders, testified gen- 
erally to such action; but hardly any one was able to specify a single instance in 
which he heard of any employer so threatening or discharging any voter, or knew 
of aiiv employee being so threatened or discharged. Not one single colored man 
throughout the entire parish was produced to testify, either to such a threat or to the 
execution of such a purpose, whether before or after the election." 

" Upon the general subject of the state of affairs in the South, and as to whether the 
alleged wrongs to colored citizens for political offenses are real or were asserted with- 
out due foundation," he savs: 

"As a whole, thcv are constrained to say that the intention charged is not borne 
out by the facts before us. No general intimidation of Keiniblican voters was estab- 
lished; no colored man was produced who had been threatened or assaulted by any 
conservative because of political opinion, or discharged from employment, or refused 
employment. Of all those who testified to intimidation, there was hardly any one 
who of his own knowledge could specify a reliable instance of such acts; and of the 
wiiite men who were produced to testify generally upon such subjects, very nearly all, 
if not every single one, was the holder of an office. Throughout the rural districts of 
the State the number of white Republicans is very few; it hardly extends beyond 
those holding oliice and those connected with them. No witness, w;e believe, suc- 
ceeded in naming, in any parish, fi\e Republicans who supported the Kellogg govern- 
ment who were not themselves officeholders or related to otliceholders or those hav- 
ing official employment." 

But that is not all. He testifies in this report that there was intimidation, that 
there was fraud, that there was murder committed for the purpose of carrying the 
elections; not that it was practiced bv Democrats on Republicans, but by Republicans 
upon Democrats; that the black men who wished to vote the Democratic ticket were 
the subjects of intiniiilation. I read further: 

" On the other hand, it was in exidence that blacks who sought to act with the con- 
servative party were on their part sometimes exposed to enmity and abuse. In the 
interior one colored man was shot for making a conservative speech; and in New Or- 
leans it appeared from the testimony that colored men who simght to cooperate with 
the conservatives were subject to so much alnise from the police, and otherwise, that 
an association of lawyers volunteered to protect them, but with little effect." 

That was not the oiily kind of intimidation, but there was an intimidation which of 
all others does more to"keep down the public spirit of a peojile and to strike down 
the spirit of liberty, the spirit of independence in which our institutions were found- 
ed. I call special attention to it, tor it is well for the country to know the appliances 
that ha\e been and maybe again used to bring abouta foredetermined result. I read 
again: . . . 

"" On the other hand, applications to the United States Commissioners in the various 
parishes, not only for alleged crimes, but because of alleged tlireats of discharge, non- 
employment, or other interference with ]iolitii'al preference, were frequent. Upon 
these affidavits warrants were often issued, and white citizens arrested and bound 
over for trial. In many localities the Federal troops were detailerl for service under 
the marshals and assistant marshals, and not only made large arrests immediately be- 
fore the election, but the reports that they were coming to particular neighborhoods 
about the election time for the purpose of such arrests, served, as the conservatives 
claimed, to intimidate, and sometimes even to produce a stampede among, the white 

voters." . , 1 /. -i.! 

I want the House to recollect that this is the testimony and rejiort of a committee 
of whom a maiority were Republicans. 

•■' That served to intimidate and produce a stampede among the white voters. Sir, 
I have seen two hundred good, ])lain men mount their horses and ride out of town 
withoutdepositingtheir votes for fear of just such persecution. _ 

But that is not all. He goes on to tell that there was a perfect despotism over that 
people, eatint' un all their substance by exorbitant taxatinu, taxing their real estate 
in the city of New Orleans up to a point beyond the rents, and in some of the rural 
districts, eight per cent; ami he quotes approvingly, as an indication of the govern- 
ment there, that the political power vested in the Crovernor of the State was such as 
is scarcely exercised by anv sovereign in the world. But the gentleman from Ohio 
in his last speech said that' in this report he toldsome truths that bore heavily upon 
his own party. I was astounded at that declaration. 



694 LUCIUS Q. C. LAM All: 11 IS LIFE, ETC. 

What! Does it bear heavily upon liis party to report that a iK-ojile cliarged with 
fraud, intimidation, and murder, are not guilty? Does it bear hardly upon the Re- 
pulilican party to prove that there is no such state of lawlessness and intimidation 
among a peojlle wlio are writhing under all the oppression which corruption can in- 
vent and tyranny inflict? Is it a condition of Republican success that the country 
should be told that there are murder and intimidation, and that if they are not there 
the truth which states the opposite Tjears hardly ujion his party? Mighty God! Is 
it true that that is the nutriim-nt upon which the party must live? 

Sir, it did strike his party with amazement at the time ; and another subcomnutttee, 
a thin" which I never knew of before, went down to revise and review his action. 
Thev came back and reported some things which the gentleman did not report, some 
thincs which did not bear so heavily upon the party. It is due to them to say that 
upon the searching investigation which they made they came back and said that 
there was an organized system of violence and murder there for the purpose of in- 
timidating voters and carrying elections and for the purpose of remanding these 
blacks into a condition something akin to their former servitude. 

But the gentleman from Ohio would not yield to that; that would not suit him. 
He made another counter report, and said: 'MVe cannot agree to the report made to 
the committee by Messrs. Hoar, Frve, and Wheeler. All laws inimical to the colored 
people of Louisiana, referred to in their reiiort, have been repealed for years." And 
he goes on to state that, "in the absence of any direct evidence that the late election 
was not free and fair, the assumption by the minority that enough colored voters 
were therefore prevented from voting to change the result of the election through- 
out the State, is an assumption so violent as not to be received." 

But even this report of IMessrs. Hoar, Frye, and Wheeler contains admissions al- 
most as startling as the statements of Mr. Foster, and shows a state of things which 
without resorting to any theory of bloody conspiracies, would jiroduce disorders and 
violence among the most virtuous people on earth: " In the .State of Louisiana there 
is a Governor m otfice who owes his seat to the interference of the national power, 
which has recognized his title to his ofiice, not bv reason of any legal ascertainnie_iit 
of the fiict by legal process, but has based its interference upon the illegal order of a 
iudfe." 

Here is what Mr. Hoar savs about it. He says, in the State of Louisiana there is a 
Governor in otfice. Remember that this is the Governor who has the power of a mon- 
arch, according to the testimony of a Federal judge now there. 

How did it recognize it? If the Governor owes his place to the interference of the 
national authority, and that authority has not ascertained it l)y legal process, how did 
the national authority ascertain it, and upon what did it base its interference? Mr. 
Hoar says that it based its action "solely on the illegal order of a judge.' The ,indge 
who issued that illegal order, upon which the national authority based its action and 
interference, was driven to resignation by the fear of impending impeachment; but 
there sits that Governor, who was put there by the national authority upon that ille- 
gal order, ruling that people with a scepter mightier than that of a monarch. ^ 

So much for the executive. How about the Legislature? Saya Mr. Hoar: ' In the 
same State there is a Legislatirre, one branch of which derives its authority partly 
from the same order." .,, , 101- 

What! The Leudslature gets its authority from the same illegal order.' les, sir; 
one branch of it does, frnm the same illea;al order. How about the other branch { 
Let Mr. Hoar answer: "The other, being organized by a majority that has been_es- 
tablished in power by another interference of the national government, and which 
majority derives its title, not from any legal ascertainment of the fact, but from the 
certificate of a returning board which has misconceived and exceeded its legal au- 
thority." , , . , . 

Therefore, at the time that report was made every branch of that government ex- 
hibited to the American people the spectacle — of an executive officer put there In- na- 
tional authority based upon an illegal order, one branch of the Legislature owing 
its authoritv to the same illesal order, and the other branch having a majority liased 
upon another illegal order. Illegality imbedded in illegality, and upon the whole a 
colossal despotism crushinu: down therights and interests of that people. . 

1\Ir. IIoui: Will the gentleman from IMississippi [Mr. Lamar] allow me to ask him 
if he thinks that he has fairly stated the conclusions of my report upon the point to 
which he has referred? 

Mr. Lam.\r: Upon that particular point? 

Mu. Hoar: Yes. 

Mr. Lamar: I think I have. 

Mr. Hoar: I do not think so. 



AVl'KSDIX, NO. 13. 695 

Mr. Lamar: 1 will yield to the gentleman. 

Mr. Hoar: Tho report which the gentleman does me the honor to quote from states 
that, in the opinion of those who signed it. Gov. Kellogg had a majority nf the legal 
votes of the people of Louisiana, hut that any ascertainment of the legal result hy le- 
gal evidence was prevented by the frauds of his political opponents, who had so ma- 
nipulated and treated the registrations and the returns— had tinally carried them off, 
I think — as to deprive them of any legal authority wdiatever. Thereupon the judge 
of the United States Court, misconceiving or usurping his power— I do not undertake 
to say which — ordered Mr. Kellogg to be put in oflice ; and on that order the United 
States executive officer based his interference. 

Now, the committee found, first, by all the evidence that they could get at, that 
Gov. Kelloirg was the lawful! v chosen Governor of the State of Louisiana ; second, that 
his political opponents had bv fraud destroyed the returns or their legal value, and 
that they had done wrong to that extent; third, that the judge was unjustified in this 
order, aiid the executive was without justification in relying on that order as authority 
for interfering. That is the statement of the report. I agree that the gentleman 
from Mississippi has the right to cite mv report as evidence of gross misconduct on 
the part of Republican officials in the State of Louisiana. I do not agree that he 
ought to cite my remarks as admissions against my own |jarty unless he quotes the 
conclusions with which thev were necessarily connected. 

Mr. Lamar; I think I caii appeal to the recollection of all present that I said that 
the gentleman in his report did say that there were intimidation and fraud and mur- 
der, and that the elections were carried by those appliances. 

Mr. Hoar: I also said that in my judgment Gov. Kellogg was lawfully elected. 
Mr. Lamar: I have not time to wrestle with the gentleman on that point; l)ut I 
think that if he will examine the report he will find its statement to be that the result 
could not be ascertained, but that in his opinion Mr. Kellogg received the majority 
of votes. Now I think I have the right to receive the gentleman's admissions and re- 
ject his conclusions, especially when I give him the opportunity, which I am always 
glad to ilo, to interpolate into my remarks any explanation that he may please. 

Mu. Hoar: The gentleman is perfectly at liberty to receive my admissions and re- 
ject my conclusions. I think, however, that he should not state the admissions with- 
out the other. 

Mr. Lamar: I will allow the gentleman always to state fur himself his own propo- 
sitions and conclusions, and I have yielded the floor to him for that purjjose in order 
that they might not be unfairly stated in ])assing through the medium of my brain. 

Mr. Hoar: I thank the gentleman for the very great courtesy with which he has 
allowed me to do so, and I say to him that I made this interruption of his eloquent 
and interesting speech with verv great reluctance. 

Mr. Lamar: Now, sir, as to the character of the government there, we have the 
gentleman's acknowledgment ; and I reiterate that it is not I, but the gentleman, who 
calls upon the American people to note the fact: "The American people are now 
brought face to face with this condition of things." 

Then he goes on to show that the Governor there owes his authority to the inter- 
ference of the national power, not by the ascertainment of legal process, but by an 
illegal order of a judi;e, and that both the other departments of the government 
rest upon the same illegal basis. As to his opinion that the election was carried one 
way or the other, that is a mere matter of opinion; but when he himself proclaims 
voluntarily that the whole superstructure of executive and legislative power in that 
State is based upon the interference of the national authority, and that interference 
resting upon illegal orders, I think that it is doing no injustice to him, nor to his con- 
clusions, to hold that statement up before an astonished people. 

The gentleman's report presents the state of things in Louisiana very graphically, 
and with telling effect against that jieople, I admit. I do not think that he rightly 
conceived their condition. He stayed but a short time, and foiled to note some of the 
most important elements of society there. He has concentrated his attention upon 
two classes: one, the slaveholders,"wlio are not the largest part of the white popula- 
tion; and the other, the blacks. He overlooks that teeming pojiulation of nonslave- 
holders, the super-best race of men in the world. There is no order of men superior 
to those who were the nonslaveliolders of the South. They were freemen and free- 
holders, Free-soilers in the true sense of the term ; for they worked their own land, 
and reared families, economical, independent, and virtuous. And they constitute one 
of the strongest forces of Southern society at this time; yet the gentleman takes no 
note of them in his analysis of Southern society. 

AVhat does the gentleman say about the character of this government that thus 
rests upon illegal intervention? 



696 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAK: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

"One fact is that there has been great malaihninistration by Republican officials; 
there lias l)een much dishonesty, much corruption in .State and local administration 
in Louisiana. For this the Republican party, especially under Warmouth's rule, is 
largely resiJonsible, although in numerous instances its opponents have been equally to 
blame." 

Again, he says: " We do not overlook the causes which tend to excite deep feelings 
of discontent in the white native population of Louisiana. There has been great mal- 
administration; public funds have been waste<l, pulilic creilit impaired, and taxation 
is heavy." 

What are these admissions? Illegal governments based upon interference of the 
national authority, maladministration, dishonest}', corruption, waste of public funds — 
which means embezzlement and the misapiiropriation of puljlic money— loss of pub- 
lic credit. This is the despotism under which everytliing that is precious and beauti- 
ful and lovely in that State is withering and dying. 

I have other testimony. The President of tlie United States, in his last annual mes- 
sage, said not a word upon the subject of the disorders in the South ; for, sir, this cry 
of disorder, intimidation, and violence always comes up in this hall and in this Fed- 
eral metro])olis just before an election, when it is to l)e carried, or just after an election, 
when it is to be set aside. In tlie interim everything is quiet and orderly. But the 
President, in his annual message befor(> the last, speaking of these people in the 
South, where these disorders occur, uses the following language: "I symjiathize with 
their prostrate condition, and would do all in my power to relieve them, acknowledg- 
ing that in some instances they have had most trying governments to live undei- and 
very oppressive ones in the way of taxation for nominal improvements, not giving 
benefits equal to the hardships imposed." 

Sir, take the features of that statement. What are they? Oppressive governments, 
burdens of taxation, and prostrate jieople. What greater woe can there be than this? 
What more accursed fate can befall a people than such a government as Blr. Hoar de- 
scribes — illegal in its every department, marked ):)y maladministration, and reeking 
■with dishonesty and corruption ; or, as Mr. Foster describes it, an infamous despotism 
consuming all the resources of a people? Where, 1 repeat, on earth, or in what age of 
the world, have you not had violence and turbulence, where a people are prostrated by 
the burdens of opiiressive government and tortured and impoverished by taxation? 
Where have you ever seen orderly, quiet, and peaceable citizens whose governors are 
lawless felons, whose ministerial officers are forgers and thie\es, and their magistrates 
scoundrels? 

And, sir, when this prostrate people, writhing in their agony, turn over and jostle 
these rickety establishments that wi>ul(l fall down of their own rot if let alone; when, 
as is almost inevitable, disorders occur, the national authority is called upon, the 
Federal Executive is invoked— for what? To protect tlie prostrate people against 
these illegal, dishonest, corrupt, and oppressive governments? No; liut to protect 
and maintain these governments, and to hold the people down in quiet submission to 
them. AVhat a policy! This great Federal Government, powerless for the protection 
of the peojile against oppressions of local government, but onniii)otent to maintain 
those governments and enforce their oppressions! 

Now, sir, I have read all this testimony with reluctance. INIy purjiose has been to 
show that ample cause exists for these troubles in the South without attributing them 
to a spirit of cruel vindictiveness, or wild, restless, unlawful amliition on the part of 
Southern whites. I have appealed to this evidence of earnest, leading Republicans 
that the sudden enfranchisement of eight hundred thousand slaves threatened the 
very evils wliich have come upon us. I do not arraign your policy. Its attenqited re- 
versal now would lead to a shock and ruin even worse than that which has residted 
from its establishment. All tliat we ask, in common justice to the South, is that you 
■will reflect anci act ujion the fact that the governments you contrived have, by your 
own testimony, proved to yfni and to the world their utter incompetence to solve 
peaceably andprosjierously a jiroblem the difficulty of -which we do not deny. When 
you point me to ai-ts of violence, I acknowledge and deplore them; but I ask you, 
"who lias governed the States where tliis violence occurs, for the last ten years? Have 
we? Will) have taxed us, controlled our legislaturi'S, filled our courts, received the 
patronage of the Federal Government, ruled over us at home, and represented us here? 

Sir, you cannot by Federal and military intervention preserve those governments 
without trampling out the liberties of whole Commonwealths, because those govern- 
ments are in defiance of that hiirhest and most sacred of all constitutions, the law of 
nature. God had so identified the interests of these two races by the necessities of 
climate and labor and old associations that time would soon have readjusted their new 
relations. It is not vet too late fir such an adjustment. You have given the l)lac]c 



APPEXDIX, NO. IS. 697 

race the most delicate, the most dangerous, as well as tlie mo^t sarred, of all jiiivileges. 
Let that jirivilege be maintained inviolably; but give liim real ficcdoMj, and do not 
make him the janizary cif party tyranny. Allow that race to leain what you have 
learned in New England and carried with you into that new empire uf the Wot which 
y.iur eneigy has created: that moral wcirti], intelligence, and industry and wealth are 
the true tbuntlations of a people's happiness and liberty, no matter wliat their color. 
Let it no lunger rely upon Federal bayonets. They inspire a contempt for law, and 
disqualify for self-government. 

Sir, this rare problem is callable of solution. Two English statesmen such as Lord 
Derby and Earl Russell, or Mr. (dadstono and Jlr. Disraeli, could agree upon a liasis 
of settlement in three <Uiys; and we could do the same here liut for the inter))osition 
of the passions of party in the contest for the power and emoluments of government. 
It could lie settled in tliis district and throughout the South without abridging uni- 
versal sulfrage or subjecting either race to the control of the other. Take the ques- 
tion out of national politics, and it can lie settled on a basis which would consolidate 
all the rights of the lilack man, make him free and equal with every citizen before the 
law, protected in the fruits of his labor, safe in his person, happy in his household, se- 
cure in the enjoyment of whatever he can in fair competition achieve, whether it be 
of fortune or fanie, and tlms secure to him a higher and better life than he now leads 
as the misguided and deluded constituency of dishonest officeholders. 

I have not intended to intimate that the capacity of the black race for freedom and 
the duties of citizenship should be determined by the considerations which I present- 
ed. The freedom of this race, its citizenship, have not had a fair opportunity for fa- 
vorable development at the South. Controlled through the authority of the govern- 
ment by the worst men, as they have been, it would be unjust to them to form any 
estimate of their capacity to meet tlie demands of their high jiosition by the events 
of the last ten years. 

Sir, we knov^ that one great cause of the jealousy with which the Southern people 
are reganled is the fact that they stand between the ambition of a party and the glit- 
tering prizes of honor and emoluments and patronage which the control of the gov- 
ernment for another four years will give. I believe, sir, that if they could do so consist- 
entlv with their constitutional obligations our people would willingly stand aloof 
and 'let the Northern people settle the ciuestion of President for themselves, upon the 
condition that there shall be no furtlier intervention in their local affairs. But, sir, 
they cannot abnegate their rights and duties as American citizens and impose on 
themselves a sullen and inactive incivicism ; they must go forward and keep abreast 
with American progress and American destinv, and take their share of tlie responsi- 
bility in the settlement of the questions in which all parts of the country are alike 
interested. 

But it is asked why we are united in support of the Democratic party. A celebra- 
ted author in his work on political ethics says that in the history of all free countries 
there is no instance of a people being unanimous in sentiment ami action, unless 
they were made so by the imminence of some great and common peril or by the inspi- 
ration of some enthusiastic sentiment. 

The people of the South are not moved bythe latter. Even if the events of the war 
and the sufferings since the war had not, as they have done, crushed out all then- 
party attachments, nearlv one-half the people of the South have no attachment to the 
Deniocratic party; and iii acting with it for the time being, they only obey, as I said 
before, the imperious law of self-preservation. 

The motive which prompts tlieir cooperation is not the expectation of filling cabi- 
nets and directing policies, but simplv to get an administration which will not be un- 
friendly to them; an administration which, in place of the appliances of force, subju- 
gation, and domination, will give them amnesty, restoration to the privileges of 
American citizenshiii; which will accord to their States the same equal rights with 
other States in this Union— equality of consideration, equality of authority, and juris- 
diction over their own affairs— equalitv, sir, in exemption from the domination of 
their elections by the liayonet and by soldiers as the irresistilile instruments of the 
revolting local despotism^ Give tliem that, give them local self-government, and you 
will then see at last wliat will be the dawn of prosperity in all the industries and en- 
terprises of tlie North ; vou will see, sir, a true Southern rena'mance, a real grand re- 
construction of the South in all the elements of social order, strength, justice, and 
equality of all her people. Rising from her confusion and distress, rejoicing in her 
newly recovered libertv, prosperous, free, great, her sons and daugliters of every race 
happy in lier smile, she will greet your benignant Republic in the words of the in- 
spired poet: 

Thy gentleness luitli iii.ide me >rreat. 

[Applause]. 



698 LCrirS Q. C. LAMAR: Ills LIFE, ETC. 

Appendix No. 14. 

THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION. 
tipcech ill thf Hoiinc, on the Zoth nf .liiiiniirii, 1S77. 

The House having under consideration the bill (S., No. 11.53) to provide for 
and regulate the counting of votes for President and Vice President, and the de- 
cision of questions arising thereon, for the term commencing March 4, A.D. 1877, 
Mr. Lamar said: 

;1//'. Siicdkir: I have listened, sir, with great pleasure to the able argument just 
submitted to the House by the gentleman from Texas, mixed, however, with re- 
gret that I am forced to combat the views and to oppose the course of one with 
whom I have so long had warm political sympathies, for whose talents I enter- 
tain so high a respect, and in whose patriotism and integrity I have such perfect 
confidence. If I understand his position properly, he holds that this bill, by re- 
quiring a concurrent vote of the Senate and House to reject the conclusion of the 
commission, deprives either House of that which is not only its constitutional 
power, but its constitutional duty — that is, to exercise an effective veto upon any 
act of legislation which it may disapprove. 

Now the fallacy here lies in the assumption that a decision of either Senate or 
House upon any question in counting the electoral vote or witnessing that count 
is a legislative act by a legislative body. It is nothing of the sort. 

When the constitution declares that the vote shall be counted in the presence 
of the Senate and House, it does not bring them together as a Congress or a Legis- 
lature in any sense. They are the Senate and House, it is true, but only as those 
words describe the constituents of the assembly. They are as separate and dis- 
tinct a body from the Senate and House in Congress assembled as a body com- 
posed of any other constituents would be. 

Mn. Mills: In order that my friend may understand me exactly, I state that the 
tribunal is one ordained by the constitution and clothed with both legislative 
and judicial powers. 

Ml!. Lamar: Yes, sir: I understand. The gentleman says that it is a body or- 
dained by the constitution and clothed with legislative powers and judicial 
powers; and it is from this proposition, as he states it. that I dissent. Now, sir, 
if, as the gentleman contends, it is a body under the constitution clothed with 
legislative powers, it can do no act nor adopt any resolution nor make any or- 
der nor take a concurrent vote without having the President of the United States 
to approve such action: for such is the requirement of the constitution as to all 
proceedings of the two Houses when acting as a legislature. But. I repeat, it Is 
no legislature in the contemplation of the constitution. It cannot perform any 
legislative act. Could a bill be introduced and passed in such an assembly? It 
could not even make an appropriation to pay its employees. The very tellers, by 
whom the count is made, are appointed for it by the two Houses severally when 
in session as branches of Congress. It is an organized body provided by the 
constitution, called into being once in every four years, the two Houses being its 
constituent parts; but it has only a single function, and that is to count the 
electoral vote, as one party contends, or to witness that count, as the other party 
holds. The method therefore which this bill provides for ascertaining the legal 
votes which ought to be counted, and distinguishing them from the illegal votes 
which ought not to be counted, may be a good or bad method, a wise or foolish 
method, but an unconstitutional one it is not: for, in the first place, whatever of 
power is given to this commission is not given to it by the body intrusted with 
the duty of counting the electoral vote, but by Congress, by regular legislation of 
the Senate and House, with the approval of the President. 

If I am right in the proposition that the duty to be performed in counting the 
electoral vote does not attach to the character of the Senate and House as the 
National Legislature, but is the single function of a special organization pro- 
vided by the constitution. I think it cannot be doubted that Congress may by law 
prescribe the means and agencies whereby the assemblage may perform its func- 
tion with facility and efficiency. If, in order to perfect the machinery of that 
special organization. Congress by law supplements it with this commission, it 
cannot be objected to unless it violates some constitutional provision as to its 
character. The power given to this commission is not the power intrusted to the 
Senate and House thus assembled of determining who has received a majority of 
votes, but is simply the power to test the genuineness of a certain class of con- 



APPENDIX, NO. i.v. 099 

tested votes, the result of which the two Houses finally determine. Has Con- 
gress not the power to do this? Why, sir, the law of 1792 provides the means by 
which the President of the Senate shall be guided in receiving the electoral cer- 
tificates, ^nd requires that the certificate of the vote from each electoral college 
shall be attested by the Governor ot each State. Does that law substitute the 
Governor for the Senate and House or infringe upon their power? So where two 
returns come from the same State, this bill submits them to the scrutiny of the 
commission, and requires its attestation to the genuineness of the one which is to 
be counted, unless the Senate and House determine to reject the finding of the 
commission. 

I desire to examine for a moment the position which has been pressed by gen- 
tlemen in this discussion: that the President of the Senate has the right not only 
to open the certificates, but to count the votes. For the sake of the argument let 
us admit this assumed prerogative of that ofiicer with whatever of power may 
be incident to its exercise. It is certain that if he has the right to count the vote 
he has the right to count It only "in the presence of the Senate and House." 
Now, sir, give to these words .of the constitution the very minimum of signifi- 
cance which gentlemen ha\e allowed them. Say that they mean only that the 
two Houses shall be present as witnesses, and these words are replete with posi- 
tive and afllrmative power. If they are witnesses, surely no one will pretend 
that they are blind witnesses and deaf and dumb. Sir, if these two Houses are 
present under a constitutional duty to witness the count, are they not under a 
correlative obligation to refuse to witness that which they hold to be not a count? 
If either of these witnesses denies that it is an honest count, the count is not a 
legal one. Suppose each of these two Houses retires to its own chamber and 
there puts on record that it has not witnessed a count, but a fraud and a lie; 
what is the result? Why, sir. the whole proceeding becomes null and void. It 
is like the case of a man who is about to make his will. He, and he alone, has 
the power to make it; but the law requires him to make it in the presence of 
three witnesses. If the witnesses, or any one of them, refuses to attest, and 
swears that the signature is not genuine, or that the testator was not of sane or 
disposing mind, what becomes of the validity of the will? If. then, the Senate or 
the House refuses to testify to the count, or if they declare upon record that 
what purported to be a count was a cheating, deceptive, fraudulent pretense, 
what, I ask again, becomes of the validity of the count? 

Surelv the two Houses alone can testify whether the right vote was counted. 
If. therefore, the assumed right of the President of the Senate be granted, the 
count cannot result in an election unless the witnesses, the Senate and the House, 
agree In giving their testimony to its correctness. But to do all this implies the 
right to discriminate the legal from the illegal vote. To accomplish this result 
it is proposed by this bill that Congress, under its power to pass all laws neces- 
sary and proper to the execution of any power vested in any department of the 
government, shall provide a method by which, in case of two certificates, the 
Senate and House may ascertain the legal vote which ought to be counted. . . . 
[The continuation of this speech appears in the text; see pages 294 to 297.] 



Appendix No. 15. 

THE EI.ECTORAL COUNT. 

VndeUrercd Siiircli — Hmtxc, Fehrunry, ISIl. 

Mi: Sprnlrr: I rise with profound regret to i-ecord my vote against the accept- 
ance of the decision of the Electoral Commission. 

W'hen I voted for the creation of that commission I was prepared to accept a 
decision contrary to my own desires and convictions, if such decision should be 
rendered; and I have not now any factious opposition to make against a result 
which I disapprove and which it was impossible for me to anticipate. 

But I cannot allow this decision to be recorded among the archives of our na- 
tional history without my earnest protest against the methods by which it has 
been reached and the principles upon which it rests. 

When I voted for the act which created this commission its purpose was as 
clear as light; there was not in the breast of any member of this House a doubt 
as to what it intended. A question affecting the election of the Chief Magistrate 



700 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

of this Republic had arisen where the file afforded no precedent, and where hon- 
est and conscientious men might well differ in opinion. Identified as we had 
been with the partisan struggle which had preceded the election, we felt how 
possible it was that any decision we might reach would be tainted with the pas- 
sions and prejudices of the contest. Anxious that the President should take the 
authority of his great office without a shadow of shame upon his commission, we 
selected fifteen men whose names, whose ability, whose experience, and whose 
characters placed them among the foremost citizens of the country: and we said: 
"Tell us and the people who has been truly and honestly elected, and him we 
will obey." And I say now, before God and my countrymen, that if that commis- 
sion had reported that they conscientiously believed that Rutherford B. Hayes 
was duly, fairly, and honestly elected President of these United States I would 
have accepted their decision without a murmur. 

But. sir, they have said no such thing. We submitted to them a great case of. 
political justice, and they have belittled it below the proportions of an ordinary 
case of trespass to try title. We asked them to tell us the truth, and they tell us 
that they cannot ascertain what is the truth. We said: "Here is the vote of 
Louisiana. We believe that it is corrupt, false, fraudulent." They reply: "It 
may be so, but we have no right to examine it." We said: "These Louisiana 
electors are declared incapable of office by the constitution of the country." 
They answer: "It may be so. but we cannot look to see if they are." We said: 
"The Returning Board of Louisiana violated the law of their creation." They 
reply: "We cannot read the law which you submit to us." The point of their 
decision is that they could neither try nor decide the very questions which they 
were created to decide. If the Governor's certificate, based upon the report of 
the Returning Board of Louisiana, was final, then it was binding upon us as well 
as upon them, and the very fact of reference proved that we did not so consider 
it; and, as they were clothed with all the powers we possessed, what was not final 
upon us was not final upon them. As I understand their decision, it is only that 
certain certificates of the Louisiana vote laid before them are proper in form, 
and that the question sent to them by us, lying behind these certificates, it is not 
in their power to investigate; and they consequently send it back to tis. Now. 
sir, without in the slightest degree implying or intending to imply that there 
was any want of honesty or conscientiousness in this conclusion, without de- 
nying that a sharp and narrow attorney might find logic and even precedent for 
such decision. I cannot but regret that such a view of svich a case should have 
been taken by such a tribunal: and I declare that this method of procedure was. 
in my opinion, a violation both of the spirit and letter of the act. 

But infinitely worse than the method is the principle of this decision. It is a 
declaration that, while fraud vitiates every act of human intercourse known to 
the law, it cannot and does not vitiate that supreme act of citizenship, the exer- 
cise of the ballot; and that, while not one member of this House could hold his 
seat here upon proof of such an election, yet the President of the United States 
can be duly elected by a vote notoriously corrupt and fraudulent. More than 
that, it converts certain States into rotten boroughs, to be held by the party 
having the power of the administr.ition as makeweights in any future Presiden- 
tial election, and to be manipulated by corruiit and perjured returning boards as 
the exigencies of the electoral count may require. 

In the face of this decision, and in the despotic selfishness of party rule, there 
never will be. there never can be again, an honest Presidential election. The 
stakes are too high, and you have made loaded dice legal instruments in the 
game. 

With this protest my duty is discharged. I do not regret voting for the act: 
I would do it again. I would readily submit the question, whether Mr. Tilden 
was elected President, to any fifteen competent citizens of any party in this 
country, if they would decide the question submitted to them upon the evidence: 
and the decision of this commission is the warrant of my confidence. They 
have not ventured to say that he was not: they have simply declared that they 
are technically disabled from examining if he was. 

Sir, by the decision of this commission I intend to abide. To that my faith 
and the faith of the South, as far as I could represent it. have been pledged: 
and that faith will be kept.\ Earnest, passionate, self-willed we may be; but false 
•we never have been, and never will be.' 

For the consequences of this violation of all the principles of the government 
we are not responsible. God grant that those who have taken the responsibility 
may find themselves — I will not say justified, but — excused before the country by 



APPENDIX, NO. IG. 701 

the wisdom and purity and patriotism ot him whom they have so elevated to this 
great office! 

In conclusion, let me say one word to the Republicans, the shout of whose vic- 
tory I do not pretend or desire to silence. The South, determined that her hopes 
and fears and fortunes should not again imperil the peace of this country, believ- 
ing that in the election of Mr. Tilden was furnished a guarantee of repose and 
fair dealing, was yet willing to submit the arbitration of rights which she scarce- 
ly doubted to the integrity and patriotism of this tribunal. Her hopes have 
been disappointed. The pomp and power of the government are yours— its 
armies and navies, its vast patronage, its boundless treasure. May you give 
peace and prosperity to the wliole land! But if you would not see your success 
turn to ashes of bitternes in your hands, if you would escape the reckoning of a 
people who will come back from the exultation of party success, as well as from 
the despondency of party defeat, to the solemn conviction that the only safety of 
the country is the equal administration of equal constitutional rights, you must 
give us justice, and teach us, by a kindly and patriotic use of your power, to for- 
get the doubtful means in the accomplished end. 



Appendix No. 16. 

THE PAYMENT OF GOVERNMENT BONDS. 
Sjirrrli in fhr Senate, January Z.'i, 1S7S. 

The Senate having under consideration the resolution of Mr. Matthews, rela- 
tive to the payment of bonds of the XTnited States in silver, Mr. Lamar said: 

Mi: Prr.tiilnit: The resolution of the Senator from Ohio, omitting its preamble, 
reads thus: 

"That all the bonds of the United States issued, or authorized to be issued, 
under the said acts of Congress hereinbefore recited, are payable, principal and 
interest, at the option of the Government of the United States, in silver dollars, 
of the coinage of the United States, containing 412V2 grains each of standard 
silver, and that to restore to its coinage such silver coins as a legal tender in 
payment of said bonds, principal and interest, is not in violation of the public 
faith nor in derogation ot the rights of the public creditor." 

To this resolution various amendments have been offered, among others one 
submitted by the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Edmunds], which reads in the fol- 
lowing language: 

"That all the bonds of the United States issued, or authorized to be issued, 
under the said acts of Congress hereinbefore recited, are payable, principal and 
interest-, in gold coin or its equivalent, and that any other payment without the 
consent of the creditor would be in violation of the public faith, and in deroga- 
tion of his rights." 

I shall vote, Mr. President, against both of these resolutions, because I be- 
lieve that the issue thus made up and joined does not set forth fairly and fully 
the true issue involved in the great change which is proposed to be wrought in 
the monetary system of this country by certain measures now awaiting the 
action of this body. This, I think, is manifest from the remarks with which the 
Senator from Ohio [Mr. Matthews] opened his argument in advocacy of his res- 
olution. He stated very distinctly that he would not consider the question as to 
what the interests ot this government and of the country required in connection 
with the exercise of the rights therein asserted. With equal emphasis he waived 
off the question as to what a sound policy would dictate with reference to the 
legislation contemplated by his resolution. Refusing to consider either the 
question of policy or expediency, he confined himself to the sole issue of the 
right, the legal and moral right, of the government to so frame its legislation as 
to pay its public creditors in silver coin containing 412% grains in the dollar. 

Now. sir, the very fact that these important and grave considerations are not 
deemed pertinent to the discussion of the resolution is of itself, in my opinion, a 
sufficient and conclusive objection to its adoption. Suppose that when the meas- 
ures which are lying behind this resolution come up for discussion the fact 
should be developed that the law which is necessary to be enacted before this as- 
serted right can be exercised and put in force would be prejudicial to the interests 
of this government. Suppose that we should become satisfied that such a meas- 
ure conflicts with the well-established principles of sound national finance: that 
it not only runs counter to the lasting prosperity of the country, but may inflict 



702 LUCIUS Q. V. LAMAR: 11 IS LIFE, ETC. 

an incurable blow upon the public credit. What then would be the result of the 
adoption of such a resolution? Not merely the bare assertion of an abstract 
right, I respectfully submit. Something more than that: a solemn declaration 
to the world which, lying upon our records, would be pregnant with embarrass- 
ment and injurious misconstructions along the whole track of our future finan- 
cial interests. 

I think that a reference made by the Senator from Ohio to a point in our finan- 
cial history very strikingly illustrates the force of this objection. He stated 
that the legislation of 1SG9 was made necessary by the doubts, the apprehen- 
sion, and the mistrust which arose from a prevailing opinion expressed by states- 
men and jurists that the principal of our public debt at that time was pavable in 
our legal tender paper money, the greenback currency of the country. To settle 
the question and to remove this distrust, to quiet these apprehensions, to clear 
away the obstruction to the funding of our bonds at a lower rate of interest, 
and to bind the government by a solemn Act of Congress that these bonds with 
all its other debts should be paid in coin, the act of 1S69 was enacted. It was. as 
its style declares, "An act to strengthen the public credit," the public credit 
which was shaken by the construction to which the Senator referred. 

Sir. in my opinion, the arg-ument in favor of the right of the government to 
pay the principal of those bonds in greenback currency at that time was just as 
strong, and if possible stronger, than that now made in favor of the right of the 
government to pay its present debt in silver coin containing 412% grains in the 
dollar. 

By the law of the land this greenback was then, as it is now, "lawful money." 
and" "a legal tender in payment of all claims and demands against the United 
States, except for interest upon the public debt and duties on imports." These 
provisions of the law were indorsed upon the note itself. The commercial 
world, the business public, had notice of the law under which the bonds were 
issued; and the business world negotiated and accepted these bonds, advancing 
for them this verj^ currency, and in some instances at a prodigious discount. As 
a lawyer, I concur in the opinion that at that time these bonds were payable in 
greenbacks, according to the literal construction of the contract as it was origi- 
nally executed. It would not have been a matter of any importance, it would 
not have been a subject either of interest or inquiry, whether they were payable 
in greenbacks or coin had the government performed its promise of redeeming its 
greenback currency; for in that case the two would have been convertible. The 
holder of our national securities wotild have felt no more interest in the ques- 
tion as to whether they would be paid in gold or silver than the holder of an 
English security is now interested in the question of the payment of an English 
bond in the notes of the Bank of England or in gold. 

But inasmuch as the greenback was not redeemed, and was therefore depre- 
ciated in value by reason of the government's own act, or rather its default, the 
question arose whether it could afford to stand upon the letter of its contract. 
The very agitation of the question caused alarm among the public creditors; 
and, in the face of the peril to which it subjected the credit and finances of the 
government, the legislators of that day felt themselves bound to do what they 
deemed was equitable as well as politic, which was to pledge the government to 
pay its debts, not in its own unredeemed and depreciated notes, but in coin. 

i am not now discussing the ulterior purposes which in this debate are 
charged to have been the real motive of this legislation; I am considering It in 
the light of the reasons which are relied on as its justification — j. c, that it was 
demanded by good faith and financial necessity. Now, sir, had some Senator, 
pending that discussion, like my friend from Ohio, enamored of the juridical as- 
pect of the qtiestion alone, introduced a resolution with a preamble reciting the 
laws under which the public debt was created, and concluding with the declara- 
tion that the principal of "all the bonds issued by the United States under the 
said acts of Congress is payable, at the option of the government, in the legal 
tender notes of the United States, and that such payment is not in violation of 
the ptiblic faith nor in derogation of the rights of the public creditors," and had 
the two Houses, after a declaration by the mover that he wished the legal right 
asserted, irrespective of what the interests of the people or the suggestions of 
financial wisdom might require, adopted stich a resolution — what, sir. would have 
been the effect of such action upon the attempt to fund the public debt at a lower 
rate of interest? Its effect then would have been precisely what the effect of 
this resolution 'will be if it is adopted: not merely tmfavorable, but, I fear, sir, 
disastrous. 



APPENDIX, NO. 16. 703 

The resolution of the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Edmunds], in my opinion, is 
amenable to the same objection. 1 do not believe it wise or politic or states- 
manlike tor the two Houses of Congress, in advance of any legislation, in ad- 
vance of any settled policy, to proclaim to the world their position upon a naked 
legal point," isolated from all the other important aspects of this sweeping and 
radical revolution in our monetary system, involving as it does an utter over- 
turn of all existing financial conditions. However it may do in logic, it will not 
do in practical legislation to lay down and commit yourself to any premise until 
the other terms of the proposition are well defined and established. 

There is another objection, in all these resolutions offered as amendments 
and substitutes there is, under the circumstances of their presentation, an im- 
plied committal against the policy of the remonetization of silver. Such a com- 
mittal, even by implication, is, in my opinion, at this time extremely inopportune 
and ill-advised. I believe that there is a method of remonetizing silver, indeed 
there is more than one method, so as to place that metal upon a solid and last- 
ing foundation as a part of the currency of this country. I believe that it can be 
incorporated into the national ctirrency so as to conduce to the prosperity of the 
country, satisfy the popular demand, and that, too, without any shock to the 
great interests involved, and even with strengthening effect to the public credit. 

By concert of action with all those nations who are favorable to the remoneti- 
zation of silver I believe that a legal ratio between these two metals can he fixed 
so as to make what is called the double or the alternate standard feasible, at least 
sufficiently so to advance all the practical purposes of commerce and trade and 
business. It must be a fair and an honest ratio, one in which the legal relation 
between these metals corresponds to their actual relation: and there must be co- 
operation in order to insure this result, for I think that I shall be able to demon- 
strate that we can make but a slight impression in that direction standing soli- 
tary and alone. 

Several Senators on this floor in advocating this measure have urged it in this, 
which I consider its most important aspect: and as the Senator from Tennessee 
[Mr. Bailey] has set it forth with admirable clearness, force, and brevity, much 
more so than I can state it in my own language, I ask the Senate to indulge me 
while I read this view thus presented. He said: 

"It seems to me. howe\er. that these gentlemen overlook the fact that the ob- 
ject in remonetizing the silver dollar is not alone to furnish money for the pay- 
ment of the public debt." 
Then what? 

"The main purpose." says the Senator from Tennessee, "is to arrest the move- 
ments inaugurated in Europe, and blindly followed in this country, to destroy a 
great part of the wealth of mankind: it is to restore the silver dollar to the serv- 
ice of the world." 

An admirable object, and one which furnishes the strongest argument in favor 
of a movement looking to silver remonetization. He says again: 

"Mr. President. I believe that the Congress of the United States by prompt and 
decided action can arrest the movements looking to the demonetization of silver, 
and thereby prevent the consummation of what I can Init regard as a crime 
against humanity, the destruction of one-half the money that belongs to man- 
kind. . . . Sir, we can arrest this movement. Our influence among the na- 
tions is commensurate with our great population, our vast commerce, and ad- 
vanced civilization. That influence thrown now into the scale will arrest the 
attention of the world: it will check the movement of Germany, already brought 
to a halt: it will sustain the States of the I^atin X^nion in their struggles so long 
maintained without support. Our action will compel all people to reconsider 
this question, and count the cost of such gigantic destructions of wealth and the 
means of creating wealth." 

Now. sir, I for one am not an advocate of monometallism either of gold or sil- 
ver: and while I am in favor of going as far as sound policy and principle will 
permit toward the establishment of a dual system with a fairness of relation be- 
tween these metals in the circulation of this country, I do not believe that the 
bill which was reported from the House and that which is reported as a substi- 
tute by your committee will accomplish that object. I believe that the result of 
that bill will be not bimetallism in America or in Europe. Its peculiar and all- 
overshadowing feature is that one metal, and one metal alone, shall be the exclu- 
sive ruling element of American currency, and that metal shall be silver. And I 
say, with all respect to my friend from Tennessee, that if the financiers of Germa- 
ny and England had combined together to devise a scheme which should drive the 



704 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAJt: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

silver as money from the markets of Europe forever and establish silver mono- 
metallism in this country they could not have invented one more efficient than 
that which has been reported by the committee, unless it is the one for which it 
is a substitute. 

I am aware of the boldness of this assertion, and I beg Senators to believe 
that with my experience here I should not venture upon it without ample aiithor- 
ity to fortify the assertion: nor do I intend to invoke to my aid any opponent of 
the restoration of silver to the currency of the nations or to the currency of this 
nation. I shall call no bondholder upon the stand, I shall cite no witnesses ex- 
cept those who have made themselves distinguished in their effort to restore sil- 
ver to the circulation of the world. 

Now, sir, the first that I shall ask attention to is a gentleman who has made 
himself conspicuous among a group of authors, all of whom are distinguished for 
their efforts in struggling not only against the demonetization of silver in Eu- 
rope, but for its remonetization there and its remonetization here. I allude to 
Mr. Cerniischi, a writer of great power and brilliancy as well as a most acute 
thinker, who has for many years consecrated his great abilities to the cause of 
bimetallism both in Europe and in America. I have in my hand a work of his 
entitled "Nomisma, or Legal Tender." containing, besides, his testimony before 
the United States Monetary Commission. The author is an ardent advocate of 
the restoration of unlimited legal tender of silver in this country and of its free 
coinage. No one can read his writings without feeling his own mind strength- 
ened and enriched by the contact. And in order that Senators may understand 
fully that no advocate of silver remonetization is any more advanced in his posi- 
tion or demands for silver than he, I will first read what he has to say on this 
subject: 

"For the United States to resume specie payments it is necessary for them to 
rehabilitate silver — give the silver dollar the same value as the gold dollar, then 
accept silver at the customhouses, and be able to pay their European bondholders 
in silver dollars." 

So earnest is this gentleman in his advocacy of this movement that when he 
heard of the appointment of the United States Monetary Commission, instead of 
corresponding with that body, he crossed the Atlantic in order to give his evi- 
dence in person. I call attention to what he says upon the subject referred to by 
the Senator from Tennessee. Mr. Boutwell asked him this question: 

"If silver and gold should be used throughout the Ignited States, the Latin Un- 
ion, Holland, and India, upon the same basis of relative values, what would be 
the effect?" 

Here is his answer, and I read this part simply to show that this gentleman is 
an unqualified, enthusiastic (even to an extreme) advocate of the theory of the 
double standard; and I wish to say here that, in my opinion, many of the eco- 
nomic principles which Cernuschi and Ernest Seyd and Hay and other European 
writers on this subject have laid down in advocacy of the restoration of silver to 
its former place as money have not been successfully controverted, and, in my 
judgment, cannot be. Here is his proposition: 
— "I maintain that the effect would be to constitute a strong mass of money, com- 
posed of gold and silver, but without possibility of variation in value of the one 
against the other." 

He develops this theory at some length, with which I will not detain the Sen- 
ate. But nov/ for the next question: 

"What, in your opinion, would be the effect of an agreement to use both metals 
in the United States, in Europe, and in India?" 

Answer: "The effect would be that every variation, every perturbation in the 
relative value of gold and silver, would be forever impossible. The quantitv pro- 
duced of the one or the other of the metals has nothing to do with the relative 
value of the two metals. The only cause which produces variation in the relative 
value of gold and silver is that w^hich is shown in the laws of the different coun- 
tries." 

He exaggerates the influence of laws upon the value of monev, and this I think 
the weak point in his theory. I read this simply to show the extent to which he 
goes m his advocacy of the restoration of silver to the currency of all the nations, 
the United States as well as Europe. I ask especial attention to the next ques- 
tion and his answer: 

Mr. Bogy: "Supposing that in this country we restore our relation at 16 to 1, 
while in France and Europe generally it would remain at 15% to 1, what would be 
the ettect upon this country, and what would be the effect upon Europe'" 



Ai'ri:.\i)i.\, .\o. 16. 7U5 

Answer; "If you coin at the ratio of IG, France cannot coin at the ratio of 15'/2- 
. . . Then, it you coin at lU. you remain alone; and it. were better to maintain 
the greenbacks than to coin silver, if this metal is not also coined in Europe." 

I would put this government abreast of the Latin Union at this very moment. 
If Senators do not wish to wait for cooperation, why go further than France? 
There is no doubt about the fact that, knowing that she cannot maintain her po- 
sition as a bimetallic nation, France has stopped the coinage of silver altogether 
within her limits. Again; 

Question: "Suppose that France keeps her mints shut, as they are now, and re- 
mains as she is, while the United States adopts the bimetallic system, with the re- 
lation the same as that which the Latin Union has now established — Germany 
is prohibited from sending her silver to France, and the United States i)oldly 
adopts the relation of 15U to 1 — I ask what harm could come to the United States 
in such a condition of things?" 
Mr. Cernuschi answers; 

"This silver which would come from Germany here should have the effect of 
driving out all the gold." 
Again: 

Question: "In the presence of the great demand caused by the wants of this 
country for the purposes of resumption, how long do you suppose silver would 
remain at a discount as compared with gold?" 

Here is the pregnant answer to that; and it is noteworthy, not only on the 
ground of authority, but on account of the intrinsic force of the suggestion; 

"The silver can remain at a discount forever; but this is not the worst. The 
worst is that no fixity would ever be possible between the value of gold and the 
value of silver. If you are bimetallic when Europe is gold monometallic, you are 
bimetallic only by name. Verily, you would be a silver monometallic country, 
such as India; and the monetary position of the United States against Europe 
would be exactly the same ts is the present position of India against England, a 
position which engenders heavy losses to both countries." 

I have read this, Mr. President, not only as authority, I say. but to give to the 
public the reasons, stated with a force far beyond the happiest efforts of my 
humble powers, which control my vote on this important question. But, sir, I 
cotild cite other authority in Europe and England and in this country. I call at- 
tention now to the views of an author in this country with whom I am not per- 
sonally acquainted, but whose book is full of rich and curious and rare informa- 
tion, and the argument is well made. It is the first elaborate work I think in this 
country in favor of using the remonetization of silver as the means of specie re- 
sumption, and it was written before this bill came before Congress. These are 
the works and teachings of thoughtful men upon the subject before it was flung 
into the arena of political strife, before passion began to rage around this ques- 
tion and parties began to shape themselves in reference to it. I am now about 
to read from the work of Mr. S. Dana Horton, in which the author advocates, 
just as Ernest Seyd and Cernuschi and Wolowskl and Smith (all bimetallists) 
have done, the remonetization of silver by free coinage, unlimited legal tender, 
and the payment of your public debt in silver. But the qriestion of judiciously 
timing your measure is the most important question involved in this contro- 
versy; and what does he say upon that? 

"Under these circumstances, what course is left open to the United States? It 
must be recognized that the movement toward demonetization of silver in Eu- 
rope has in no proper sense spent its force. Motives, powerful to move nations 
as well as individuals, are still active in promoting it. It was urged in France, 
before the Franco-German war, that in demonetizing silver France would be en- 
abled to sell its silver to Germany; and after the war the similar expectation 
was held as to the sale of German silver to France. The pride of leading person- 
ages in Europe is enlisted not merely in the maintenance, but also in the further 
extension of the gold standard; and it is from the demand for silver for the 
United States that the relief is expected which may facilitate the spread of their 
great error. It is 'on the cards,' and is an event upon which leading men in Eu- 
rope calculate, that the United States may be trusted to fail to comprehend its 
true interest, and hence to deal crudely"— excuse me. Senators; it is not my lan- 
guage — "to deal crudely with this momentous subject — in a word, that it may 
contribute its ?130,000.000 of gold to the stock of Europe and withdraw the 
weight of its demand for existing stock and annual product of gold. It is obvi- 
ous that for the United States alone to attempt to establish the bimetallic stand- 
ard would result in failure to secure aught but the one depreciated metal." 
45 



706 Lrrirs (j. c lamak.- his life, etc. 

I am aware, Mr. President, that I am reading more than is usual in arguments 
of this sort, but really this is a question in which the views of those who have 
given the subject calrii and scientific investigation are entitled to more than or- 
dinary weight. 

After this book was published, a second edition was issued; and what is known 
as the Bland Bill was passed in the House, I think, after the first but before the 
second edition was published. I read from the appendix to the second edition: 

"The causes of the stoppage of silver coinage are not, in any proper sense, 
temporary. So long as the policy of demonetization prevails in a country which 
has silver to sell, other countries must abstain from maintaining free coinage of 
silver as legal tender, or consent to part with their gold in return for the silver 
thrown upon the market by their neighbor State. . . . 

"But if a sufficient number of nations coin silver at one fixed equation with 
gold, silver would remain an international money, the par would be secured in 
permanence, and there would be no danger of the latter event above suggested. 
This was abundantly illustrated in the case of Holland, whose demonetization of 
a circulating metal (gold) in 1S49 was made possible by the working of the bi- 
metallic system, in France and other countries. All is different to-day. The 
northern countries of Eui-ope are demonetizing silver; the product is increasing, 
and no great combination of nations exists to neutralize so violent a disturliance 
of the equiliVirium of the metals. Hence it is plain that the action of the Latin 
Union in refusing to coin legal tender silver is, in the present phase of the ques- 
tion, final. It is an adjournment sine die. There can be no further action until 
the final situation is changed. . . . 

"It is sufficiently obvious that the leaders of the Latin Union are cognizant of 
these facts, and they are men who are not likely to stultify themselves. The 
Latin Union cannot coin the silver franc if we coin the silver dollar at 1 to 16. 
She cannot become at once the sole receptacle of all the silver demonetized in 
Germany. . . . 

"The bill" — speaking of the bill in the other House — "is really an attack upon 
the bimetallic system, the restoration of which is needed for the future prosper- 
ity of the world; and if it becomes a law, it will prove an obstruction to the pros- 
perity of the United States." 

I have adduced all this to show that in the opinion of the ablest and most dis- 
tinguished advocates of silver remonetization the effect of such legislation as is 
here proposed will consolidate the currency of all Europe on a gold basis and re- 
mand America to "the Asiatic role," and tbat of those poorer countries of Europe 
that are condemned by their very necessities to receive the rejected coin of the 
great commercial nations. I do not say this in any spirit of hostility to the 
restoration of silver, but the fact is true that that metal occupies a subordinate 
position in the currency of the ruling nations of the European continent. It is 
demonetized practically among two hundred and fifty millions of the population 
of the globe. That is, it is entirely demonetized as a legal tender in England 
and Germany; and its coinage has been arrested in the Latin Union, and it is 
demonetized in the United States. Silver cannot go into France to be coined; 
and the five-franc piece, which is the only silver coin that is a full tender there, is 
getting scarce. 

Now, Mr. President, the fact of demonetization is a fact irrespective of our 
own wishes on the question ; and the consequences of that fact are just the same, 
whether demonetization was a grand, gigantic error of these enlightened nations 
or whether it was due to some inhei-ent deficiency in the metal itself as a medium 
of modern exchange. We must legislate with reference to what exists, to things 
as they are, and not as to what we would like them to be. It has been said that 
the causes which led to the demonetization of silver in Germany and its subor- 
dination in other European nations had no reference to its relative fitness for 
exchange as compared with gold. It lias been alleged that its demonetization in 
Germany was due to political reasons exclusively, the policy of the empire to 
unify and centralize its circulation and get rid of the diverse and somewhat dis- 
cordant currencies of the German principalities. That is a good reason as far as 
it goes; biit it was as easy for Germany to unify its currency upon a'silver basis 
as upon a gold basis, and it does not explain why that government selected a 
metal which it had not and rejected a metal which it had as the material of its 
new monetary system. There must have been some other reason. It has been 
said in this debate that this demonetization was the policy of despotic govern- 
ments whose policy was different from that of a free Republic, and that their 
adoption or rejection of a system should not influence our decision on such a 



Ai'i'F.sDix, yo. iG. 707 

question. Sir, the nations in wliicli tliese changes liave taken place are those 
whose institutions are freer than the governments which have adhered to silver 
money. Their governments are responsible to public opinion, and the adminis- 
tration of their affairs is directed by an enlightened sense of the interests of 
their own people. 

Another fact. How came Prance to stop the coinage of silver and to that ex- 
tent demonetize that metal? France was not an empire when she did that, nor 
was she under the same necessity which is alleged of Germany. The funiace of 
war which lused the German confederation into one empire simply melted off the 
imperialism of France, and brought out her republicanism pure and unalloyed; 
and it was as a republic, under the leadership of Gambetta, Thiers, and others, 
that she flung back into the lap of Germany the demonetized silver which that 
power sought to force upon her, and thus performed a financial maneuver which 
gave her a greater financial victory over her haughty rival than that rival had 
won over her in the ruder game of war. It was not following her example, but it 
was simply thwarting the financial finesse of Germany with a measure of a like 
character. 

Mr. President, this bill deals with two of the most delicate and sensitive parts 
of the apparatus of civil society: the currency of the country and the all-per- 
vading relation of debtor and creditor. A great statesman has said that there 
is nothing in the arrangements of human society and government more sensi- 
tive, nothing that ought to be touched so cautiously, nothing that rash experi- 
ments would injure more seriously. It proposes that the old silver dollar shall 
be coined as legal tender and made equal with the gold dollar. Now I would ask 
Senators if the silver coin is not largely overvalued and gold undervalued by this 
proposed legislation. Will any one deny that the effect of this measure will be 
to drive whatever of gold circulation we now have out of the country? Such is 
the invariable effect of this legislation. When you make a certain weight of one 
metal the lawful equivalent of a defined weight of another metal as money, the 
overvalued metal is the cheaper one, and drives the other out. You cannot open 
a work on political economy in which this changeless law is not stated. The 
coinage history of every country bristles with illustrations of It. Nearly every 
Senator who has spoken in favor of this resolution and the bill behind it has 
afiirmed the existence and force of this principle in order to account for the lim- 
ited amount of silver coined in this country at certain periods. They all attrib- 
ute It to the overvaluing of gold and the undervaluing of silver, each affirming 
the cause to be that the cheaper money will always drive out the dearer. 

The effect of the bill now proposed, if it becomes a law, will expel the gold 
from the country to the extent that silver is used. The question then arises, 
should the legislation of this country be so framed as to establish one metal as 
the basis of currency, and that metal to be silver? Is it a wise policy to legis- 
late gold practically out of existence as money in the United States? Why 
should we substitute a silver currency for a gold one? What conceivable benefit 
will silver confer which gold will not confer in a much greater degree? In what 
one single attribute of money is silver so superior to gold as that our laws should 
expel the latter and make the former the controlling element of American cur- 
rency? Take any of the functions of money, whether it be as a medium of valua- 
tion or as a means of purchase or as a means of payment or as a transporter of 
values or a preserver of values, and in what one element is not gold the supe- 
rior of silver? Both have their peculiar functions. Gold is the great commer- 
cial machine which swings the products of a cotmtry in one bulk from continent 
to continent; while silver sends these products, not in bulk, but in littles, through 
the numerous and labyrinthian mazes of domestic exchange. 

We hear it said that the mountains of Nevada are producing this abundant ma- 
terial of money, and that we should have it coined into dollars for the people's 
use. But, sir, our gold mines are still more prodtictive of a far more valuable ma- 
terial for money. Then, sir, I ask again, what possible reason can there be for 
this legislation, which in effect demonetizes the more precious product of our 
American mines and the more abundant? V,''hy should we avail ourselves of 
only one of these sources of money wealth to the exclusion of the other, espe- 
cially when the latter furnishes an international money that puts our country 
en rapport with the whole commercial world, and the former is a commercial 
and financial insulator? 

Sir, I am well aware that such is not the design of this bill, and that its advo- 
cates (those of them who admit that such will be its effect) regard that result 
neither with complacence nor indifference. Their view, so far as I can gather it, 



70S Lnir.s q. c. la.vai:.- ins life, etc. 

is that expulsion of sold will be an evil, but an evil incident to the accomplish- 
ment of a much greater benefit. Judging by the arguments m favor of this bill, 
it seems to be pressed as a measure which looks not so much to the principles 
of a permanent financial policy for the securing of the future interests ana the 
lasting prosperity of the nation as to the immediate relief of the present dis- 
tress of our people, which is very great and deserves all of the sympathy which 
has been so eloquently expressed in this debate. 

I fully concede that there is at the bottom of this consideration a strong prin- 
ciple of justice and humanitv, and of wisdom also, if the purpose could be ac- 
complished. The skillful physician, when he finds his patient writhing under 
in=upportable agonv, at once administers laudanum or some other anodyne, al- 
though he may know that it will not cure the disease or restore vigor to the con- 
stitution Now there is no doubt about the suffering condition of the people of 
the United States, It needs present and immediate relief. The distress spreads 
over the entire country, extending to every class of our population— merchants, 
farmers manufacturers, men of business, and laborers. It is a mistake to sup- 
pose that those who live on the income of fixed investments or borrowed capital 
have escaped. The shrinkage in the value of one single class of bonds is stated 
at the sum of $2,0on,000.000. I am prepared to vote for any measure that will 
give relief to all these suffering interests, and I will not hesitate to do so from the 
consideration that it will enable debtors over this country to pay their debts at 
ninetv cents on the dollar. The public man or statesman who will introduce a 
measure that will enable the people of this country— the indebted classes— to lift 
their debts bv the pavment of ninety cents or eighty-five cents on the dollar will 
be a benefactor to his generation: and the creditor class will be as much the re- 
cipient of the benefaction as any other, for what could be the loss of ten cents on 
the dollar to the creditor class of this country compared to the sacrifice and the 
insolvencv and the beggarv and the poverty and the fraud and the ruin and the 
desolation which are now threatening them? But, sir, how will the remonetiza- 
tion of silver give this relief? We are told that it will bring from our mines m 
Nevada and the demonetized silver of Germany the needed supply for the wants 
of our people. It is expected to produce activity in the business and industry of 
the country, employment for laborers, higher prices for products, and help to the 
indebted classes in their struggle to escape the burdens which are crushing them 
into poverty. Mr. President, this is indeed an alluring prospect; and when pre- 
sented to a" people enduring the privation of poverty and the torture of threat- 
ened insolvency, it is but natural that they should look upon a measure promis- 
ing relief with all the eagerness of hope; it is but natural that they should listen 
with impatience and irritation to the stern truth which negatives these sanguine 
hopes, and the probabilities, founded on past experience, that such measures 
promising a wholesale relief to the ills of a people will produce not the effect 
expected, but the very reverse. And when the delusion vanishes and the stern 
reality appears, how cruel the disappointment, how much keener the suffering! 

Sir, it does seem to me so clear that the relief which is promised for this meas- 
ure is delusive that I would be criminal if I did not speak my honest convictions. 

It is said that all this prostration of business and industry, this destruction of 
prosperity, is due to the scarcity of money growing out of the policy of contrac- 
tion: that remonetization will supply the deficiency and restore prosperity. 

Let it be conceded for argument's sake (and I concede it only for argument's 
sake) that the scarcity of money is the cause of all the financial distress which 
the people of the t'nited States are now suffering. Before any one is authorized 
to promise or anticipate that the remonetization of silver will increase the vol- 
ume of the currency, and thus relieve the people from the evils of scarcity of 
money, he should show that it is the absence of silver at this time from the chan- 
nels of circulation, as the effect of demonetization, which causes this scarcity. 
If it can be shown that, but for the absence of silver from our circulation, money 
would have been abundant instead of scarce, a very rational foundation is laid 
for the hope that remonetization will bring us the promised relief. Unfortunate- 
ly, facts show the re', erse to be true. 

The advocates of this measure have, in order to show what an insufficient sup- 
ply of money exists in the United States, cited the fact of the great disparity be- 
tween this and other countries in respect of the proportion of money to popula- 
tion England having, as it is stated (not with entire accuracy, but let that pass), 
from $27 to $3n jirr cdpitti: France, |44 per riiitiln: Germany, $24 prr rniiita: while 
the United States has something under $20 pir cdpitri. Now, sir, it is a remark- 
able circumstance that the very nations which are cited as having a more plen- 



APPENDIX, NO. 16. 709 

tiful volume of money are the very nations which have demonetized silver. It is 
true, sir, that these three nations, two of which luive demonetized silver and the 
third stopped the coinage of it, have in proportion to population a larger volume 
of money than we have: but that fact proves, if it proves anything, that demon- 
etization of silver does not cause a scarcity of money. It shows that the absence 
of silver and scacily of money are not necessarily coexistent phenomena. 

But there are other facts in this connection whicli still more positively negative 
the presumption that remonetization on the plan now proposed will augment our 
quantity of money. We have had given to us by a Senator a table of nations in 
which silver is the sole legal tender and of those in which gold is the sole cur- 
rency and of those in which both gold and silver are legal tender. 

In the list of those liaving silver money alone, Austria comes first. There, sil- 
ver and paper are legal tender. Surely if unlimited legal tender of silver is all 
that is wanted to insure abundance of money, then Austria ought to have that 
abundance. But. in point of fact, how does Austria stand in the proportion of 
population to money? Below England, below Germany, below the United States. 
Why is this? Austria is a silver nation. I do not mean that it has got silver 
mines, but it has silver coinage and unlimited legal tender of silver, and the 
mines of Nevada and the thalers of Germany could flow there if something else 
did not prevent their going; and yet. with silver coinage and an unlimited legal 
tender of silver, Austria has only ,f].5 to the head, or, as some authorities put it, 
$17. It seems to me that if silver coinage and silver legal tender only are neces- 
sary to have an overflow of silver into a country Austria would be that country, 
and her poet might exclaim: 

If there is wealth to be found in the world, 

A heart that loves silver might loi>k for it here. 

For she has got the very law which you propose; and yet the silver does not flow 
there. And Russia, that great colossal despotism, which is extending its con- 
quests almost into the heart of Europe, and threatens to be to some extent its 
arbiter — Russia is also a silver country. Her metallic currency, according to the 
most trustworthy authorities tliat I have been able to consult, is, like tliat of 
Austria, exclusively silver and some baser metals; and yet in that country of sil- 
ver coinage and legal tender the proportion of money to population is only $12 
\wr capita. It is apparent from these facts that, while there may be an abun- 
dance of money where silver money is abolished, so there may be likewise a great 
scarcity of it where silver is recognized and used as the exclusive metallic basis 
of circulation. 

Now, sir, I wish to be understood as not citing these facts to show that silver, 
either in its presence or in its absence, is the cause of scarcity or abundance of 
money; I mean only to sliow that scarcity of money and the presence of silver as 
a legal tender with free coinage are not necessarily coincident facts, and they do 
not sustain to each other the relation of cause and effect. The fact is, the proof 
shows, as far as I have been able to consult the authorities — and I have looked 
over a large number of them — it neither increases nor decreases the amount of 
currency in a country. The fact seems to be that the cheapness of silver (caused 
by demonetization and the discovery of new mines and other catises which I can- 
not now go into) has only served, in those countries open to its unobstructed 
inflow, to displace gold. There seems to be just so much of a capacity for metal- 
lic currency in those nations, and the flowing in of silver simply causes an outflow 
of gold without any rise in the volume. 

It is something like what is seen in my State, where a crevasse, breaking 
through the banks, pours its water into a bay or harbor of the gulf. It does not 
deepen the bay. Ships of no heavier draft than before can bring in their freight 
on account of it. It simply dilutes and displaces the strong salt quality of the 
water and destroys the oysters and other fish, of which there was a plentiful 
abundance before tlie influx of fresh water. 

There is another fact worthy of attention in this connection. Before 1S73 we 
had silver coin and legal tender unlimited, and yet the greatest contraction of 
our currency was between 1S6G and 1S69. Silver was demonetized in 1873. In 
that year our circulation was in round numbers $738,000,000. In 1S74 the circu- 
lation rose to $779,000,000, and this was after the demonetization of silver. I 
state this fact to show that neither the remonetization nor tlie demonetization of 
silver has any very great effect upon the volume of currency in this or any other 
country in the pi'esent monetary condition of the world. It may be asked what, 
then, is the thing which makes the Ignited States have less money in proportion 
to poptilation than the countries heretofore named, if it be not the exclusion of 



710 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

silver. Sir. it is the result of many causes. I liave time to refer to but one. 
which of itself as long as it exists will go far to keep the money of this country 
inferior in character and less in amount proportionally to population than that 
of any prosperous country on earth. 

Sir" it is true that the money of this country is less in proportion to population 
than 'it is in England. France, or Germany: but if we analyze the elementsof 
which those currencies are respectively composed, It will be found that our in- 
equality is owing to the greater quantity of coin in those countries. In other 
words, "while they have a larger volume of currency, we have a much larger vol- 
ume of paper circulation than they have. In this one fact of a large volume of 
inconvertible and therefore depreciated paper currency we have a cause which 
puts a limit to any augmentation of money that will be commensurate with 
either the growth of our population or the increasing demands of business. 

When the currency of a country consists of a depreciated legal tender paper 
monev it puts a stop to the inflow of any coin from abroad as completely as if 
there were a prohibitory tariff, and thus it renders impossible any increase by 
the laws of trade. It drives to foreign lands the stable and solid currency of the 
precious metals, and degrades what is retained into a commodity by driving it 
from the channels of currency and putting it into the hands of brokers. The law 
of an inconvertible paper currency issued by government is. "Be it enacted, there 
shall be so much, and no more;" and no matter what the demand of trade shall 
be, no matter what commerce shall require, or how your population shall In- 
crease, you cannot add a dollar to that currency through the ordinary offices of 
trade, for the precious metals are excluded by it. Not fifty cents can be added 
unless a statute is enacted on the subject: "Be it enacted, so much more shall be 
issued." There is no escape from the bankruptcy of a people who are writhing 
under the curse of an inconvertible currency. It is an embargo upon the im- 
portation of the precious metals as money (of gold and silver alike). It deprives 
the nation in which it exists of just those agencies which increase and decrease 
the currency of other countries according to the increasing or diminishing needs 
of business. You have confirmation of this in all those States in which an incon- 
vertible currency exists. Italy and Russia and -Spain — all have but little of coin 
compared to their paper circulation. 

But it is said that this measure is needed not so much to swell the amount of 
money now in circulation as to arrest the fearful process of contraction to which 
the enforcement of restimption is subjecting the people. 

Mr. President, if it is so absolutely necessary to relieve our people of the pres- 
sure of contraction, would it not be best to pursue the shortest way to that end 
by stopping the process of resumption, rather than to resort to a measure whose 
effects cannot be known until after the experiment is made? 

Sir, the resumption act was not made a law by my vote or with my consent. 
In common with many others I foresaw the difliculties which have arisen in its 
enforcement. The objections of John C. Calhoun to the coercion of specie pay- 
ments by government made a most profound impression upon my mind long ago; 
but the relation of the government to the subject was just the reverse of what it 
is now, and the condition of things when he spoke was different from what it is 
now. It is not true, by the way. that the great South Carolinian ever favored an 
inconvertible currency. At that time the government itself was out of debt; 
and as it was the creditor of the indebted classes, it could afford to he generous 
in its policy. It is now the debtor, and perhaps may be considered as confronted 
by different obligations. Sir. the remonetization of silver will not relax or 
arrest the contraction growing out of resumption. In my opinion, its effect just 
at this time may be the most disastrous of contraction instead of expansion. 

The policy of resumption has been entered upon. To go back will simply in- 
volve us in more evils than those which it has brought upon us. From various 
circumstances many things point to a speedy resumption of specie payments, 
whether anybody wants it or not. Gold was quoted a short time since as low 
down as 102. Kverything points to a speedy equality between the values of gold 
and greenbacks. It nothing in our legislation prevents it. I think that equality 
will come very soon. It is manifest now that when gold and greenbacks are at 
par gold will cease to be a commodity and pass into the circulation. All motive 
to hoard it or to make brokerage upon it or to speculate in it as a commodity 
will be taken away. If this be the case, it will at once increase the volume of 
available currency by the whole amount of gold in the country, and I think that 
is put at $130,000,000 by some of the estimates. Some say JISO.OOO.OOO, and some 
$200,000,000, In spite of everything that is being done to prevent specie pay- 



Al'PENDlX, AO. 16. 711 

ments from being resumed, the natural condilion and effect of our business rela- 
tions are bringing the two together. When the greenback and the gold dollar are 
equal it does not necessarily follow that we can resume specie payments or that 
we can maintain resumption. But that circumstance will immediately unlock 
the door of the stock of gold in this country and put it in circulation; it will make 
it part of the currency of the country. Suppose that just when we are so near 
the unlocking of the door which has kept gold out of the currency of the country 
for so long, and just when we are in sight of it, we by the passage of a silver bill 
lock it up again. We have not any silver currency in this country except sub- 
sidiary coin; altogether I believe it is less than $40,000,000. It will take many 
years for the government to coin a silver currency and put it in circulation. The 
manufacture of silver coin, I see it stated, is a slow process; the handling of silver 
is a slow process; and the immediate effect would be to drive out this volume of 
gold already here and put in place of it the smaller volume of silver that would 
be available in a short time. This would be a contraction of the currency 
sharper and more disastrous than anything that can be anticipated from the 
present condition of affairs. 

But it is said that the remonetization of silver at the ratio fixed by this bill of 
16 to 1 will give increase of compensation to the laboring classes through the 
higher prices which it will produce, and to the indebted classes Increased means 
of discharging their debts. 

First, let us see what the effect will be upon laborers, even conceding that it 
will produce high prices. The two things which are least affected by a change in 
prices are labor and real estate. Everything else rises or falls, as the case may 
be, before they do. What, then, is the situation of the laborer, who has been 
earning a dollar a day, after the price of everything has risen ten cents on the 
dollar— or, which is the same thing, after the dollar has been depreciated ten 
cents? The price of his labor is the same. He receives the same amount of pay 
which he received before— that is, a dollar a day— but he receives it in a dollar 
cheaper by ten cents, while he has to pay for everything he purchases a hi.gher 
price; and therefore the value of the money which he receives for labor is less, 
and brings him fewer comforts than it did before. 

Look at the price of labor in any of the tables that have been published, and 
you will find it as firmly fixed as any law, that the prices of labor and of real 
estate go up more slowly than anything else. Therefore any change which 
brings higher prices to a country, and unnaturally raises the prices, as certainly 
brings oppression and distress upon the laborer for the time being. But more 
especially will this policy fail to benefit the farmers of the South and West. 
They have nothing to pay their debts with except the money which they make 
over and above their current expenses. They must first pay the current expenses 
of the year and then apply their surplus to the debts which are now pressing 
upon them. 

The Senator from Ohio, in reply to a question from the Senator from Connecti- 
cut [Mr. Eaton], as to the price in gold in the markets abroad, said; "What have 
we to do with abroad?" Sir. we of the South have everything to with abroad. 
The great production of the South has its price fixed at Liverpool in a gold mar- 
ket, and that dominates the price of the same product with the manufacturers of 
the North. Then with the proceeds of the sale thus made at the price fixed at 
Liverpool they are compelled to pay their expenses, the necessaries and comforts 
of life, at the high prices ruled by a depreciated currency. There is no people on 
earth who can stand such a process long. Senators have dilated upon the evils 
of a contracting currency. They are very great under some circumstances; but 
they are not comparable to those of a people who, having to sell what they pro- 
duce in a market of low prices, are doomed by the laws of their country to buy 
all that they consume in a market of high prices. There are exceptions to the 
rule in reference to contraction. There was a greater contraction of the cur- 
rency, far greater, between ISCO and 1870 than since 1"73, and that has been 
counted a period of great prosperity. The pecuniary distress which we have 
here is not confined to the TTnited States; it extended to Europe, and was just as 
great. But there was one great difference. The period of contraction here was 
a period of unexampled expansion of currency there. So the rule does not seem 
to be an invariable one, that expansion of currency brings prosperity or that 
contraction brings financial adversity. But it is a law to which there is no ex- 
ception that a people will sooner or later come to hopeless insolvency who. sell- 
ing the product of their annual toil in a market of low prices, are compelled to 
buv for themselves their food and clothing and shelter In a market of high prices. 



712 LVVIVS Q. a. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

Nothing can be more destructive, not even tlae ravages of armies or "the out- 
pouring of floods or the withholding from the parched and thirsty earth the re- 
freshing rains of heaven." 

Mr. President, we have two great American products in this country. One is 
the cotton product. That product commands gold everywhere on the globe with 
the single exception of the spot where it is produced. Not a human being han- 
dles this product of Southern agriculture, the product of American soil and 
American labor, not one man touches it beyond the confines of America who 
cannot command gold for it at its own price; but the producer of it, he who digs 
and delves and plows the earth, does not obtain what the product of his labor will 
command over all the world besides. There is another product here in the gold 
mines of this country, produced in American soil by American labor. The gold 
mines in the United States are more productive than any in the world. Indeed, 
they produce more than half of the annual product of the world. They produce 
more gold than do our silver mines, and yet the product of gold and the product 
of cotton cannot come together upon this continent. 

By some malign influence, gold, the product of American soil, the product of 
American labor, and cotton, the product of American soil and the product of 
American labor, are kept apart, divorced; and the very moment they leave the 
country, the very moment they depart from your shores, they leap together as by 
a natural affinity, and live in indissoluble wedlock in every other clime on earth. 
What is the cause of this? There is but one cause, and that is that you have here 
a currency which will not allow the farmer, with his potatoes or his wheat or his 
cotton or any other product, to get gold money with that product. You have a 
currency which drives gold from your shores, leaving you an inconvertible cur- 
rency, a depreciated currency, a currency which forces the cotton grower of the 
South and the wheat grower of the West to take for these articles the prices 
fixed by a gold standard abroad, and to make their purchases here at the higher 
prices which a depreciated currency never fails to create. 

Mr. President, I have said nothing about the effect of this measure in relation 
to the debtor classes of this country, except simply to demonstrate in my opinion 
that it will not give them the relief that is anticipated. I believe that it will 
crush the indebted classes down further than before. Nor have I discussed the 
question whether the government has a legal right to pay its bonds in silver dol- 
lars containing 4121-2 grains to the dollar. There is so much of magic bewitch- 
ment in the dialectics of construction, whether of contracts and bonds or of laws, 
that we are apt to overlook practical results. I am willing, for the sake of the 
argument, to put myself along with those who maintain the right of the govern- 
ment, upon the strict letter of the contract, to thus discharge its obligations. 
There is no doubt that up to 1S70 all that this government had bound itself to do 
was to pay a bond of $1,000 in $1,000 of gold or one thousand silver dollars of the 
then standard value, and that, standing upon that contract, the government could 
pay its bonds in that way; but in 1S73 the government prohibited the coinage of 
silver dollars, and by legislation withdrew the legal tender quality from silver. 
Has not that something to do with this question? Senators have contended that 
the value of silver has depreciated by demonetization. If this government by Its 
own act has lowered the value of silver, can it now equitably claim to pay its obli- 
gations in a metal which itself has demonetized and depreciated in the markets 
of the whole world? Is it not estopped by its own act from insisting tipon its 
right to pay in this coin thus depreciated and demonetized, not by events beyond 
the control and a,gency of the government, but by the government itself? 

I shall not go into the agencies which produced that legislation. I have noth- 
ing to say of the powerful arraignment made by the Senator from Indiana [Mr. 
Voorhees]. I do not run across that argument of his. masterly, refulgent, and 
sharp as it was; but, whatever may have been the error, whatever may have been 
the wrong of the party which fastened that legislation upon the country, it is an 
act of the government, and it imposes an obligation as solemn as national honor 
can impose. Silver was demonetized by the sovereignty of the government of the 
United States; and. according to your own argument, its depreciation this day is 
owing to that cause, and no other. 

Now, sir, conceding that the strict letter of the contract with the public credit- 
ors allows the payment of all its bonds, even those issued since 1S73 ffor which 
gold in full was received), in a coin depreciated by its own acts of demonetiza- 
tion, does it follow that such a construction is the proper and rightful one as to 
the true spirit and intent? Such a construction comes under the condemnation 
of the old legal maxim. Qui hirrrf ?» lifn-n hnrrt hi cnrfice, sticking like a worm in 



APPENDIX, NO. 10. 713 

the bark and gnawing away that which protects the lite of the fair and stately 
tree of national credit. 

Senators speak of restoring the silver dollar to its legal Ktatus quo before the de- 
monetization by remoneiizing it. Sir. does not the obligation go further? If 
we are determined to restore the Icual relation of silver to gold as it was before 
demonetization, ought we not to restore its actual relation also, to put it where it 
was in point of fact as well as of law? 

The argument of the Senator from Missouri is ingenious, but the special plead- 
ing which he gives is supposed to be conducted as in a suit between two iiidirUI- 
uals before a conrt of laic. This, I respectfully submit, is a fallacy. National 
credit is quite a different thing from individual credit. An individual is subject 
to the processes of law; he can be compelled to comply by the judgment of court: 
mortgages can be foreclosed upon his estate, and execution will bind his goods 
and chattels. Not so with the nation. No lien can bind its property; execution 
cannot issue against it. 

The security of any investment in Its obligations rests not in legal enforce- 
ment. Then where Is the security? It is in nothing but a sentiment: good faith. 
national haiioi: What a frail tenure in one sense, and yet how strong in another! 
Let universal confidence be felt in that honor, and the credit of the nation rests 
upon a rock, and an earthquake cannot shake it : but let one breath of suspicion 
touch it, and it crumbles into irretrievable ruin. 

Cicero, speaking of public faith, said: "The State to its citizens speaks through 
its own statutes, decrees, and edicts; but in treaties it speaks the language of 
universal justice and right as ordained by the immortal gods." 

Sir, England has a greater debt than ours. The interest she has to pay is only 
3 per' cent. AVhat is the cause of this low rate? Nothing, sir, but the sentiment 
everywhere prevailing of confidence in the sensitive regard which that nation 
has for its public credit. 

In a few years our bonds will fall due. We cannot expect to pay them. We 
shall have to borrow the entire amount again in the markets of the world. At 
what interest depends upon our credit. The rate of interest is always measured 
by the comparative safety or risk of the investment. The risk is always covered 
by a high interest as a certain compensation against ultimate probable loss. 

Now, sir, the question in reference to the debt of this government is not. How 
shall it be paiil .' but, IJoir ithall if hr cairird .' Shall it be carried with a heavy 
burden of high interest or a light burden of low interest? This alone, it seems to 
me, ought to settle the question of the policy of paying the bonds in a depreciated 
coin. It has been shown that we could have saved, but for the agitation of this 
question, $20,000,000 a year by funding in 4 per cent bonds, which has been 
stopped simplv by the pendency of this bill. I call attention for a moment to 
the replv of the Senator from Tennessee [Mr. Bailey] to the calculation of a gen- 
tleman who was before the Committee on Finance, showing this fact: 

"It is urged with much force, however, that the restoration of the silver dollai* 
and making it legal tender money for the payment of debts, public and private, 
will prevent the funding of the public debt at a lower rate of interest; and tables 
have been prepared showing the sums which the (loreriimriit will save by an 
abandonment of silver. I have one of these tables now before me, prepared by 
Mr. Ellis, a banker in the city of New York. and. as the newspapers say, read be- 
fore a committee of the House of Representatives. I will read it: 

"'I have made a table showing the amoimt to be gained, provided that the 
government can continue its funding operations as at present, on the supposi- 
tion that, if the silver bill is passed and the principal and interest of the bonds 
are made payable in silver, its funding operations will cease. I will now read 
you the figures: 

Amount of 6 per cent bonds outstanding $729,000,000 

Annual interest on same ? 43,740,000 

Amount of .5 per cent bonds outstanding 708,000.000 

Annual Interest on same 3.=), 400, 000 

Total ? 79.140.000 

If these bonds were funded at 4 per cent, the annual interest 

would be 57.480.000 

Annual saving ? 21,fifi0.000 



714 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

If the 4 per cent bonds shall be paid at their mattirity, say thirty 

years, the total savings would be, not compounding interest. . $649,800,000 

If the bonds should not be funded, and principal and interest 
should be paid in silver, and the relative vahie of gold and sil- 
ver should continue as at present, say a difference of 8 per 
cent, the saving to the government on the interest payments 
would be about $196,000,000 

And on the principal would be about 115,000,000 

Total, not compounding interest $311,000,000 

"Now, upon the assumption that we can fund our debt in 4 per cent bonds 
(and I do not doubt that we will), and upon the further assumption that the effect 
of the legislation contemplated by these resolutions will prevent this funding, 
the statement makes out a strong case. The sum lost to the government is very 
large, and exceeds $15,000,000 a year. But will the fulfillment of our obligation 
destroy our credit? It may be injuriously affected for a time, not because of the 
fulfillment of the obligations of the contract in their essence and spirit, but be- 
cause of the disappointment of unreasonable expectations. But when time shall 
have cooled the passions excited by these disappointments and the deliberate 
judgment of mankind shall be pronounced, the sentence will be reversed, and our 
credit will be strengthened by the firmness with which we have resisted these 
appeals." 

There is some force in this suggestion, but it is not satisfactory. It may be 
that our credit will recover from the blow which w-ould be given to it should our 
vindication be complete: but, sir, a character unassailed is immeasurably more 
precious to a nation than a character vindicated. 

This is a most favorable opportunity for funding our national debt at a low 
rate of interest which may not come again. The conjuncture of events which 
has caused so much capital to be locked up makes it seek safe investments at in- 
terest so low as to be very slightly remunerative. This may not last a long time. 
It must soon look for other investments. With anything like an improvement 
in business, investments will offer which will be more remunerative, and the op- 
portunity which the present financial condition of the world and the disturbed 
political condition of other nations now afford may pass from us never to return. 

I distinctly state here that I believe that the purpose of all is to uphold the 
national credit. I am only stating whfft the dear-bought experience of nations 
has shown: that when the legislation of a nation is injurious to the interests of 
those who, trusting in its honor, have invested loans of money to it, borrowed 
especially in its struggle for national preservation, their complaints and assaults, 
however unjust, will injure its credit, and the injury is always irreparable. I 
■have had an illustration of this in the last few days. 

A Senator, in a not unkind spirit, referred to the State of Mississippi as having 
repudiated her debt. Mr. President, I have no hope of ever removing that im- 
pression from the mind of the business public, no matter how strongly I may 
reiterate the oft-repeated explanation. 

It has passed, it seems, beyond the power of correction. At the same time I 
must be permitted to repel that statement. The transaction which has attached 
to Mississippi the odium of repudiation is one in which that State disclaimed no 
debt which she had either in law or fact contracted. Nor did her people receive 
one dollar from it. I have not the time to go into this matter now. even if it were 
pertinent to this discussion. I will merely make one statement. By the Con- 
stittition of Mississippi at that time no Legislature could pledge her credit to any- 
body or in behalf of anybody, individual or corporate, except by the law of two 
successive Legislatures and by a vote, in the interim, of the people upon the act 
thus pledging its credit. What I mean is that it required that any statute which 
loaned the credit of the State should first have to pass one Legislature, then be 
submitted to the people, and. after certain formalities complied with, passed by a 
second Legislature. Sir. that act which has attached to Mississippi so long the 
odium of repudiation never did pass two successive Legislattires: it was never 
submitted to the people of Mississippi. It was passed by one Legislature, exe- 
cuted in hot haste, and the proceeds of it were put in a private institution: and 
never a dollar did the treasury or the people of that State receive of the money 
thus raised in violation of her fundamental laws. The business public, the com- 
mercial world, had notice of this fundamental law of the State of Mississippi, 



APPENDIX, .\(>. 10. 715 

and with that notice was superadded the proclamation of her Executive forbid- 
ding any negotiation in these bonds thus unconstitutionally Issued and illegally 
executed. 

Mi:. Randolph: If I do not interrupt the Senator, I think that the Senator 
from Mississippi and my-self are not in exact agreement as to what I intended to 
say yesterday. He speaks now of the Union Bank bonds. I was speaking of the 
Planters' Bank bonds. I do not care to interrupt the Senator, and will only say 
that the Planters' Bank bonds were guaranteed by the Constitution of the State 
of Mississippi passed in ],S32, and that from 1S32 to 1852 the interest was paid 
upon those bonds, and that after that, by the action of the people, which I regret 
a.s much as he, the interest ceased to be paid. I said that was practically repu- 
diation. 

Mu. Lamak: Mr. President, the charge of repudiation made against Mississippi, 
and which has caused her to be held up to pulilic reprehension, was not based 
upon her action with reference to the Planters' Bank bonds, but wholly upon the 
transactions connected with the Union Bank bonds. The affair of the Planters' 
Bank bonds, which came afterwards, involves a different line of considerations, 
from which the Senator must excuse me now, as I wish to give this subject only 
a passing notice. 

Something was said in this discussion with reference to the benefits which are 
to result to the producing classes by this measure, and also as to the motives 
which prompt the opposition to it. It has been said that there are two classes 
in this country — one, the producing class engaged in the active business of life, 
the laboring class; the other, the capitalists of the country, those who derive their 
income from fixed estates, rents, interest upon bonds and stocks — and that upon 
this question a conflict between these two classes has arisen. Now, sir, so far as 
I have studied this subject, I have seen nothing to justify such a classification. 
No man has a greater respect and sympathy for the working classes than I. Sir, 
before the man who stands with bronzed brov.^ and hardened hand and bent frame 
from his struggles with the earth for the subsistence of himself and his family I 
stand in modest deference and respect. I know something of that class at home. 
I have felt the heart-warm grasp of their hands, and owe to their support all 
that I am. There is another class of workers, however, to whom I am tinder a 
greater obligation than I am even to those who have worked the earth and the 
material agencies of nature. They are those men who work with the brain, 
who in silence and in (heir closets develop the great laws which rule society, 
who trace the phenomena of human government to their original principles and 
discover the laws which control governments and societies. They are men of 
genius, men from whose brains flow the great thoughts of which constitutions 
and laws and institutions are the mere external embodiment. It is to them that 
I am indebted for the views which control me in this vote, the men who are the 
true kings of earth, and who are really the authors of the considerations which 
have moved the enlightened governments of Europe in the management of their 
finances. 

As to the other class, called the bondholders, I know nothing personally. 
Throughout the entire range of my acquaintance there are but three persons I 
know who are the owners of United States bonds. Will the Senate bear with 
me while I state who they are? One is a distinguished lawyer, one of the most 
upright men I ever knew; one whose rectitude in all the relations of life, be they 
to God or man. seems to be unexceptionable; a model of intellect, integrity, and 
honor to all who know him. He has never handled a dollar that he did not earn 
by the toil of hand and brain, or that he did not collect and pay over to his client. 
After making provision for his family and benefactions to the poor and dis- 
tressed, which were generous and munificent, he found himself at the end of 
each year with a small surplus of means. Being no speculator, never having in 
his life. I suppose, bought or sold for profit, and there being no property in Mis- 
sissippi in which a man could at that time invest with security— for. alas! in my 
State propertv was poorer than labor, and a more grievous burden than poverty- 
having no other means of investment at hand, he simply bought United States 
bonds as a deposit of his funds. Another was an old farmer, who. by long years 
of industrv and frugality and virtue, amassed sufficient fortune to purchase him 
a plantation in his declining vears. The fortunes of war swept away everything 
from him except his real estate, which in 1S65. before the desolating furies of re- 
construction came down there and devoured everything, he sold, and bought 
just enough of bonds to bring him an income of $1,200 a year. Upon that in- 
come the old man with his aged wife lives in a small cottage, educating their 



716 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

boys in our college, near my little town. Tliere is still another, a widow woman 
with three children. Her husband was a merchant. His affairs being woimd up 
just before his death, and his small estate converted into money, and there being 
no other investment, government bonds were bought; and with the income of 
those bonds they find shelter and raiment and food and education for the three 
little girls. 

Sir, these are the only bloated bondholders that I know of in all this world. 
It is true that they get a very small income. By the way, let me say that there is 
not an investment in this country less remunerative than the bonds of this gov- 
ernment. There is scarcely an avocation that does not pay a larger percentage 
than United States bonds, when you consider the premium upon them and the 
small rate of interest that they bring. The men who make their fortunes by 
large and extortionate jobs are not the men who invest in these securities, it 
seems to me, althougli I confess I know but little about it. 

It is true, as I was going to say, that the persons to whom I have just referred 
do draw semiannually their small income in gold; but, inasmuch as we are told 
that greenbacks are the best currency that we ever had, surely those who think 
so ought not to complain if they are paid in one that is not so good. But if they 
insist upon the injustice of the discrimination of paying the bondholder in gold 
and the laborer and soldiers and sailors in greenbacks, I trust that they will 
cease to find fault with those of us who wish to pay the soldier, the sailor, and 
the laborer in the same coin that is paid to the bondholder. I repeat, I do not be- 
lieve that the classification is a correct one. I do not believe that any such dis- 
tinction exists in tliis country as that which places all the capitalists on one 
side and all the producing classes on the other. It is impossible that it sliould 
be so in a country of institutions like ours. Sir, property is too shifting, for- 
tunes are too mutable here, to organize society upon any such basis. In a few 
years, by industry and energy, men who are laborers become capitalists; while 
those who were capitalists become in the mutations of fortune and the laws 
of trade among the class of laborers. There is not a citizen of this great 
Republic who can ever vote against the laboring classes of this country without 
striking a cruel Mow at the interests of some of his own descendants, who are 
destined in the course of human events to swell the ranks of the laborers of this 
country; nor, on the other hand, can any man cast a vote against the capital 
class of this country that will not throw obstructions in the way of his own 
posterity. 

I cannot forget one thing: that we of the South at least owe much of the suc- 
cess of the opposition which has been made to the repressive policy of this gov- 
ernment to the conservative influence which capital has exerted in the politics of 
this country. But for that, I do not know that Mississippi and Alabama and 
Arkansas and Florida would not this day be tinder the iron rule of the force bills 
which were defeated but a few years ago. Much has been said about the city 
of New York. New York City has been most generally Democratic, and she has 
often stood by the South when popular majorities elsewhere were hostile. 

Sir, I again insist that it cannot be maintained that any such distinction exists 
between the two classes in this country, or that it ever did exist. Sir, where 
bave the commercial class and the planting class of the South been in every 
struggle in which the interests of labor were concerned? In the Revolutionary 
War, to what class did John Hancock, of Massachusetts, and Charles Carroll, of 
Maryland, and George Washington, of Virginia, belong? What did they say in 
the Declaration of Independence? "We mutually pledge to each other our lives, 
our forfinirn, and our sacred honor." Did they risk fortune or life grudgingly 
because the success of their cause was to raise the great body of their laboring 
fellow-countrymen to a freer and broader and higher life? ^^Iio in 1812 defied 
the power of England, in all her might, to protect the humblest citizen who by 
his labor contributed to our wealth and to our glory? Sir, where will you find 
the champions of free trade, the opponents of extravagant taxation, the steady 
opponents of moneyed monopolies and the speculations of those who are not 
capitalists btit who by Congi-essional plunder seek to make themselves capital- 
ists? Who but the Democratic representatives of every class in this country — 
the farmers of the West, the merchants of the North, and the planters of the 
South? 

Why, sir, were not the planters of the South, at the time they were denounced 
as bloated slaveholders, as an effrtr aristocracy, always considered as the sure 
allies of the Democracy of the North? They stood always by the laboring classes 
of the North, and. with Jefferson and Madison and Jackson and Polk as Presi- 



APPENDIX, NO. 1". 717 

dents, always kept the power of capital from Interlacing itself with the powers 
of gov^ernment; and whatever else may be laid to their charge, they maintained 
their fidelity to the interests of the laboring classes of the North down to the 
very time of the extinction of their influence in this government. I say this be- 
cause I speak of what I have witnessed. I was here amid the closing scenes of 
that influence. One of them I can never forget. I remember heaving on this 
floor the then distinguished Senator from New York [Mr. Seward], who has 
even become more conspicuous in the more eventful times which have come 
since, declare that the power had departed from the South; that the scepter was 
now taken from her hand, and that henceforth the great North, stronger in popu- 
lation and in the roll of sovereign States, would gi-asp the power of government 
and become responsible for its administration. I am aware that I listened to 
him with impatience, and perhaps with prejudice; for it seemed to me that he 
spoke in a spirit of exultation that scarcely realized the magnitude of the task 
about to devolve upon him and his associates. It struck me that he spoke in a 
spirit far removed from that sadness and solemnity which I think always weighs 
upon the mind and the heart of the truly great man in the presence of a grave 
crisis of national life. 

I remember the answer that was made to him by a South Carolina Senator, 
Gov. Hammond, who sat near where my friend from Indiana [Mr. Voorhees] 
now sits. He was surrounded by a circle of Southern statesmen whom no fu- 
ture generations will see surpassed in ability or purity, be the glory of our 
growth, as I trust it will be. unrivaled in the history of nations. There was 
James M. Mason; the square and massive simplicity of whose character and purity 
stands monumental in our annals. There was his accomplished colleague. Rob- 
ert M. T. Hunter, whose clear and broad statesmanship found fitting expression 
in a scholarly eloquence that drew friends and opponents into the same circle of 
admiring affection. There was Slidell, with his shrewd and practical wisdom; 
and, near him. J. P. Benjamin, whose astuteness and skill and eloquence and 
learning have since rebuilt his fame and his fortune in that Olympic field of men- 
tal conflict, the great courts of Westminster. There was Robert Toombs, who 
never spoke without striking at the heart of big thoughts and kindling the ideas 
of all who listened to him. There was Clement C. Clay, the cultured student 
whose heart was the sanctuary of lofty feeling and stern principle. .There was 
Albert G. Brown, from my own State, who never had an aspiration not in synu 
pathy with the wants and feelings of his own people, who yet was never over- 
awed by their prejudices nor swerved from his convictions by their passions. 
There was another. Jefferson Davis— Mr. President, shall I not be permitted to 
mention his name in this free American Senate which has been so free to discuss 
and condemn what it has adjudged to be his errors? — one who has been the vica- 
rious sufferer for his people, the solitude of whose punishment should lift him 
above the gibe and the jeer of popular passion, but whose words wiH stand for- 
ever upon the record of history; not in defiance, not in triumph, but as the sad 
and grand memoranda of the earnest spirit, the lofty motives of the mighty 
struggle, which, however mistaken in its ends and disastrous in its results, wa5 
inaugtirated by those who believed it to be in the interest of representative lib- 
erty and constitutional government. 

Among these, and surrounded by others like them, the Senator from South Car- 
olina, with that noble presence which lives in the memory of all who ever saw 
him. addressed to his Northern associates on this floor the words which I have 
never seen in print from that day to this, but which I can never forget, and 
which, it the Senate will permit me, I will here repeat: 

"Sir. what the Senator says is true. The power has passed from our hands 
into yours; but do not forget, it cannot be forgotten, it is written upon the bright- 
est page of history, that we. the slaveholders of the South, took our country in her 
infancy; and after ruling her for sixty out of seventy years of her existence, we 
return her to you without a spot upon her honor, matchless in her splendor, in- 
calculable in lier power, the pride and admiration of the world. Time will show 
what you will do with her. but no time can dim our glory or diminish your respon- 
sibility." 

Sir, it is not for me to say what has been done with it. The arraignment of 
the Senator from Indiana [Mr. Yoorheesl is still before the country. There is 
testimony, however, by a witness who may be regarded as more impartial, a 
judge sterner than he.* I will read what he says; 

*Af.Tn:ijrer TTonr, in tlm iinprriPhnipnt triiil of Tiplkii^p. 



718 LUCIUS Q. a. LAMALt: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

"Mj- own public life has been a very brief and insignificant one, extending 
little beyond the duration of a single term of Senatorial office; but in that brief 
period I have seen five judges of a high court of the United States driven from 
office by threats of impeachment for corruption or maladministration. I have 
heard the taunt, from friendliest lips, that when the United States presented her- 
self in the East to take part with the civilized world in generous competition in 
the arts of life, the only product of her institutions in which she surpassed all 
others beyond question was her corruption. I have seen in the State in the Un- 
ion foremost in power and wealth four judges of her courts impeached for corrup- 
tion and the political administration of her chief city become a disgrace and a 
byword throughout the world. I have seen the chairman of the Committee on 
Military Affairs in the House, now a distinguished member of this court, rise in 
his place and demand the expulsion of four of his associates for making sale of 
their official privilege of selecting the youths to be educated at our great military 
school. When the greatest railroad of the world, binding together the continent 
and uniting the two great seas which wash our shores, was firished, I have seen 
our national triumph and exultation turned to bitterness and shame by the unan- 
imous reports of three committees of Congress — two of the House and one here — 
that every step of that mi.ghty enterprise had been taken in fraud. I have heard 
in highest places the shameless doctrine avowed l)y men grown old in public 
office that the true way by which power should be gained in the Republic is to 
bribe the people with the offices created for their service, and the true end for 
which it should be used when gained is the promotion of selfish ambition and the 
gratification of personal revenge. I have heard that suspicion haunts the foot- 
steps of the trusted companions oi the President. 

"These things have passed into history. The Hallam or the Tacitus or the Sis- 
mondi or the Macaulay who writes the annals of our time will record them with 
his inexorable pen. .'^nd now, when a high Cabinet officer, the constitutional ad- 
viser of the Executive, flees from office before charges of corruption, shall the his- 
torian add that the Senate treated the demand of the people for its judgment of 
condemnation as a farce and laid down its high functions before the sophistries 
and jeers of the criminal lawyer? Shall he speculate about the petty political 
calculations as to the effect on one party or the other which induced his judges to 
connive at the escape of the great public criminal? Or, on the other hand, shall 
he close the chapter by narrating how these things were detected, reformed, and 
punished by constitutional processes which the wisdom of our fathers devised 
for us. and the virtue and purity of the people found their vindication in the jus- 
tice of the Senate?" 

Mr. President, we. the succesors of these men. are here to-day. By a policy 
which is a noteworthy fact in the nineteenth century, we have come to mingle 
with the Representatives from the States of this Union in a common council for 
the good of this country. We come no longer as representatives of the capital 
interests of the South. We come not as the mere allies of the laboring men of 
the North any longer, but as laborers ourselves, every one of us and every one of 
our constituents taught the stern lesson of the necessitv of earning our bread in 
<:he sweat of our face. But. =ir. we come with our convictions unchanged as to 
the necessity of the laboring clnsses of this nountry being protected in all their 
rights and in all their interests, for when that class sinks, the entire fabric of our 
society must sink and crumble: but we come believing that they are honest, that 
they are patient, that they are self-reliant and true to their obli.gations. and that 
what it is their duty to do they will feel that it is to their interest to do. We 
have differed among ourselves uuon this great question, but of one thing the 
world may be assured: that no Southern Senator representing Southern people 
will give a vote unon either side of it w-hich is not designed, on the one hand, to 
protect the laboring classes of this country alike with its capital, or, on the other, 
that will not preserve untarnished the sacred honor of America. 



APPENDIX, XO. 17. 719 

Appendix No. 1 7, 

OUGHT THE NEGRO TO BE DISFRANCHISED?— OUGHT HE TO HAVE 
BEEN ENFRANCHISED? 

Symposium: North Amerimn Heview, March, 1S70. 

James G. Bi.aixe, James A. Gaufiei.d, Montgomeuv Bt.air, 

L. Q. C. LAMAR, Alexander H. Stephens, Thomas A. Hekdkcks, 

Wade Hampton, Wendell Phillips, James G. Blaine (Conchision). 

Mr. Lamar: The precision with which Mr. Blaine states his premises and the 
imimpassioned spirit in which he draws his conclusions renders the discussion 
whicli he proposes both possible and profitable. His statement itself deprives 
the issue of nearly all its difficulty and danger. He lays down with force and 
clearness his propositions: 

1. That the disfranchisement of the negro is a political impossibility under 
any cii-cumstances short of revolution. 

2. That the ballot in the hands of the negro, however its exercise may have 
been embarrassed and diminished by what he considers, erroneously, a general 
Southern policy, has been to that race a means of defense and an element of 
progress. 

I agree to both propositions. In all my experience of Southern opinion I know 
no Southern man of influence or consideration who believes that the disfranchise- 
ment of the negro, on account of race, color, or former condition of servitude, is 
a political possibility. I am not now discussing the propriety or wisdom of uni- 
versal suffrage, or whether, in the interests of wise, safe, and orderly government, 
all suffrage ought not to be qualified. What I mean to say is that, universal suf- 
frage being given as the condition of our political life, the negro once made a 
citizen cannot be placed under any other condition. And in this connection it 
may surprise some of the readers of this discussion to learn that in 1.S69 the white 
people of Mississippi unanimously voted at the polls in favor of ratifying the en- 
franchising amendment for which Mr. Blaine voted in Congress, believing, as 
they did, that when once the negro was made a free man, a property-holder, and a 
taxpayer, he could not be excluded from the remaining privilege and duty of a cit- 
izen, the right and obligation to vote. And I think I can safely say for that peo- 
ple what Mr. Blaine says for himself: that if the question were again submitted 
to their judgment they "would vote for negro suffrage in the light of experience 
with more confidence than they voted for it in the light of an experiment." 

I concur also in the second proposition: that the ballot has been in the hands 
of the negro both a defense and an education : and I am glad to find this important 
truth recognized so fully by Mr. Blaine. We might possibly differ as to the ex- 
tent to which the defense was needed, or as to the progress which has been made 
in the education; but enough would remain for substantial agreement. There 
can be no doubt that in the unaccustomed relation into which the white and 
colored people of the South were suddenly forced there would have been a natural 
tendency on the part of the former masters, still in possession of the land and of 
the intelligence of the country and of its legislative power, to use an almost abso- 
lute authority and to develop the new freedman according to their own idea of 
what was good for him. This would have resulted in a race distinction, with 
such incidents of the old system as would have discontented the negro and dis- 
satisfied the general opinion and sentiment of the country. If slavery was to be 
abolished, it must, I think, be admitted that there could be nothing short of 
complete abolition, free from any of the affinities of slavery: and this would not 
have been effected so long as there existed any inequality before the law. The 
ballot wr^s therefore a protection of the negro against any such condition, and en- 
roled him to force his interests upon the legislative consideration of the South. 

What I do not think Mr. Blaine fully realizes, or makes due allowance for, is 
that this sudden transformation, social and political, would necessarily produce 
some jar in its practical operation, and that its successful working could be 
effected only by experienced and conscientious men acting on both sides with 
good sense and good temper. Conquest on either side only complicated the prob- 
lem; its only solution w-as a sagacious and kindly cooperation of all the social 
forces. The vote in the hands of the negro should have been genuinely "a de- 
fense," not a weanon of attack. 



720 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

The proper use of this defensive power, and its growth into a means of whole- 
some and positive influence upon the character and interests of the country, 
could only be attained by the education of the negro; and I agree fully with Mr. 
Blaine that his practical use of the ballot was an important part of that education. 
I am willing to accept the present condition of the South as the result of that 
practical education. Will he? I say that the negro has been using this defense 
tor ten years: that in this time hundreds of thousands of negroes, born free, have 
grown to manhood under the experience of a political life as open to them as to 
the old white govertiing race: and Mr. Blaine himself asserts that education has 
been more generally diffused among the youth of the colored race than among the 
poorer classes of the whites — whether truly or erroneously we will not nere dis- 
cuss — and the result is that throughout the South the races vote together: that 
they have learned where their mutual interest lies; and that whom God has 
.ioined all the politicians have failed to keep asunder. * 

I have his essay before me. He denies that this is a legitimate result. He in- 
sists that the facts prove that the negro vote has been cheated by fraud or de- 
feated by force, and that the present condition of Southern politics is an unnat- 
ural result. I am willing to meet this issue on his own principles. I will indulge 
in neither invective nor denunciation. I will simply take the late government 
of South Carolina or of Louisiana, or of other States imder similar rule, and de- 
scribe it in language that Mr. Blaine may himself select. When he has told its 
history I will ask him whether he would willingly, as a patriotic American, de- 
sire to see his own State, or any other of the free States, reduced to such a level. 
I am fiot afraid of his answer, or that of any man who has been bred under the 
traditions of a virtuous civilization. 

Then I will say to him: This, it is true, is a painful result; but when you put 
the ballot in the hands of an ignorant negro majority as a means of education 
and progress, you must be patient while they learn their lesson. We of the South 
have borne all this, because we know that the reaction must come. It has come. 
The results which you see to be so bad the negro has seen also. He has come 
back to us with the same blind impulse with which a few years ago he fled from 
tis. He may be as ignorant a Democrat as he was an ignorant Republican, but 
years must pass before the ballot will have educated him fully into self-reliant, 
temperate citizenship; and what we of the South have borne, our friends of the 
North must bear with us. imtil the negro has become what we both want to make 
him. This is part of his education. By a system, not one whit less a system of 
force or of fraud than that alleged to exist now. he was taken away from his nat- 
ural leaders of the South, and held to a compact Republican vote. Granting — 
which I do not grant — that the present methods are as bad as those then applied, 
the fault lies in the character of the vote. It is not educated to free action, and 
we must educate it to what it ought to be. Take the history of the race, as stated 
by Mr. Blaine himself, and is there not progress, astonishing progress, when the 
material with which we are dealing is considered? Force and fraud have .jeen 
freely charged. Suppose it is granted. Could any one expect, did any one ex- 
pect, that such a tremendous political and social change — the siulden clothing of 
four million slaves with suffrage and with overruling political power — could be 
made without violent disturbance and disorder? Had any such change ever been 
made in any free State without convulsion? Was it to be expected that, when the 
capital and character of a State were placed .at the mercy of a numerical majority 
of i.gnorant and poverty stricken voters, it would present a model of peace and 
order? 

But all this while the ballot has been educating the negro. He«has learned that 
he was a power betweeti Republican and Democrat. He is now learning rapidly 
that at the South he is a power between Democrat and Democrat, and in the late 
election he made that power felt in the result. I would have preferred a much 
less costly tuition: liut, such as it is. it has been paid for: and if Mr. Blaine will 
patiently trust his own theory, he will find the ballot in the hands of the negro 
the best defense and the best educatoi'. But. as the South has been patient, so 
must he be patient: as the South has chafed ineffectually when that vote was all 
against her white people, so will he chafe ineffectually when it is now largely for 
them. 

In his perplexity over the sudden change in the vote of the negro, Mr. Blaine 
has forgotten that at this stage of its progress the negro vote cannot intelligently 
direct itself. It must and will follow some leader. Now. up to 1S7fi the Republi- 
can party, armed with all the authority of the Federal Government, supplied 
those leaders. They were strangers in the States which they governed. The 



APPENDIX, XO. 17. 721 

moment that the compact vote upon which their power rested was divided they 
abandoned their places, and in almost every case left the Stale in which ihev had 
ruled. Ihe great mass of colored voters was left without guides. In maiiv of 
the largest counties, where their majority was absolute, thev were not onlv"not 
organized, but there was not interest enough to print a Republican ticket. " The 
weapon of defense which had been given to the negro was thrown awav bv his 
leaders in their flight, and Mr. Blaine can scarcely complain if it was picked up 
by the Democrats. In saying this I do not wish to provoke or renew useless and 
irritating controversies; but Mr. Blaine's position is that not onlv the negro 
ought not to be disfranchised, but that such a question could never have sug- 
gested itself but for an illegal control of the negro vote by Southern Democrats. 
My view is that, while the enfranchisement of the negro was a political necessity. 
it could not be effected without subjecting the country to such dangerous polit- 
ical aberrations as we have experienced; that a wise man would have foreseen 
them, and that in fact they have been less than could reasonablv have been antic- 
ipated; that the ballot in the hands of the negro has been a protection and an ed- 
ucator: that with it he has been stronger and safer in all his rights than the 
Chinese have been in California without it; and that the problems it raised are 
steadily and without danger solving themselves through the process of local 
self-government. 

When Mr. Blaine admits that disfranchisement is imposible and that the ballot 
has been, in spite of all drawbacks, a benefit to the negro, he really proves that 
there is no organic question aitecting great national interests, but simply the 
subordinate question. How rapidly is the ballot fitting the negro for the full en- 
joyment of his citizenship, and what influence does his vote exercise upon the 
supremacy of one party or the other in national politics? This latter may be an 
interesting question, but not one which should disturb either a sound national 
sentiment or great national interests. I do not propose to discuss it. I am of 
opinion that to make the negro a free citizen it was necessary first to take him 
from his master. Then it became necessary to take -him from the party which 
claims his vote as absolutely as his master had claimed his labor. The next step 
will be to take him as a class from either party and allow him to differ and divide 
just as white men do. The difficulty so far has been that the Republican party 
desires to retain the negro, not as a voter, but as a Republican voter. Party pol- 
itics have been directed to keep him at the South in antagonism to the white 
race, with whom all his material interests are identified. 'WTienever — and the 
time is not far distant — whenever political issues arise which divide the white 
men of the South, the negro will divide too. The time will then have come 
when he cannot act against the white race as a body or with the white race as a 
body. He will have to choose for himself: and the white race, divided politically, 
will want him to divide. The use of his vote will then be the exercise of his indi- 
vidual intelligence, and he will find friends on all sides willing and anxious to 
enlighten and influence him and to sustain him in his decisions. 

The whole country has passed through a very painful experience in the solu- 
tion of this question, and no one can adeqtiately describe the bitterness of the 
trial of the Sotith; but she has borne it, and it seems to me that a statesman who 
loves this great country of which we are all citizens should feel that the time has 
come when a kindly judgment of each other's difficulties would bring us nearer to 
that unanimity of action which alone can aid the solution of a grave social and 
political problem. I was born and bred a slaveholder, born and bred among 
slaveholders; I have known slavery in its kindest and most beneficent aspect. 
My associations with the past of men and things are full of love and reverence. 
In all history never has a hea\T duty been discharged more faithfully, more con- 
scientiously, more successfully, than by the slaveholders of the South. But. if I 
know myself and those whom I represent, we have accepted the change in the 
same spirit. No citizen of this Republic more than the Southerner can or does 
desire to see the negro improved, elevated, civilized, made a useful and worthy 
element in our political life. None more than they deplore and condemn all 
violence or other means tending to hinder the enjoyment of his elective franchise. 
The South took him, as he was sent to her, a wild and godless barbarian, and 
made him such that the North has been able to give him citizenship without the 
destruction of our institutions. The progress which he made with us as a slave 
will not be arrested now that he is a freeman, unless party passion and personal 
ambition insist upon nsing him as an instrument for selfish ends. And I have 
joined in this discussion because I regard it an honest effort to remove this ques- 
tion from the heated atmosphere of political debate, and to ask the conscientious 

46 



722 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: JJIS LIFE, ETC. 

atlention of thinking men to a problem the wise and peaceful solution of which 
will be one of the noblest achievements of democratic civilization. 

Mr. Blaine assumes that the Southern States as a whole— differing in degree, 
but the same in effect— have through force and fraud so suppressed the negro 
vo;e as to make negro suiirage as far as possible of none effect. The statistics 
of election will show that the negro vote throughout the South has not been sup- 
pressed. That there have been instances of fraud and force I admit and deplore, 
but they have been exceptional. Take them all in the recent election and average- 
them among a population of twelve millions of people, and to what do they 
amount? The President, in reviewing the whole subject after these elections, 
did allege, and could only allege, that in all these States but seven Congressional 
districts exhibited results which were altered by either fraud or force. When we 
consider the fact that since the formation of the government there have been but 
few Congresses, if any, in which there have not been elections from all parts of 
the Union contested on these very grounds, and then bear in mind that at no 
time in our history, and in no other part of our country, has there ever been so 
keen and searching a scrutiny into the facts of election as that to which the 
South has been subjected, these exaggerated statements of force and fraud must 
be reduced to their real proportions. 

But suppose that the allegation which Mr. Blaine puts as the argument of those 
who advocate disfranchisement be true, viz.: that the present political condition 
of the South is practically the rule, not of a numerical majority of the whole peo- 
ple, black and white, but of the whites as one unanimous class; and let it be con- 
ceded fully that such a political condition, if it actually exists. Is an evil. What 
is the precise nature and extent of that evil? In the first place, it is not pre- 
tended that any of those civil rights of person and property that negro suffrage 
was intended to protect have been invaded or endangered. Indeed, this seems to 
be impliedly admitted, though not explicitly stated, in Mr. Blaine's article. The 
object of the fifteenth amendment is fully disclosed by contemporaneous debates. 
It was to protect and establish free labor in the South, in all its new relations of 
rights and interests, by giving to the emancipated laborer the political means of 
maintaining those rights and interests. Now, will any one deny that this pur- 
pose has achieved its fullest consummation under existing conditions? Is free 
labor anywhere on earth more firmly established, more fully developed, or more 
absolute in its demands (even for exag.gerated remuneration), and more secure 
and unrestricted in the enjoyment of its gains, than in the South? In all re- 
spects, negro freedom and negro equality before the law, securiLV of person and 
property, are ample and complete. To protect these, should they be invaded, he 
has the franchise with which a freeman can maintain his rights. He may no 
longer allow it to be used as a tool for the rapacity of political adventurers: but 
he is perfectly conscious of the fact which Mr. Blaine states, that his right to 
vote is to himself and to hi ; race a shield and sword of defense. 

The question then recurs (conceding, for the sake of argument, that in the 
South political rule represents not the will of mere numbers, but the intellectual 
culture, the moral strength, the material interests, the skilled labor, the useful 
capital of that entire section, as well as its political experience): Is not this re- 
sult exactly what the intelligence, character, and property of the country are 
striving to effect in every Congressional district in the Union, and is it not a 
perfectly legitimate result of placing the ballot in the hands of a population unfa- 
miliar with its use, and who are peculiarly susceptible to the influences which 
property and brains have always exerted in popular government? 

I anticipate the answer: it is, that the property and intelligence of the other 
sections seek to control the votes of the masses by methods that are legitimate 
and peaceful, while the Southern whites have achieved their power by means 
which are unlawful and unjust. So far I have to some extent, for the sake of 
argument, conceded the assumption that the negro vote has been subjected to 
the forcible control of the white race, but that I deny. Reference has been made 
to the great change which the election returns show in the negro vote throughout 
(he South. The phenomenon is easily explained. Let any intelligent Northern 
man review the history of the State governments of the South for the last ten 
years under Republican rule — their gross and shameless dishonesty, their exorbi- 
tant taxation, their reckless expenditure, their oppression of all native interests, 
the social agonies through which they have forced all that was good and pure to 
pass as through a fiery furnace, the character of the men (many of them) whom 
they have placed in power— and then say if such a state of things in a Northern 
or Western State would not have been a sure and natural precursor of a Republi- 



APPEXDIX, NO. IS. 723 

can defeat so absolute and complete that the very name of the party would have 
become in that State a name of scorn and reproach. Then why should not that 
result have oct-urred in the South? Are we to assume that the black race have 
neither instinct nor reason — have no sense, no intelligence, no conscience, no in- 
dependence; that in every Southern State the thralldom of the negro vote to 
party leaders, even when abandoned by them, is so unquestioning and abject 
that no amount of misrule can cut him loose from them or teach him the advan- 
tage of a more natural and wholesome political alliance? To reason thus is sim- 
ply to say that ihe negro is unfit for suffrage, and to surrender the argument to 
those who hold that he ought to be disfranchised. 

But this is not true. There are many honest, intelligent, and independent men 
among the negroes in every Southern State. There are thousands of them who 
own property, who cultivate their own lands, who have taxes to pay. and who ap- 
preciate their vital interests in good government. This change in his political 
relations which has been the subject of so much incredulous comment is the 
legitimate result of the experience through which he has gone. 

So far from proving his weak subordination to a hostile influence, it demon- 
strates what Mr. Blaine says: that the ballot box indeed educated him to undsr- 
stand his own interest, and that he has learned to use it as an instrument to pro- 
tect his own rights. To interfere with such a result because it does not square 
with the necessities or the ambitions of this or that party seems to me to be in 
direct contradiction to what has been suggested by Mr. Blaine himself. He says: 
"The one sure mode to remand the States that rebelled against the Union to their 
autonomy was to give suffrage to the negro" — leaving (I venture to add) to self- 
government the evolution of the proper remedies for whatever of evil or error 
may attend the working out of this grave and critical experiment. 



Appendix No. 18. 

THE EXODUS OF NEGROES FROM THE SOUTHERN STATES. 
Sjieech in Ihe Senate, June 14, 1S80. 

The Senate haviui; under consideration the report of the committee apiiointed to 
investigate the causes of the immigration of colored people from the Southern to the 
Northern States, Mr. Lamar said : 

Mr. Presidoit: I ask the attention of the Senate for a very few moments to reply to 
some of the remarks made by the Senator from Minnesota [J\Ir. A\'indom]. I do this 
with reluctance, because I am departing from a purpose which I had formed not to 
address the Senate upon any subject at this session if I cnuld possilily avoid doing so. 
Nor woulil I depart from that purpose upon this occasion but for two considerations. 

In the first place, tlie Senator from Indiana, whom I am i)rou<l to call my friend, has 
requested me to give my views upon the subject under dis<ussion, doing nie tlie honor 
to think that they will aid in dispelling the errors and prejudices with which j)ersist- 
ent misrepresentation has surrounded it. In the second place, if the extraordinary 
speech just delivered liad been intendeil to produce any impression or inlluence upon 
this bodv or to affect its legislation in any manner, I should have allowed it to pass 
in silence; but, sir, the words which the Senator has uttered tliis day do not die upon 
his lips; thev do not perish in the echoes of this chamber. They are indeed winged 
words; and where do thev go? Far hence, amid the great cities of the West, all over 
tlie broad farms and in the prospei-ous villages of that renter of the future [jower 
and life of the coimtry. And for what purpose? If, sir, one tithe of what he has 
said shall be believed," men and women bound to us of the South by the sacred ties of 
race, of blood, of countrv, and of a common Christianity, will be led to believe that 
over that vast section of countiy there is a population and a land in which justice ha,s 
no courts, religion no temple, humanity no home. 

But they go further. Charged with a poison more subtle and fatal than our own 
native malaria, thev are borne on the wings of the lightning to every brid<en hearth- 
stone in the South." The planter who in poverty and amid difficulties is striving to 
upbuild the waste i)lacep, where labor is the only salvation of tlie negro as well as of 
the white man, turns away in despondency, feeling that this burden of hate is too 
heavy to bear. The untutored and impulsive negro hears them, and waxes recklessin 
the belief that in the law, propertv, and order of societv there, he finds the agencies 
of his own onpression and degrad"ation. The slirewd oolitical adventurer, who once 



724 LUCIUS Q. C. LA.VAK: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

subjei'ted tliat people to all the suffering and oppression which corruption could in- 
vent and tyranny inflict, eatclies their sounds with joy, for they are to him a new hope 
for a new lease of i>lunder and spoliation. 

I do not oljject, ami never have objected, to the utmost scrutiny (provided it be fair 
and trutliful) into the affairs of the iSoiithern people, esjiecially in their relations to the 
black race; and whde I sliould not have asked such an investigation as this, 1 do not 
regret that the Senator from Imliana [^Ir. Voorhees] has called it forth ; and I feel in- 
debtetl to him, as tlie wliole country will, for the facts which that investigation has 
developed, ancl his fair and masterly exjiosition of them. 

I can add nothin<; to iiis argument, and will not detract from its force and conclu- 
siveness l)y any attempt to follow on tiie same line. In order that I may not I e nds- 
understood, I wish to assert once for all that this ujovement of emigration, whicli has 
been so faNely and so ridiculously styled the " exodus " of the negroes from the South, 
never hail any terrors forme, nor have I looked upon it with alarm or deprecation. 
If it be a normal movement of emigration giowing out of a healthful demand for that 
kind of labor at the North, and a healthful sufficiency of its siip]ily in the South to 
meet the demand, it should be regarded as a natural and vigorous jilay of the indus- 
trial forces of this country, fraught with no i^ermaneiit evil either to the country 
which they leave, the emigrants tliemselves, or the land to which they go. If it lie, as 
the Senator from Indiana has demonstrated it to lie in this instance, a movement in- 
augurated anil carried on Ijy comldnations and associations for political purposes and 
for party ascendency, in a great measm-e, while I would regret the injury suflered by 
the victims of the delusion, I should nevertheless think tliat there are benefits of an 
equivalent and compensating character attached to this movement. 

Sir, the exposure of these negroes to hanger and the ligors of a Northern climate, 
to the conflicts with the liostile forces of nature to which they are subjected for a 
bare subsistence, though painful and lamental)le to contemplate, will develop a force 
of cliaracter, an energy of wmII, and a spirit of perseverance under difficulties and 
misfortunes — (jualities which tlieir easy life in the genial climate, bounteous soil, under 
indulgent employers, of the South, has suffered to lie dormant. 

If it is good for those people to go, the voice of every patriot and of every states- 
man anil of every man whose heart is not callous to the claims of humanity will be: 
"Joy go with tliem." Even if they are deluded, the movement will still be an indica- 
tion of aspiration, of energy, of a desire to improve their condition, wlucli is always 
a hopeful and favorable sign of prot^ress in any peojile. And it is certain, if it is a 
delusion on their part, the movement will be of short duration; for tlie means of ex- 
posing tliat delusion are abundant and easily applieil. 

I was reading tlie other day a work upon the suliject of new departures in political 
economy, in which the author traced tlie causes of great revolutions that had lieen 
wrouglit in the methods of jiroducing and accumulating and distributing the wealth 
of the world. Tiie chief of these, he said, were the electric telegrajih and the apjilica- 
tion of steam to locomotive machinery; that tliey had brought the ports of dimand 
and tlie ports of supply all over the world into such immediate and direct contact as 
to dispense with the old instrumentalities of commerce, and brought producers and 
consumers into speaking distance. 

Sir, the same agencies are at work more powerfully and producing more striking 
results in the distnlintion of labor. Tliey are producing revolutions greater than any 
that have hitlierto been produced in tlie exchange of the world's commodities. The 
(juickness with wliich comniunication can be sent to different jiarts of the world is 
bringing laborers everywhere into direct contact with employers, so that whenever 
the price of W'ages is depresseil in one locality immediately a ileniand for labor is 
found in another and without the intervention or the aid of any associations, politi- 
cal, benevolent, railroad, or otherwise. 

Tliat agency is at work upon tliis very poin-t at this very time. Even now, while 
the Senator was reading his diatribe before this body, the planters of Mississippi, as I 
know well, are in direct (oramunicatioii with the emigrant laborers who are in Kan- 
sas and in Indiana; and they look upon those bodies of laborers as more accessible 
sources of supply, from w hich laborers can be obtained on lietter terms and with more 
facility than either Alabama or Georgia. While these gentlemen are negotiating and 
plotting the laborers and the planters face to face are talking with each other over 
their heads, and they have only to listen to the tickings of the telegraph to hear the 
deathwatch of their own departing schemes and opportunities. 

The Senator from Minnesota, confessing in advance the weakness of his case, en- 
deavors to shield his failure lieliind the paltry complaint that his side had not a full 
and fair opiiortunitv to be heard. Such a charge in the face of the fticts is only puer- 
ile and petulant. Admitting that the number of witnesses called by the minority of 



API'KSDIX, M.I. JS. 725 

the committee was less tluui tluit caUccl by tlie majority, an exiiiiiination of the record 
will !^how that in actual amuuiit of testiiiioiiy attc-iitivcly and iiatieiilly heanl, far more 
than one-half was from witnesses who avuwed their Kepnljlican sentiments and allilia- 
tions. The printed testimony amounts to l,riiiS paijes. Of that, the Democrats nccuiiy 
only 3GS pages; the Repnlilicans, 1,1">- ; the Greenbackers, ".I's and tlie lailroad men, 11'. 

Eleven of the witnesses which the minority called poured forth into this record 
over five hundred pages of their twaddle; and whatever of deficiency existed was 
amply made up by another species of statements which will strike the future exam- 
iner of thi-i record with surprise, but will not be, I presume, embodied among the 
valuable results of researches. They consist of certain very dogmatic assertions made 
by some of the gentlemen of the comndttee w ho seemed to have supposed that they 
were appointed to state fiicts, and not to inquire into them. Under the form of an 
interro'jatory there were a-ssertions of a very positive <'liaracter, to which the assent 
of the witness was invited or his denial challenged. The " facts " thus suggested are 
indeed the most startling and striking in the book, and nothing which any witness 
testified to equaled the statement that forms the jiregnant suggestions of the ques- 
tions which the honorable Senators put to the witnesses. 

But so for as the real testimony is considered, no one can read it with close atten- 
tion without coming to the conclusion that there was nothing in the condition of the 
States from wdiich this emigration proceeded to produce such a result as driving its 
labor from the emplovments in which it was so actively and profitably- engaged, and 
nothing in the condition of the States to which this current of emigration moved that 
invited such an influx of labor there; upon the contrary, that there was nuich in the 
pressm-e of labor upon employment in these States last mentioned, and the conse- 
quent depression of wages and want of employment, to discourage and rejiel such in- 
flux, and even to roll it back to tlie locality from which it started. It also, sir, dis- 
close^, beyond any question or cavil, that the emigration itself was in large measure 
one of those instances, becoming very frequent in modern times, of powerful com- 
binations entered into for the aggi-andizement and enricliment of their projectors, 
which by the magnitude of their operations can contravene for a time the natural 
laws and economic princiiiles which govern the proiluctinn and distribution of a 
country's wealth— combinations that never fail to result in mischief and disaster, as 
this one did, to all except those for whose benefit tliey were formed. The proof, sir, 
which the Senator from Indiana has brought together upon this subject is absolutely 
impregnable, and stands un-haken by tlie angry rhetoric of theSenator from Minne- 
sota, which, in dashing against it, has only foamed out its own imltecility. 

There is no doubt about the fact that the testimony which has been adduced is 
contradictory. Gentlemen can bring witnesses here who wdl swear whatever is 
wanted for the benefit of their p.irtv. It is not the first instance in which the records 
of investigating committees are made the channel through which falsehood and 
slander and cahimny throughout that section empty all their kennels of pollution 
upon the floor of the Senate. , • i j 

But sir, no man can read this testimony without coming to the conclusion heyond 
a doubt that this exodus, so called, or migration, of twenty-five thousand people (to 
put it at the bi-gest figure that tliey state)— an exodus from a country ot four million 
blacks— no one I say, can come to the conclusion that it was caused bv any demand 
for this labor either in Kansas or Indiana or by any oppression and suflering of 
laborers in the States from which they are coming. , ,, , ,, ^ iu 

I shall not here go over the testimony on one side or the other of these two theo- 
ries. I did not rise for that purpose. I rise to-day, Mr. President, to call the atten- 
tion of Senators, and, if necessary of the whole people, to the testimony of men_ who 
are not brought before investigating committees, men who are neither Republicans 
nor Democrats, men who give their testimony not with a view to a Presidential elec- 
tion or to party results in this country. ^ ,. , , ,• ii -D ■,■ u 

1 will take first the views of an intelligent Englishman, a member of the British 
Parliament, wlio has had great experience in the administration of atlairs in his own 
country, and who, having traveled through tlie United States, published for the 
edification of his own countrymen the result of his observations upon tlie relations 
of the black and white races here as compared with the relations of the same classes 
in the British colonies. In his work ent-tled M\ hite and Black: a ^ is.t to the 
Unite.l States," Sir George Campbell says: " I was, as I have there stated, led to look 
particularly into the relations between the black and white races m the Southern 
States, for the sake of the lessons that might be learned as bearing on our manage- 
ment of British possessions where white and black races arc; intermingled. 1 do 
not here speak," said Sir George, "of our great dei>endency, India where our sys- 
tem has been to rule both races by a government avowedly absolute and desiiotic. 



72G LUCIUS Q. a LAMAE: IIIS LIFE, ETC. 

In regard to that system, I am one of those to be judged rather than to judge others. 
. . . In the course of my tour I have had opportunities of conversing -nith many 
men of many classes (and quite as much on one side of politics as the other), -n-ho 
have liad the greatest experience of the blacks in various aspects— educational, in- 
dustrial, political, and other." 

He did not confine his attention to the statements of political adventurers and 
jail birds, and thus violated some of the precedents so faithfully followed in many 
investigations heretofore. " I am indebted to them for information given to me with 
a freedom, frankness, and liberality for which I cannot be sulliciently grateful." He 
goes on to say: " I have visited not only the towns, but the rural districts, of four of 
the principal States formerly slaveholdin;;— namely, Virginia, Nortli Carolina"— 
the very State that is now the subject of this investigation— "South Carolina, and 
Georgia; and it so liappened that t was in South Carolina on the day of the late 
general election. I have seen and conversed with the negi-oes in their homes and m 
their ' fields, in factories, in churches, and in political meetings." Kow let us see 
what he says about it. 

JIr. Telleii: When did he travel through the South? 

Mr. Lamar: In 1S79. He was prevented from going through Mississippi and 
Louisiana by the yellow fever. After some introductory remarks he makes this 
statement: "After tlie war the Southerners accepted the situation as few but Amer- 
icans can accept a defeat, and, instead of throwing up their hands and crying to 
heaven, sought to make the best of the lands that remained to them. It seemed not 
impossible that, the property in skves being written ofl:' as lost, the land might be as 
cheaply and efl'ectivelv cultivated by hired labiir,if the negroes could be got to work; 
at any rate, it was a necessity to get it cultivated somehow. The negroes, on the 
other hand, found that they muf^t work or starve; and the feeling between them and 
their former masters being, as I have said, not unfriendly, the matter was arranged 
in one way or another." 

Here is'what he says upon the subject of the labor relation of the two races to 
each other: "On small farms, where black men work in small numbers, in company 
with and under the imuicdiate control of their employers, they do exceedingly well; 
also when they work on their own account tliey do veVy well. It is only where they 
are employed in large numljei-s, under insufficii'nt sujiervision.as on very large farms, 
that they'are apt to take it easy and idle away their time, as is the case with most 
suili races. Not only," says Sir George Campliell, " is tlie negro labor excellent, but also 
there is among the Southern j Topric'tors and leading men ai'customed to Iilack laljor " 
—I call the attention of the Senate to this paragraph ; let it go forth and refute a thou- 
sand slanders— "not only is the negro labor excellent, hut also there is among the 
Southern nroiirietors and leading men accustomed to lilack labor, and not so used to 
whites, a disiiosition greatly to rely on black labor as a consei-vative element ; . . . 
and on this ground the blacks are cherished"— the blacks are cherished— "and pro- 
tected bv Democratic statesman, who now hold powiT in the South." 

He then proceeds to discuss the question of wages, and no one can read this book 
without seeing the precise accordance with the conclusions whicli tlie facts developed 
in this investigation will Ijring any fair and imjiartial mind to, whether you consider 
the rate of wages or the opportunities of employment or the cost of living or the 
security of person and jiroperty in that section. Here is what he says: "Nothing so 
much brings home to me the jioverty and lowness of living of our Indian population 
as to hear "these wages talked of as low; being, as they are, six or eight times the 
wages of a coolie in India, while food is scarcely, if at all, dearer. In truth, the 
negroes are very well oft'." Let me read you more: "More important than the rate 
of wages is the question whether the Idack laborers show any disposition to provi- 
dence and saving." I read this because it bears upon the single question that has 
been so much mooted — ('. c, the accumulations by the negroes of the South. Says 
he: "There is a good deal of discrepancy in the evidence on this subject. . . .It 
seems i>retty clear that providence is a"s yet the exception, and that the rule is a 
light-hearted way of sjiending their money as they get it." 

"Here is another important ol:)servation wliich he makes upon the suliject of the 
relations of laborer and landlord: ^ _ 

" Not only are lar^re farms generally unsuccessful in America, but in the South 
there is very great deficiency of capital to work such farms; and so it has come 
about that niost of the land is cultivated on a sort of co('i]>erative or Metayer tenant 
system. . . First, there is a mere cooperative arrangement under which the owner 
supplies land, seed, mule, implements, and all, and exercises a general supervision 
over the culture, giving the laborer a share of the crops rather than taking a share 
from him. Tlie laborer's share is, moreover, subject to deduction for food supplied 



AlTEyUIX, NO. IS. 727- 

to him uurinj,' the cuUivatini; sioiisoii. Tlien we have regular Metayer tenants, who 
themselves find the mule anil inii)lenient.s, the crup hcing divided with the land- 
lord; and again, many tenants who pay a fixed rent in cotton — so many bales— and 
a few (comparatively rare) who pay money rents. Sometimes white men rent 
land and cultixate with negro laborers, but most frequently the owner deals direct 
with the negro. 

"I have said that the cotton cultivation is suited to the blacks; it is easily carried 
on upon a small scale. As slaves they have learned to raise it. A single mule and a 
plow sutKce fiir the operations of a ^mall Jiirm. The cotton gives employment almost 
all the year round, especially at the season unfavorable to white labor. . . Al- 
though after the war the proprietors and the ex-slaves came to terms to carry on the 
cultivation, it umst not be supposed that the former slaves have generally remained 
w4th their old masters. In some cases no doubt this is so, but it is the exception. 
Not only have war and revolution caused considerable migrations, but there seems 
to have been a general feeling that freedom was not practically lealized till the slaves 
had left their masters, if it were only for a time. Both partii^s seem to have felt that 
it should be so; and it often happened that while remaining on quite friendly terms 
with their old masters, and even coming to them for advice and assistance, A's ibrmer 
slaves would prefer to cultivate under B, and B's slaves under A. Altogether, some- 
what migratory habits were set up, which the existing system of agriculture has not 
tended to diminish." 

So, sir, it seems that migrations were not only frequent in the South, liut were 
encouraged by both classes, emjjloyers and employees. He also directed his in- 
quiries to the subject of the acquisition of land. He says, speaking of the negroes: 
"They have become accustomed to independent labor and to raising valuable 
staples for the market. So far from neglecting tliese latter in order to raise a low 
and lazy diet, the common accusation against them now is that they cultivate the 
staples, which bring money, too much to the exclusion of food supply. I have heard 
much said of the folly of negro farmers in Imyiug Western corn and bacon instead of 
raising these things. This is partly the conseijuence of the system of cotton rents, 
which makes a large cotton cultivation obligatory; but also, I dare say, these people 
know by experience what ].)ays them best. At any rate, it is clear that they are not 
now inclined to lapse into a low style of living; their foult and dilliculty is just in 
the opposite direction. Unfortunately they live too freely and generously, and do 
not save monev to buv land, and make themselves independent, as they might." 
Yes, sir, well m'ay he say that thev might, if they would, buy land and make them- 
selves independent farmers. "Throughout the Southern States there are already a 
good many negroes (though very few compared to the whole mmibei) who cultivate 
Umd of their own ; and there are very many more who own houses and small patches, 
especially in the vicinity of towns," etc. 

He has already stated, as quoted above, why there are few in proportion to the 
whole numlier who have become landowners, showing the cause to be, not any 
difficulty in the acquisition, but in the habits of the negroes themselves. 

I next call attention to the statement of this enlightened observer which every 
Southern Senator and resident knows to he true: "Many proprietors in Soiith Caro- 
lina and elsewhere, far from thinking, as some of our colonists seem to think, that 
the best way to make sure of hired labor is to debar the laboring population from 
any independent place on the land, have followed a much wiser course, and encour- 




goes on and states how these parcels of land are allotted. 

Here is what he savs again: "On the whole, I am very agreeably surprised to 
find the position of the emancipated blacks so good, and the industrial relations 
between them and the whites little strained an<l difiicnlt. It seems tonie th.at 
the present situation gives very good ground of hope, and I am sanguine of a 
favorable issue. The position of tlie cultivators is such that they may well, with a 
little kindly aid, become indeiiendent farmers; and any man inclined to work 
honestly and well can earn sulliciently good wages. . . Supjiosing things to settle 
down peaceablv, as I hope thev may, 1 go so far as to say that,thougli nothing is per- 
fect in this woild, the American blacks are in a fair way of becoming a comfortable, 
well-to-do population to a degi-ee found in very few countries." 

Now, sir, how could this intelligent and observant traveler labor under such a de- 
lusion if the one-thousandth part of the falsehoods which have been poured into this 
Senate, in the shape of testimony before investigating committees, were not false- 
hoods but truths? 



728 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

" I tro so far as to say that, though nothing is jierfect in this world, the American 
bhick< are in fair way of becoming a comfortable, well-to-do pojiulation to a degree 
found in very few countries; a condition which may comjjare very favorably, not 
only with tlie Indian ryot, the Russian serf, or the Irish tenant farmer, but also with 
the Dorsetshire laborer. I doubt whether, on the wliole, a better laboringpopulation, 
more suited to the climate and country in which tliey find themselves, is anywhere 
to be found. The whites ccrtainlv cannot do without them; already the great draw- 
back to the Southei-n States is the want of that great influx of foreign population 
which causes the North and West to progress in a geometrical ratio. 

" My advice would certainly be to tlie Ijlucks in America, ' Stay at home, and make 
the best of an excellent situation ; ' to the whites, ' Do all yon can to keep these peo- 
ple, conciliate them, and make the most of them.' I am confident that this may and 
will be done if only political ditliculties and unsettlements do not mar tlie prospects." 

I may recur to this author upon another branch of this sulijcct if 1 have the 
strength to continue mv remarks. I wish now to call another witness to the stand. 
I know that Sir George'Campbell, if he were before this committee, would undergo a 
very severe cross-examination and be plied will all sorts of skeptica'] and somewhat 
derisive questions, as were the intelligent and honest gentlemen who were brought 
here to testify upon the state of things in that region. I proiiose next to call to the 
stand, not before this investigating committee, but before this whole country, a witness 
who occupies, among the religious communities of this country at least, a position 
as commanding as that which any other living man ever occupied in America; and I 
do not see what the minority of tliis committee will be able to do about this testimo- 
ny, unless they summon Bishop Simjjson before them, and subject him to the tortures 
of a cross-examination. Bishop Simpson, after having been on a visitation to the 
churches in the South connected with the 'Northern Methodist Church, said: "The 
general impressions which I received upon this trip were of a pleasant and favorable 
character." 

If that land was a scene of tumult and disorder and murder, if injustice and oppres- 
sion stalked through its length and breailth, would not this grand and_ good man 
have seen it, and would he not have cried aloud and spared not? He did not have 
his eyes upon the votes that were to be cast in the Presidential election; he had 
other and higher and grander objects. He is a man the motives of whose actions are 
God, triitli, couscience, and iiosterity. Now let us see what he says: 

" 1. I am satisfied that the South is grailually tint surely improving financially ; busi- 
ness is reviviuir, and everv indication points to a period of financial ease and comfort. 
This revival of business lias tended to soften and smooth some of the asperities which 
have heretofore existed. The peojile are more contented and happier; tlie commer- 
cial intercourse between the North and the South is constantly increasing; the people 
know each other better, and find less cause for unkindness and complaint. 

"2. While political difficulties have existed, and do still exist,_ it is evident to me 
that a day of greater safety and of more free expression of opinion is rapidly ap- 
proaching." 

I sliall not be aljle to read the whole of this letter. I find that my strength is go- 
ing very rajiidly ; but I will publish the whole of it, with the unanimous consent of 
the Senate, in my remarks. 

I invoke the attention of the Senator from Minnesota and tlie Senator from New 
Hampshire to these noble utterances: " I conversed freely with our intelligent colored 
ministers, and I did not liear from any one of them " — not oiu — " I did not hear from 
any one of //tp»t any expression of danger in his work. The only fears whicli I think 
need to be entertained are liy those" whose influence is supposed to be exerted in 
political directions." 

Wliat does he say about this? "Our white ministers are greatly disliked by some 
because they are supposed to exercise a strong influence over a portion of the col- 
ored population. Those who are unscrupulous toward the colored jieojile, as some 
there are in everv community "—well might the l.iishop have said " as some there are 
in everv commuiiitv," for where is the Senator that can rise and say that his commu- 
nity is free from such unscruinilous persons''—" either maltreating them personally or 
defrauding them of the wages for tlieir labor, regard our ministers with avereion, as 
being tlie friends and protectors of the colored race." 

Now here is his summary: "While I deplore all wrongdoing, and wdiilc I sympa- 
thize deeply with those who have suft'ered, vet I cannot but think that it is almost 
a miracle that even so much of (|uiet, good order, and kindly feeling prevads so soon 
after the total revolution which occurred in Southern society." 

Sir, put these just and charitable sentiments side by side with the ungenerous, un- 
just, and partisan outpourings that we have just listened to. What else does the 



APPENDIX, NO. IS. 729 

bishop say? "Antialavery as I always was from early youth "~aiul I call attention 
to tills — '' antislavery as I always was from early youth, lia<l mv friend asked me 
twenty years ago to exi^ress my utmost wish for the eoloied peojile, 1 sIkjuW not 
have dared to ask for so much advancement as has been made." 

Why, sir, think of it one moment. Here are people just liberated from slaverv.and 
invested with freedom and citizenship and suHVage 'and the right to participate in 
government. The world looks on with concern and misgiving at the experiment. 
Here an antislavery man from his youth, one who has indulged the brightest visions 
as to tlie future of tins race, comes forward and puts upon record that the most san- 
guine wishes of his heart are transcended by the actual result in the Southern States; 
and yet we are heralded to the world as a land of inhumanity and murder by gentle- 
men who have political capital to make! 

Now, sir, let Senators no longer declare that we, on this side of the Chamber, are 
defending wrong and perjury, and apologizing for lawlessness and murder, unless 
they are prepared also to hurl their denunciation upon the head of this venerable 
man. 

"That a race, comprising four nullions, should be changed at once from slaves to 
citizens " — mark it, sir, this learned and venerable minister of the gospel, recognizing 
that which these gentlemen refuse to recognize as having existence in the South, the 
citizenship of the negro — "should have not only tlie right to vote, liut also to sit as 
representatives in the State Legislature and in Congress, and yet dwell in the midst 
of their former masters, 1 should have thought would occasion convulsions of the 
most terrible kind. To me it is a matter of suri)rise that, at this comparatively early 
day after such a revolution, so little friction exists. It would have been impossible 
but for the general Christian sentiment of the people." 

What! "Christian sentiment" among a people who are whipping negroes and 
shooting them and actually dragging the rivers anil the ponds for tTi^ir dead bodies! 
"Nothing," says this grave and reverend preacher of the gospel, "could have pro- 
duced sucii a mirai'le except the general Christian sentiment of the peoiile and the 
calming and controlling power of the gospel of Jesus Christ." He continues: "To- 
day there is more enmity between the landholders and ruling portions of Ireland 
and its peasantry, though so many years have passed away since the union with the 
British Crown, than there is between the former slaveholders and the emancipated 
slaves. While 1 write this, however, I see that there is great room for improvement; 
and years will probalily pass before there is that protection of individual rights and 
that scrupulous regard for the interests of the colored people ^^ hich ought to prevail." 

I am not unwilling that every wonl should go ujion the record, nor is it necessary 
for me to controvert this last statement. We all have to learn and unlearn from each 
other on this subject, and we can do so when the subject is approached in a spirit of 
fair, calm, equitable, personal confidence, and not in a spirit of hatred and malignity. 

Though our peojile are proud and sensitive, smarting under a sense of injustice on 
this subject, they will neither resent nor disrespect wliat such a man may say in a 
spirit of Christian admonition and reproof. Now, sir, sujipose the bishop had been 
before that committee; how would these unprejudicerl utterances have looked by tlie 
side of that foul slush which has been poured upon them? I am not speaking of the 
remarks of the Senator, but of the testimony which he has rejiroduced here in this 
Chamber. 

I propose to bring another Witness to the stand. I pledge myself that every wit- 
ness that I bring here before the Senate •will comjiare not unfavorably with Avery, 
Ruby, Henry Adams, Langsdale, Home, Kennedy, and tlie other gentlemen whom 
you "have brought before this body, and for the tirst time, and it is to be hoped for 
the last time, before this country." I believe, however, that Eliza Pinkston was not 
invoked on this occasion ; but she was not needed ; there were other witnesses whose 
testimony would have put even Eliza to the blush. 

Now let us have the nest. Here is a sketch which I take from the New York Trih- 
une, of May 17, 18S0: 

"A Preacher on His Travels— Rev. Dr. W. F. Hatfield at the Washington SurARE 
Methodist Episcopal Church. 

"At the Washington Square Methodist Episcopal Church yesterday evening Rev. 
Dr. W. F. Hatfield told about his recent visit to the South, giving his ' impressions 
of the country ami the people.' His text was Numbers xiii. IT, IS; and some of the 
passages in the sermon were as follows " — 

I believe that Dr. Hatfield is a Reiniblican. I have beard tliat his sympathies were 
intensely Northern, and that for a long time after the war and before lie visited the 



730 LUCIUS Q. C. LAAIAB: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

Soutli liis jirejadices ajjainst that people were strong and deep. I believe that Bishop 
Simjisun also is a decided Republican. Now here is what Dr. Hatfield says: 

"Tlie agricultural and mineral resources of the South are immense. Fine farms can 
be bought there at prices so luw that almost any man can own one, and help can be 
obtained at much lower wages than in the North. Young men and those having 
large families, who with ditticuUy earn a living here, should l)y all means go South 
and buy farms." 

If that be so, if land can be got there upon which a living can be made so cheaply, 
why is it that these people are so opiiresscd? 

"It is a mistake to sujipose that Northern jieojile are not wanted there. Some are 
not wanted— those who boast a great deal; who think the Southerners do not know 
anythintr, and that all the learning and wealth are in the North ; "lio go down there 
to tell them that the Union soldiers whipped tbcui in battle, and that a black man is 
as good as a white man. Such are not wanted ; but earnest, industrious, enterprising 
men will l)e kindlv received. 

" In regard to the political situation in the South, so i;ir as my observation went, 
there is a great deal more agitation in regard to the coming i^lection in the North 
than in the South. The foct is, the better class of people in the Southern States have 
suffered so severely in the loss of their property and friends in the late war, which 
they Ixdieve to have been brought about largely through the machinations of jiolili- 
cians North and Soutli, that the very name of politician is offensive to them ; and the 
Ijerson bearing that name no longer occupies the position that he did liefore and dur- 
ing the days of the Confederacy. The fact is, that if fifty of the politicians in the 
South and a hundred of those of the North could be transported to Siberia or Botany 
Bay it would be one of the greatest blessings that could be conferred upon our coun- 
try ; for so long as these agitators, these restless and dissatisfied spirits, are in the na- 
tion they will keep the countrv in commotion." 

Mr. Teller: I should like to inquire whose communication that is. 

Mr. L,\.m.\u: Rev. Dr. Hatlield, of the Was"hington Square IMethodist Episcopal 
Church, New York, as reported in the Neii) York Tribune, of the 17th of May, 1)S80. 

"As to the condition of the colored peoi>le, I found them industrious, happy, and 
contented. Thev have all the work that they want, and are iiaid. liberally. I never 
met one among them who complained that his lot was hard, that he had to work too 
long, and that wa^es were too small. I never heard of a strike or i-evfilt or dissatis- 
faction between capital and l:d)or, and that is more than I can say of the North. I 
did not meet witli anv who talked ..f going to Kansas or the West; they were ail sat- 
isfied with their honies in the Atlantic States, and there they preferred to live and 
die." 

Now, sir, here is a report of the same sermon as made in the World of the same day. 
It has one point in it that I do not notice in the report in the Trilmne, and 1 will read 
it: " It has been said that there is now as much liitterness toward the North as at the 
close of the war, and that the people of the South do not care to mingle with North- 
ern men and women. This charire he contradicted, and said that, although he went 
there a strantrer, he never was more kindly received." Mr. President, murderers, 
cheatimr, fraudulent, deceptive oppressors of a meek and lowly race, do not receive 
such men kindly. " In conclusion he paid a glowing tribute to the Christian courtesy, 
public moralitv,' and patriotism of the people of the South." 

I know, sir, that I am accumulating testimony upon this point. I could bring just 
as much as these ttentlcmen have cited this dav, and I think that the quality of my 
witnesses is fully as good. In all that constitutes moral, intellectual, and social worth, 
thev certainlv will not suffer bv comparison with them. 

I'will read"next from Dr. Talniage, who is well known as a distinguished minister 
of the gospel in Brooklvn. He says: ., ,. , ,, 

"I had all tlie doors of inlbniiation opened to me. I talked with high and low, 
governors and water-carriers, clerirymen and lavmen, lawyers, doctors, editors, and phi- 
lanthropists, with the black and tl'ie white, old residents of the South and new settlers 
from tbe North, and I found that there have been the most persistent and outrageous 
misrepresentations in regard to the South by many of the correspondents of secular 
and religious journals, and bv men who, overbearing and dishonest in their behavior 
at the South, 'have had inforination given tn them that their company was not desir- 
able. If a man go South and behave well, he will be treated well. There is no more 
need of rigorous aovernmental esiiionage in .\tlanta, Augusta, or Macon, than there is 
in Boston or New York. Tbe i>resent disposition of the South has been so wrontrly 
set forth that I propose now, so far as I am able, to correct the stereotyped slanders 

concernina; it. ,-,,,■ r ii i i 

"First, it has often been represented to us that the South was longing tor tlie old 



AJ'i'i:.\Dix, yo. IS. 7: 11 

system of negro slavery. So fur fniiii that being true, they are all glad to have got iiJ 
of it. The planters told me that thev can eulture their lields with le^s expense under 
the new system than the old. A gentleman who had one hundred and twenty-live 
slaves before the war told me that the elothing and feeding of them, the taking eare 
of the aged who could not work, and the provision fur lielpless' colored chiklren, was 
an expense and anxiety and exhaustion. Now the planters have nothing to do but 
pay the wages when they are due. The families look after their own invalids and 
minors. So they all say," without one exception that I coidd lind. If at the ballot 
boxes of the Southern "States the <|uestion should now be submitted, 'Shall negro 
slavery be reinstated?' all the wanls and all tht- counties and all the States would 
give thundering negatives. They fought to keep it eigliteen years ago, Imt there is 
universal congratulation at its overthrow. Thank (lod! the North and Siiutli are at 
last one on that suliject; and this ell'ortof our Northern politicians to keep the subject 
of slavery rolling oil is as useless and inapt as to make the Dorr rebellion of Khode 
Island, or Aaron Burr's attempt at the overthrow of the United States Government, 
the test of our fall elections. 

"The whole subject of American slavery is dead and damned. I inquired every- 
where: 'How do the colored people work under the new plan?' The answer was: 
'Well, very well; we have no trouble. Just after the war there was the disorganiza- 
tion that naturally came of a new order of things, but now they work well. They 
work far better than Northern laborers that come here, because our colored [leople 
can better endure our hot climate ; and on a warm summer's day, at the nooning, they 
will lie down in the tield to enjov the sun.' Mv friends, all that talk aliout dragging 
the rivers and lakes of the South"to haul ashore"blai'k people, murdered and flun" in, 
though seriously believed by many people at the North, is a falsehood too ridi('ulous 
to mention in a religious assemblv. 

"The white people of the South feel their dependence on the dark people tor the 
cultivation of their lands, and the dark people feel their dependence on the white 
people for wages. From what I have oliserved here at the North of tlie oppression of 
some of our female clerks in drv goods stores, and the struggle of many of our young \ 
men on insullicient salaries, which thev must take or get nothing at all, I give as my 
opinion that to-dav there is more consideration and synjpathy for colored labor at the 
South than there is consideration and svmpathv for employees in some of the stores on 
Fulton Avenue, Brooklyn; or Broad wav. New York; Washington Street, Boston; or ^ 
Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. All the world over, there are tyrannical employere, 
and for their maltreatment of subordinates, white or black, they are to be execrated ; 
but the place for us to begin reformation is at home. 

"Another misrepresentation in regard to the South 1 cure when I say that they are 
not antagonistic to the settlement of Northern men within their Ijorders. AVe have 
been told that Northerners going there are kukluxed, crowded out of social life, un- 
recognized, and in every way made uncomfortable. But the universal sentnnent as 1 
found- it was; 'Send down your Northern capitalists; send down your Northern farm- 
ing machines; buv plantations, open stores, build cotton factories and rice mills; 
come, come riLdita"wav; come bv tens of thousands and by millions.' . ■ ■ 

"\cain, I have to correct the fmpression that the South is bitterly against the Gov- 
ernment of the United States. The South submitted to arms certain questions, and 
most of them are submissive to the decision. Why, sirs, I never saw more placid peo- 
ple, some of them with all their property gone and starting life at forty or sixty- years 
of ace. with one leg or one arm or one eve, the member missing sacrificed in battle! 
It is'simply miraculous that those jjeople feel so cheerful and so amiable. It is das- 
tardlv mean to keep representing them as acrid and waspish and saturnine and ma- 
levofent I have traveled as much as most people in this and other lan(ls,anrl I have 
yet to find a more affable, delicatelv svmiiathetic, whole-hearted people than the peo- 
ple of the South. Thev are to-dav loval and patriotic; and if a foreign foe should at- 
tempt to set foot on this soil for the purpose of intimidation and conquest, the forces 
of Brag" Geary, McClellan and Beauregard, Lee and Grant, would go shoulder to 
shoulder' the blue and the gray, and the cannons of Forts Hamilton, Sumter, and 
Pickens, 'would join one chorus of thunder and flame. . . . , ^ -1 

" This side of lieaven there is no more hospitable people than the people ot^ the 
South- and now I bring a message from all the States of the South which I visited, 
inviting immigration thither. The South is to rival the West as an opening he d to 
American enterprise. Horace Greeley's advice to go AVest is to have an addenda in 

" The South beckons you to come. Stop cursing the South and lying about the 
South, and go and trv yourselves the cordiality of her welcome and the resources of 
her m'ines, her plantations, and her forests." 



732 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: JUS LIFE, ETC. 

I a;^k unanimous consent to publish furllier extracts from this sermon. I could give 
other evidences jut^t as strong as those which I have read, but must discontinue these 
quotations for want of strength and time. 

The Senator from Minnei^ota, to show the cause of this recent movement of emigra- 
tion, so called, which if I am able I will discuss directly, goes back to a message of 
President Grant in 1875. I admit that Gen. Grant, witli the information laid belore 
him by the reports which were suljmittcd, sent that message to Congress. jS'o man is 
more isolated than the President of the United States from actual contact with the 
people whom he governs, and esiiecially was this the case with Gen. Grant when 
President. But why does the Senator go to Gen. Grant in lS7o? Why does be not 
take Gen. Grant's last utterances ui^on that subject? AVhy does he rake up that old 
message, when here, fresh from Gen. Grant's lips, are declarations that will confound 
him? 

Mii. Windom: The Senator will allow me. The message which I read from was m 
1876, the very last year that he was in the Presidential mansion. 

Mb, Lamar: Very well. I will give you a message from Gen. Grant now, in 1880. 
In resjionse to an address of welcome at Cairo, Gen. Grant, being introduced, spoke as 
follows (and if my speech has no other merit, it shall at least have this gem in it) : 

"Genilemen, Friends, and FeUow-cilizens : Alter an absence of seventeen years from 
Cairo, the point from which I might almost date tlie beginning of my late military 
career, it all'ords me great pleasure to ciime back, and, instead ot a camp, addressing a 
prosperous city, built up and devoted to the interests of peace. It has been my good 
fortune to have just passed through a Uttle bit of every one of the Southern States 
lately in rebellion." 

"Ever;/ oiie;" and in Jlississippl and Louisiana hS went through especially those 
settlements that were considered the most disturbed and the most violent on account 
of the murderers which are said to have "stalked unwhipped of justice" over that 
land. 

"It has been my good fortune to have just passed through a little bit of e\ery one 
of tlie S.iuthern States lately in rebellion; and it is gratifying to me, and I know it 
will be to you" — but he was n(jt speaking then to the Senator from Minnesota, other- 
wise he would have said, "I know that it will be disappointing to you, Mr. Senator" 
— "it is gratifying to me, and I know it will be to you, that in every one of them, 
scenes, decorations, and speeches were much the same as we see and hear to-day. 
The stars and stripes were floating everywhere. A great portion of the sjieakers in 
every instance were men who in the conflict wore the gray, and the speeches wluch 
they made show their jiresent devotion to the flag for which we fought, and which 
is all that we asked of them: that they should respect and honor the flag and become 
good citizens, and hereafter, if it should be assailed by a foreign foe, that they should 
unite with us as one people." 

Mr. President, whatever may be said of Gen. Ch-ant, he is not a man that uses words 
of duplex meaning. lie is no popularity hunter who, under smooth and honeyed 
phrases, conceals his real sentiments of antagonism. He would, if he had witnessed 
any indication of the things descrilied by the Senator from IMinnesota, have exposed 
it and denounced it with a frankness and terseness characteristic of the man. On the 
contrary, he speaks in this language: " From the assurances which they give I believe 
that they are sincere, and I hope that they expressed the sentiments of the great ma- 
jority." 

The Senator from Jlinnesota says that he does not believe in our sincerity as long 
as we vote the Democratic ticket. With Gen. Grant ujion one side and the Senator 
from Minnesota upon the other, what am I to do, and what are the people to do hi de- 
ciding such a i|uestion? 

"For, united as one people, united as generous rivals in building up our several 
States for the whole Vnion, and in a feeling of loyalty for that flag, we are a great 
people, the greatest nation in the whole world. To stand divided we are too nearly 
equal, man to man, to be a gi'eat and prosjierous )ieople. Let us liojie that there may 
be a genuine union of sentiment, a generous rivalry in the building u)) of our several 
States, and national pride above State pride. I had no idea that I siiould say so much. 
It was the remarks made to me that brought tias out." 

The New Orleans speech of Gen. Giant is as follows: 

"General and Citizens of Kiir Orleans: After an absence of .a great many years from 
your State, I am happy to return to it, and very j)roud of the reception which I am re- 
ceiving at your hands, and very glad that it is given by your citizens, irrespective of 
former relations." 

What! Ulysses S. Grant, the ex-President of these United States, feted and court- 
eii all over Eurojw, proud to be received by a band of assassins and cutthroats and 



twee 



APPENDIX, NO. IS. 733 

munlerers 1 Xo, sir; he was proud befaiise lie knew that there stood before him a 
people imbued with tlie sentiments of Ameriavn patriotism and faithful to the parole 
of honor pledyied to him at Apjiomattox. 

" The scenes of tlie war are now passed; we are a united people." 

Yes, su'; in spite of the efforts to estrange these sections and to cultivate hate be- 

•een them, we area, united people, and of that Union we all exclaim: "EkIo perjjilua." 

" I believe that if this country should unfortunately become involved in war, we 
will all wear the same uniform and fight under the same flag. [Cheers.] I hoiJe for 
New Orleans and this section the prosperity they deserve. What benefits this city 
benefits the adjoining section. This State is capable of producing millions of dollars' 
worth of sugar more than at present. I rejoice with you in the jirosperity you have. 
I am glad to hear that this city has been so nmch benefited by the improvements 
at the mouth of the river. AVliat helps you helps a large section of our country, and 
the entire Mississipjji Valley in fact. I wish Kew Orleans and the entire South in- 
creased and long-continued prosperity, belie^ ing and knowing that it is the bef t cure 
for disorders and sectional animosities. Industrious people are always happy and 
contented. Again, let me thank ynu, Jlr. Chairman and friends, for this kinrl recep- 
tion; and, in conclusion, I hope that the blue and the gray may never again be ar- 
rayed against each other. The past is gone. Again I thank yon." [Loud and con- 
tinued applause.] 

Why did not the Senator from Minnesota put these speeches in with the remarks 
which he made to-day? Wliy did he not let these words go to the broad fields and 
cities and villages of the mighty West, so that when those people should read ■what 
he and his witnesses said they might also read what Gen. Grant had said? I will 
tell you why. These words of Gen. Grant would fall in that country like the gentle 
snow sent to mellow the soil for the growth of peace and good will, while the Sena- 
tor's words will fall like the fiery snow of the Italian poet's hell, scorching and with- 
ering the returning feelings of love between the sections. [Apjilause in the galleries.] 

Now, sir, having shown from these witnesses the circumstances of peace, order, and 
growing prosperity in the South, the question is easily answered as to the cause which 
led to this so-called exodus. It was a movement concocted outside of the South, hav- 
ing no connection with tlie wants of labor or the demands of capital, but set on foot 
for the purpose in part to olitain jiurtisan ascendency in a Northern State; in part to 
diminish the basis of representation in the South in the api)roaching census; and, 
lastly, to renew the agitation of" Southern outrages " in the coming Presidential elec- 
tion. 

In view of these facts as developed by the testimony before the committee, I concur 
fully with the Senator from Indiana [Mr. Voorhees] ifi the sentiment that, while his 
State is ready to gis'e the protection of her laws to the black peojile who seek lirimes 
in her borders in the natural course of emigration, she will not tolerate a rush gotten 
up to convert her into a colony of colored votere for political ends. 

Mr. President, there is one jioint on which I differ with Sir George Campbell. He 
says: ";\Iy advice to the blacks in America would certainly be: 'Stay at home, and 
make the best of an excellent situation.' To the whites : ' I>o all that you can to keep 
these people, conciliate them, and make the most of them. I am confident that this 
may and will be done.' " 

I am not prepared to say to the blacks: "Stay at home." I am prepared to say to 
them: " Go forth, if you have aspirations to better your conditic_>n, and think you can 
do so by throwing yourselves into the conflicts and active competitions incident to 
the civilization of the North." , We know that for every one that leaves the South we 
sh.all have a white immigrant from the North better skilled in labor and more ad- 
vanced in intelligence and political experience. They are already coming to us from 
In(iiana and Kansas and Michigan, and are contributing no little to the material de- 
velopment of our country. 

Sir, movements of population possess qualities of interest in our country apart from 
that which now attaches to this mere local cjuestion. The activities of the present age 
are scientific and mechanical. Among the nations of the world this country is one 
of the most scientific and mechanical, taken as a popuLation. As a result from this, we 
are a vii;orous, active, restless people, abridging even human life by the attrition and 
w.iste incident to our jierpetual activities. This has been so characteristic of the 
country and so uniform that it ceases to be novel with us. We not only bring emi- 
grants here in excess of all other jieople in the world, but when they come they move, 
and the native popul.ition moves; and the whole country, if we look at it in refer- 
ence to this question, is a })o|iular ocean, whose waves are never at rest. This motive 
to movement and migration is the result of the growth of intelligence and mechanical 
development. 



734 LUCIUS (J. a LA MA J!: IlLS LIFE, ETC. 

Now, ill this tendency of the negro to emigrate, we have a hojieful sign that lie is 
catching tlie spirit of American energy and enterprise, and talcing on American hab- 
its and ideas; and there is tlierefore notliing in the movement which is not credita- 
ble to the institutions? of tlie country and creditable to the race that is immediately 
affected. 

There is another cause whicli lias contributed to the migratory tendency 'of the ne- 
gro. Tliere lias been some disappointment among the negroes arising from their fail- 
ure to reahze the sanguine expectations of acquiring homesteads and accumulating 
property. This has originated in the very nature of things, and is not chargeable to 
any poUtical consideration, nor does it reflect at all unfavoialily upon the people of 
the .South. The impression is sought to l)e made that their disappointment arises 
from inadequate wages and from cHshonest and oppressive treatment bv tlieir em- 
ployers. Neither is true. As a class they are the best paid laborers to-day "of the same 
grade in the world. Statistics will conclusively shcjw this to be the case. 

The negro is disappointed becauseof the condition of things intlie South that would 
exist in any other country under the same circumstances, and because of tlie disposi- 
tion and habits which tlie negro himself has acquired, the purchase of his sujiplies on 
credit. Getting credit so readily as he does, he runs that credit up too high, lie uses 
it too recklessly, as is shown by the very accounts which were iiroduced l)efore the 
committee. The traders who charge him extravagant prices for these supplies do not 
belong to the native communities there, whether of planters or small white farmers, 
native meichants, or the negroes themselves; they generally come from foreign lands 
or the North. From this habit of not paying cash for what they get, tliey do not really 
know how greatly their accounts are growing, and buy beyond their means without 
being conscious of the fiict. They are not clic-ated, legally "and technically; but they 
make needlessand extravagant purchases in the use of the license of credit with those 
crossroad traders, who would take and iln take the same advantage of ignorance and 
credulity in the white man. Ignorant and credulous people, white or black, are treat- 
ed in the same way at the North and the world over. 

Under such circumstances the negroes cannot but find ditficulties in acquiring 
homesteads or accumulating propei'ty. In fact, the race is yet in its infancy, and sim- 
ply going through its novitiate experience, an experience "that all jieople have to go 
through. The negro is really learning in a school tliat will ultimately teach him more 
effectually than academies and colleges, and in this connection the lesson is being 
taught to cjur iilanters as well. Their^ attention is being brought to this suliject, and 
conventions and associations are held for the purpose of protecting their laborers from 
the greed and avarice of the small traders. 

If this or any other cause, however, shall create a desire among them to try their 
fortunes in other sections of the country, there is no reascm to believe that ourNorth- 
ern brethren would find such a population, even in considerable numbers, a drawback 
or drag U]ion their civilization. They are physically an extraordinary race, and stand, 
either in work or play, exjiosure to any kind'of weather ; and I believe that tliey have 
already shown that they can endure the rigors of a Northern climate. Tliey a!e ex- 
cellent laborers in a certain sphere. It is true that they are awkward and iiifacile as 
agricultural laborers outside of cotton culture, and not adapted to food ]>roduciiig hus- 
bandryj but ujion public works or any large undertakings which require the supervi- 
sion of intelligent superintendents, there is not a more efficient class of laborers in the 
world. 

They are getting educated also — not as well educated as the laboring population of 
the North ; for our country is sparsely settled, and our people jioor from the desolations 
of the late war. We have not as good scliuol systems; liut in every State we have 
colleges and acailemies and schools, and the facilities for education are as good for 
the black as for the white, and they are under the influence of the Christian religion, 
as Bishop Simpson says. They are believers in it, and cannot be considered a bar- 
barian race or a barbarian immiu'ration, wdierever tliey go. I'or that reason I would 
not, as a Southern man, liinder their emigration, nor, as a Northern man, repel it. 

As to the emigration of twenty-five thousand from the South, why, sir, it is a drop 
in the bucket. There are more wdiite men that have gone out of ^Mississippi than 
that number, and many more than that number have come into the State since the 
war; and fully fifty thousand negroes have come into Jlississippi during the same 
period. This late movement, therefore, is no indication of deep, grievous wrong per- 
petrated ui>on the one side or great suffering on the other. Taking the most unfavor- 
able view of if, it will prove a state of things at the South precisely similar to that 
\vhieh exists at the North and in every part of the civilized world— "to wit, a depres- 
sion and want of prosjierity among those who work for wages and a desire to better 
their condition by summary methoil?, by abaiuloning the work in which they are im- 



APPEND J X, .\(). la. 735 

mediately engaged and embarking into otla-r and nt-w fields of enterprise and indus- 
try. It is no evidence of wrong and oppression; for, if so, wrong and opjiression run 
riot at the ^.'orlh, where every'day's paper tells of the strikes of lal)orei-s in larger 
numl)ers and of longer duration than that which has been signalized at the Sonth by 
the name of exodus. 

1 luive rfn account that I have just clipped from a paper before me of a strike of 
livi- thousand laborers in one connnunity, and the daily ]iapei-s come laden with no- 
tices of strikes and lockouts in that section. But a short time ago there w:is a strike 
which ran throu-li many great Northern Commonwealths; and it resulted not only in 
armed mobs, but in Ihe ixirning and pillaging of $-5,000,000 of actual productive capi- 
tal and the derangement of tlio entire transportation of the country. 

There is one difference in the treatment of these industrial ilisturbanees. All the 
literature of the North, all the reviews, all the philosophical iliscussions, all the aj)- 
pe.ds from the pulpit, all the harangues from the stump, and all the speeches from 
.senate i-haml)ers and houses of representatives, are against the strikers there, and in 
favor of the interests of property and order. .Sir, bring to bear upon the laborers of 
the North the .same enginery that is l.irought to bear against the industrial system of 
the South, and yours would t0|iple into irrcparalile ruin in a short time and carry 
with it the most precious institutions of society in that section; and the very fact that 
witli all these appliances against Southern labor only twenty thousand men have been 
jostled out of three States into two shows the firm basis ujion which c^tpital and labor 
stand in relation to each other in the Southern States. And what they teach in this 
way is true in point of iact. 

Tlu^ fact tliat Sir George Campbell refere to is one which cannot be argued around 
nor argued under nor argued over, and that is that the production of the South in the 
articles to which negro labor is directed is greater now than it ever was when tin y 
were slaves, and is constantly increasing. Lo(jk at the vast amount of the product of 
the cotton crop which constitutes the basis of your exchanges and commerce with 
the nations of the earth, and tell me if such a product of lalior applied to capital can 
be shown in any country where tumult, disorder, insecurity of person, insi curit}' of 
property, ami insecurity of labor iirevail. It is an ini]iossibility. The Senator from 
Indiana never uttered truer words than when he said that the very existence and 
presence of that man Stubbleiield here was itself a refutation of all the charges against 
Mississip])i of oppression and injustice; "that he is a great fact that could not have 
existed in his prosperous condition and honorable station but for the protection of 
equal and just laws." It is one of those facts which, like a single pulsation, rexeals to 
the skillful physician the condition of an entire organism, and enables him to say that 
" in this constitution there is no disease, no decay, no symptom of convulsion." 

Sir, no man, no laboring population, will plow the earth and work under a South- 
ern sun, and live upon stinted means, toiling from morning till niglit, and laying liis 
wearied limbs upon the bed of rest oidy to resume the same round of labor with the 
morning light, unless he feels secure in tlie result of every stroke with which 1 e smites 
the yielding earth. Security of property, security of person, perfect serenity of mind, 
and brave hopefulness of heart, are necessai'y conditions of a successful application 
of labor and capital, and as necessary to the laborer as to the capitalist. 

Sir, who can contemplate for a moment this vast production of the South, giving 
so large a projiortion of the exjwrts of this country, really the basis of our exchanges 
with the world, in the nii<lst of tumult and strife anil the conflict of races, and of 
fraud, force, murder, and arson? 

I notice, sir, that the witnesses who have been brought to prove the oppression and 
the fraud perjietrated upon the negro labor of the South have introduced what they, 
called " specimen contracts," showing the lien of the employer upon the product of 
the laljorer for his rent and advances; and long accounts have been laiil before the 
committee as those which were brought against the negro laborer and tenant. Sir. 
these accounts tell their own story. '\\'hatever may have been the relative status of 
the two parties at the end of the year, they show that during the entire year the 
laborer had command of such supplies as he and his family needed. They show, sh-, 
that he could get flour and meat and sugar and coffee and clothing for himself and 
his childi-en, and medical supplies; so that the total result pi-oves that, whatever mis- 
foitune may sweep over the planter, whatever losses he may incur by the venture, 
the laborer through the whole year has shelter, food, raiment, medical supplies, and 
the comforts of life, free from any contingencies and any misfortune, and an assurance 
of the same during the next year. 

But, sir, there is another fact connected with this matter wdiich is of profound in- 
terest. You may talk, sir, of the dignity of labor; but lalior can be put nowhere upon 
such a dignified and equitable basis as it is in Mississippi, where every laborer has an 



736 



LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 



indefeasible lien upon the i^ioduets of the farm, paramount to that of the landlord or 
the supply man, for payment of liis wages or of his reward. Happy the country and 
happy the people where the toiling man has in the law of the land a mortgage upon 
everything which bears the impress of his toiling hand! and the result is, sir, that 
in that country, so much abused, there is not a man, wciman, or child that suffers from 
the pangs of hunger. There is not a man, sir, who has muscle and a wilnngness to 
use it, even thougli he may be out of employment and out of means, who cannot earn 
his breakfast or his dinner or his lunch whenever he chooses to do so, and that in 
advance of the work to be performed. Say what you please, sir, that must be a happy 
condition of society ^\ liich is free from that leprosy of nations, chronic pauperism. 

The Senator from MinnesoUi has referred to the laws of Mississippi. I assure the 
Senator that there is no law in Mississippi framed with any reference to the end 
which he has intimated. He can say that by a certain sort of construction and ]ier- 
version such a result as he speaks of is possiljle ; no such results are actually produced, 
and no such objects were ever had in view by the Legislators of Mississippi. 

In looking over this testimony, and seeing that this point was made in regard to the 
statutes of Mississippi, I took occasion to examine the Code of Minnesota, to comjiare 
it with that of my own State. I must confess that in going over that code I found it 
admirable in all of its provisions. I could find no fault with it as a code of laws. I 
pronounce it "simply perfect in its own resource," and the gentleman is beyond the 
reach of jny retort on this suliject. I can say, however, that I take as much pride 
in whatever honors his State as he does himself. At the .same time there are some 
things wliich, under the perverting criticism that the Senator has applied to the stat- 
utes of Mississippi, would render his State an unfit place for negro immigration. 

Wiiy, sir, under the Code of INIinnesota whoever cuts down or in any way injures a 
tree growing upon the private lot of another, or carries away any wood from such lot, 
is i)unishable with ninety days' imprisonment or |100 fine. If he should take fruit 
of any kind from an orchard in another man's inclosure, he is subject to two months' 
imprisonment and a fine of ^■SO. If he cuts down a tree, if one of our negroes slmuld 
go in there shivering with cold, and should do what he always does in Jlississippi — 
take enough fuel to warm himself and little ones — he would be indictable and punish- 
able witli line and imprisonment. 

Now, sir, if I were to follow the style of the Senator's criticism of Mississippi stat- 
utes, I could show that these laws of Minnesota would produce a sad havoc among 
our negroes emigrating there, accustomed as they are to helping themselves to the 
fruits and fuel of their employers and landlords. 

Mr. President, the Senator is simply mistaken. The people of IMississippi are not 
the people he tlnnks them. If he will examine the statistics of 1S70, the Sen.ator will 
be surprised that of all the States in this I'nion there are but few, )ierha|is not any, 
that show a larger proportion of people above the age of ten years actually engaged 
in productive industry than in Mississippi. Here are the figures: 



States. 


d 

C 


s 1 

= 1 S 


ill 

II 3 

i " 3 


Is 

- D 

ti 




990,992 

484,471 

600,247 

39,864 

537,464 

125,015 

187,748 

1,184,109 

2,539,891 

1,680,637 

1,194.020 

364,399 

1,321,011 

726,915 

626.915 

780,894 

1,457,351 

1,1,84,059 

439,706 

827,922 

1,721,295 

122,993 

42.491 

318,300 

906,096 


700,802 
341,737 
430,444 
30,340 
425,890 
,92,580 
131,119 
835,929 

1,809,606 

1,197,936 
837,959 
258,051 
930,136 
620.392 
493,.847 
675,439 

1,1(».066 
873,703 
305,668 
581,206 

1,205,568 

88,265 

36,655 

260,420 

0.80.(»7 


305,258 
135,349 
238,048 
17,,583 
193,421 
40,313 
00,703 
444.678 
742,016 
459,369 
344,276 
123.852 
414,.693 
256,462 
208,226 
258,543 
579,844 
404,164 
132,667 
318,850 
.")( 15.650 
43,837 
26,911 
120,168 
296,036 


291,628 




109,310 




47,863 




6,462 


Connecticut 

Delaware 


43,653 
15,973 
42,492 


Georffia 

Illinois 


336,145 
376,441 




266,777 




210,263 




73,228 




261,080 




141,467 




,82,011 




80,449 


^lassjichusoLls 

MicllJ'^MM 


72,810 
187,21 1 


M illlirsMti 


75,157 




259,199 




263,918 




23,115 




2,070 




46,573 
63.128 


New .lersoy ■ 



A PI' EM) IX, SO. IS. 



737 



New York 

Noi'th Carolina ... 

obio 

Oregon 

Pcnusylvimia 

Rhode Island 

South Cai'olina.... 

Tennessee 

Texas 

Vermont 

Virginia 

AVest Virginia.... 
Wisconsin 



1,071,301 
2,eG3,M0 

90,'j2a 

3,5il,i)51 

SIT,:).^ 

T0ri,B06 
1,258,520 

81S,57!) 

330,5.'d 
1,225,1(;3 

412,014 
1,054,«70 



S g 



:i,;i7S,95ti 

7(i'J,02(l 
l,y5;!,374 
04,085 
3,5'J7,809 
173,751 
.'•>03,703 
890,S72 
571,075 
258,751 
890,056 
308,424 
751,704 



l,4'.ll,018 

351,2911 

840,889 

30,051 

1,020,544 
88,574 
2G;1,3»I 
307,987 
237, 12i: 
108,703 
412,005 
115,229 
292,808 



SI 



374,328 
209,238 
397,024 

13,248 
200,051 

11,780 
200,054 
207,020 
100,763 

57,983 
244,650 

73,960 
159,687 



Let US examine some of the facts which this table demonstrates. Take the i^tate 
of Illinois, for instance ; a State wonderftil in its growth and development. Its popu- 
lation above tlie aue of ten vears in 1870 was 1,809,606, of which 742,015 were em- 
ployed. In Mississippi a population of 581,206 above the age often years was report- 
ed of which number 318,850 were employed in bread getting. But, sir, let Uh_ com- 
pare the Senator's own State with mine. Minnesota, according to the census of 18/0, 
had a population of 305,508 above the age of ten years, and but 132,6o, of them were 
emploved in productive industry. I do not desire to make a point m this connection 
against ^Minnesota, but only to show that, whatever else we may be, and m \vhatever 
else lacking, we are an industrious and hard-working pcojile, which we would not be 
and could not be, unless we were secure in the enjoyment of the fruits of our labor. 

I sulnnit another suggestive fact for the consideration of the Senator Irom iMiune- 
sota. From the Report on Labor in Europe and America, by Kdward \oung, t liiet 
of the United States Bureau of Statistics, pages 745, 746, and 747, the following figures 
are obtained in relation to the average daily wages paid mechanics in tlie State ot 
Minnesota and Mississippi in 1870 and in 1874: 



Occupations. 



Blacksmiths..., 

^lasons 

Carpenters , 

Painters 

Plasterers 

Shoemakers.... 

Tailors 

Tanners 

Tinsmiths 

Wheehvrigrhts, 



■113 08 
3 69 
2 92 

2 92 

3 50 
2 66 
248 
2 85 

2 81 

3 n 



$3 00 
3 00 

2 50 

3 00 



2 50 
2 50 



.Mississippi 



f3 00 
3 00 

2 60 

3 00 
3 CO 



It is almost impossible to make anv estimate in regard to the wages of field hands 
in Mississippi, for the reason that all hands are employed by the year, and work tor a 
certain portion of the crop. Thev are all, however, provided with houses, fuel, water, 
land for kitchen gardens, etc., free of charge; and inasmuch as tlie employer usually 
furnishes team, implements, seed, etc., and a<lvanccs supplies, the laborer is certain 
of at least making a living for the entire year, while the chances of actual loss are all 
incurred by the emplover. , . , v n i ..„ 

The Senator has referred to the violence and intimidation which he alleges ha\e 
been emploved to deter the blacks fiom the exercise of their riglits as citizens and 
voters The souml of martial music which floats to us through that ea-steru door 
most opportunely suggests a fitting response. If he will step to that door, he wi 1 see 
four Southern companies full-armed, uniformed, and equipped, indeed with all tne 
appointments of war, two of them from mv native State, Georgia, and one eacli trom 
North Carolina an<l Yirdnia, an<l presenting perhaps the most martial, gay, anrt 
gallant victims of oppression and wrong that his Senatorial eyes ever rested upon. 

The trath is, all these statements, so far as they represent the condition of things at 
the Soutli, are unjust and deceiving. The South is no such country as is represented. 

47 



738 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

I do not deny that there has been violence there. I deplore it, I condemn it. Re- 
specting these cases of violence, you will lind wiien you get dciwn to the bottom facts 
that they are generally jirecipitated by unscrupulous political demagogues and trick- 
sters, wlio inflame the prejudices and passions of the races for their own political pur- 
poses; l>ut these cases of violence no longer occur to any aiipreciable extent. 

The great trouble has been that the investigating committees which have been sent 
to the South, and have brought hither their reports, went with purposes hostile to the 
character of that people. Accordingly their entire social and political system has been 
uncovered to hostile eyes; every evil, every fault has been searched out as with a 
microscope and dragged pitilessly into view ; all that is good has been utterly ignored. 
Sir, no society on earth can undergo such a process of investigation as that to which 
the South has been subjected without l)ecoming a spectacle of shame. 

Sir, you may distort the most perfect specimen of human beauty, by searching only 
for its bleuushes and defects and looking at these through a magnifying and refract- 
ing glass, into a hideous deformity. 

Sir, the enemies of the South have pursued this course. Every act iif violence, every 
murder; every uprising of an angry mob, which has neither the head to think nor the 
heart to feel; every instance, every incident which can bring reproach upon a coni- 
nmnity, has laeen hunted out and magnified and nudtiplied and grouped together and 
presented to the world as the portrait of the South. 

The just and equitable operation of eijual laws; the adndnistration of justice; the 
constitution, safe in the alfections of the people; the collciies, academies, and schools; 
the busy hum of industry; the plenty that rewards the toil of the laborer; the wor- 
ship that ascends to heaven from thousands of Christian churches; the flame of do- 
mestic love, ever burning and ever pure upon the altars of hai>py homes, have been 
steadily ignored and concealed. 

And, sir, I say to-day with all the emphasis of truth that, if in the history of the 
last ten years the coming of peace has been lielayed, if in that time the good have 
been disheartened and the base discouraged, if the two races have not nioyed for- 
ward with the progress which was exjiectei.l toward a common prosperity, it is be- 
cause the Senators and pulilic men who wielded the powers of this great government 
and had the confidence of the mighty constituencies behind them have not risen to 
the level of their duty and opportunity to bring, as they could have done, rest and 
quiet and love and universal patri(jtism over this troubled land. 

Mr. President, I can pursue this subject no furtiier, as my strength is entirely ex- 
hausted. 

Appendix No. 19. 

Speech delivered January -5, ISttl, in the Senate. 

On the motion of Senator Logan to take up the bill placing ex-President Grant on 
the retired list of the army, Mr. Lamar said: 

Mr. President: lam favor of having tliis bill dispose'! "f, iind when it is called up 
for action I shall vote to place Gen. Grant upon the retired list of the army. 

Had Gen. (Trant at any time when he was general desired to lie retired from the 
command of the army, I presume tluit no one would have objected to the liberal provi- 
sion proi>osed in this bill. It is the policy, in my opinion the proper policy, which the 
government has adopted for its generals, its admirals, and its judges. It means tliat 
such officers shall devote their lives to the discharge of their great duties, and that in 
return the countrv shall secure them honorable and adequate independence. So far 
from objecting to the principle, I am willing to extend it. But the people of the 
United States did not give Gen. Grant the opportunity of retiring; they sumrnoned 
him to abandon his place of jirofessional eminence in oi'der to liecome President. 
Whatever niav be my opinion as to the political administration of Gen. < Irant, I do not 
think that ins cimsent to the ex|iressed wish of his country ouudit to deprive him of 
the provision which is secured to those who served in the army with him and after 
him. 

I would with great ]ileasure vote for a law by wdiich every President, upon closnig 
his admistratiou, should be placed upon tlie retired list \Yitii such allowances as are 
fitting for the rank of commander in chiet of the Army and Navy given him by the 
constitution. I think it eminently proper that a President should retire from active 
]H)litics, and equally proper that 'he should be able to live in quiet independence. 
The proposition that I see uryed in some of the journals and magazines, that an ex- 
President should bo given a seat in the Senate, seems to me anomalous. The Senate is 
the rei)resentative of the States. Equality of representation is guaranteed, and a Senator 



AJ'j'KXDix, yo. ?". 739 

not reprefienting a State would have no life under the constitution. Bnt I do not pro- 
pose to discuss any general jiian. If I would luive voted lo retire (ien. tirant at his 
own request from active service, if I would have done this after eiglit years' adminis- 
tration of the Presidency, I do not see why 1 should not vole for it now. 1 cannot 
consider this a question of any political consequence. It involves no breach of the con- 
stitution to pass it; it will be the violation of no constitutional duty to reject it. As 
it is presented, I am willing to consider it the expression of a popular wish that the 
general most eminent in a war which a majority of the American people ilo, as wo all 
know, regard as sacred in its motives and as important in its consequences as the 
War of the Revolution, should be secured an honorable conqjetence at the close of 
long and arduous service. 

Nor do I see any sectional feature in this measure. It threatens danger to no South- 
ern interest; it does not impair any Southern right; it ought not to be considered as 
wounding any Southern sentiment. 1 am willing to accept the popular appreciation 
of Gen. Grant as a great soldier, and acquiesce cheerfully in this method of its exjires- 
sion; but I cannot vote fir this bill unless the second section is stricken out. There 
are many grave and insuperalile objections to it which I will not liere jircsent 1 will 
state one. It seems to me to be in violation of the jirinciple upon which the retire- 
ment of officers rests. It interferes with the actual, proper administration of the ac- 
tive service, and will not by its omission in the slightest degree diminish the honor 
or justice of the position assigned. 

Without any reference to tiie principles involved in Gen. Grant's administration of 
the national government, without any reference to the merits of the strategy of his 
military canqjaign, I am in favor, as was done with those who had conqileted their 
service under the Roman eagles, of writing opposite the name of Gen. Ulysses S. 
Grant, " Emcrilus." 

Appendix No. 20. 

THE ELECTION OF OFFICERS OF THE SENATE; OR, THE REPl'BLK^AN- 
POLICY AND THE SOLID SOUTH. 

Extracts from the Speech in tlie Senate, April 1, ISSl. 

On the resolutions submitted by Mr. Dawes in relation to the election of officers of 
the Senate, ilr. Lamar said: 

Mr. President: An entire month, saving two or three days, has elapsed since the 
commencement of this session. The President of the United States called us together 
on the 4th day of ]March. We are here as a part of the treaty-making department of 
the government and also as a part of the executive department. AVe were called 
here for the purpose of adjusting our relations with foreign nations and confirnung 
appointments nominated by the President. This, and tJas alone, is the business for 
which this Iiody was convened. It is here in no legislative capacity, l)ut simply, I re- 
peat, as a branch of the treatv-making and executive department of the government; 
and yet, sir, tliough tluit long" time has elapsed, tliis body has scarcely entered upon 
the discharire of the Ipusiness wliich it was called specially to consider. 

This attitude of the Senate is an extraordinary one, and has no precedent in the 
history of this country. It is the result of a determination of thirty-eight Senators, 
aided liy the Mce President, not to allow the body to enter upon the lousiness which 
it was called to consider until it shall first disorganize the Senate as it now stands, and 
to reorganize it with reference to certain party ends, whicdi I will endeavor to disclose. 

I repeat, sir, that the announcement has been made tl}at tlie business for which this 
body has been convoked shall not be entered upon until certain officers of the Senate 
are deposed and certain other persons named in a resolution on the clerk's desk shall 
be installed in their places; and so determined is this puriiose that from day to day 
these thirty-eidit Senators go through the form of attempting to do what it is mani- 
fest they cannot do, and then persistently refuse to do what it is manifest they can 
do, wha't they were called here to do, what it is their constitutional duty to lio, and 
what they admit the pressing interests of the country require them to do. 

Notoniv that, sir, but if report be true— and it is nowhere denied— they intend to 
■ continue this state of things indefinitely. One Senator, the Senator from Pennsyl- 
vania [Mr. Cameron], declared that the accomplishment of this purpose liad become 
a mere question of endurani'e, and he proposed to sit it out. When another Senator 
upon this side of the Chamber, in response to that suggestion, declared that it was his 
purpose and that of his associates to meet that endurance with an equal endurance 
on this side, even if it should take to June or December— the end of the session— 



740 LCCIUS Q. C. LAilAli: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

another Senator, so intense and proseriptive seems to be this purpose, arose and said 
that he regarded tliat declaration of purpose by the Senator from Georgia [Mr. Brown] 
as a declaration which contained the very essence of revolution and of treason to the 
institutions of this country. 

Mr. President, this is a grave accusation— I will not say a dishonoring one, for the 
Senator uttering itdisclahned any such intention. It was certainly a grave reflection 
upon thirty-eiirht fellow-niembers of this body. If it was true, it devolves upon these 
thirty-eight Senators a terrible responsibility." If it be not true, how stands the mat- 
ter then with the Senator making it? I propose to analyze this proposition and 
to determine whether it Ije true or untrue. What is it? That thirty -eight Senators, 
one-half of the bodv, have determined that before the Ijusiness for w^hich this Sen- 
ate was called shall "be proceeded with certain officers of this body shall be deposed 
and other persons put in their places; and when notice is given that the thirty -eight 
Senators upon this side will not allow that to lie done so far as they can prevent it by 
a resort to the iiarliamentary rules of this body, we are told that it is revolution and 
treason in its purpose and character. 

Where is the element of treason or revolution in this action? I can very well see 
that if the Senate was disorganized, or rather unorganized; if there were vacancies 
in the offices, instead of being fully equipped and prepared to proceed with business 
as it now is, opposition to tlie tilling of those vacancies protracted to the enil of the 
session would be factious, unpatriotic, reprehensible; but such is not the case here. 
The Senate is fully equipjieil in every respect; its clerks are at the desk, its Strgeant- 
at-arms is at his post, and the pages and messengers are all alert in the performance 
of their duties. 

I can very well see that during a session if important appointments w^ei-e to be 
made or treaties to be negotiated, or if tither things were to be done, and a minority 
should announce its purpose that none of these things should be done until the ex- 
piration of the session, that minority would place itself before the country in a ].o- 
sition of factious partisanship; but Here nothing of that kind exists. It is simjily a 
proposition upon the one side by thirty-eight members, one-half of this body, that 
the whole Senate shall proceed to the discharge of the business for which it was 
called together, and which every Senator upon the floor admits it to be his constitu- 
tional duty to attend to, and which every Senator must admit is at this time of press- 
ing urgency. 

Mr. President, think of it one moment. We are charged with announcing a doc- 
trine replete with the elements of treason and revolution for making motions against 
which not even a parliamentary point of order will lie, treason and revolution for 
making motions witli reference" to which not even a parliamentary in(iuiry can be 
made. 

I shall not pursue this subject any further, sir. I proceed at once to address njy- 
self to the question: Are we. having the power to do this thing in accordance with 
the rules of this bodv and the principles of the constitution, justified in exercising 
that power as we have done? Upon the prima facie case, as the matter stands, to 
those who look upon it sinqil-,' as it ].iresents itself upon the face of our jiroceedings, 
the thirtv-eight members upoii this side must be justified. Their course is sustained 
by the unbi-oken usages of the body and also by the very terms of the proclamation 
which convoked us here. 

Then why should we not proceed in accordance with these usages and in conformity 
with the call of the Executive? AVhy should a resolution be put right at the tliresh- 
old of our executive session, and this'body stand balked and paralyzed so that it can 
do no business? Gentlemen t;dl us that a majority, a constitutional majority, thirty- 
eight members, aided liv the Vice President, wish to remove certain otticers and put 
others in, and that this"alone is a suflicient reason. They insist that when the ma- 
jority of the Senate determines to change its officers it is the dutv of the minority 
to allow it to be done, and that to prevent it is to fly in the face of the constitution. 
I cannot concur in this view. In the first place, you are not the majority in this 
Senate, nor are we the minority. We have as many votes as you have. The fact 
that it is your will not to proceed to the legitimate business of the session, but to go 
into this election, does not furnish a sufficient reason for us to succundi to your will 
merely because von are aided by the casting vote of tlie Vice President. I respectfully 
submit that, if so serious a dejiarture from the usages of the Senate is insisted upon 
with such infli'xil)le purpose, some good reason should be given for it other than that 
it is the will of the constitutional majority, especially when that majority is obtained 
by the casting vote of the Vice President. That reason has not yet been stated, 
unless it mav be considered as having been disclosed yesterday by the Senator from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Cameron], which I shall presently consider. 



APPENDIX, NO. 20. 741 

Sir, there is scmietliing else by whieli thirty-eight member? of the Senate must ha 
controllfil th:m tlie iniTe aiinouiueinent that such is the will of the constitutional 
majority. The frauiers of our constitution took a j,'reat step in political science and 
in tlie practical advanceinent of human rijjlits when they pmclaiuieil to the world 
and wrote it in their organic law that minorities should never oppress niajurities, 
but it was a still greater stop that gave nunorilies the right and the means of pro- 
tecting themselves against even the oj)i)ressions uf majorities. 

I admit that if there is any especial, overruling, <loniinating rea.son for this de- 
parture from the usages of the body these thirty-eight Senators on the other side are 
justified in their demand. But they uuist give the reason, they mu.st address them- 
selves to the great tribunal of public opinion ; for they will not be suslained by the 
mere declaration that it is the will of the majority, ami that it is treason and revolu- 
tion to oljstruct it, even though the means of that obstruction be the barriers of the 
constitution itself. 

What are \om leasons? We know what they are not. Tliis change which is' 
demanded, au"d for the carrying out of which the Senate has been kept here one 
whole month and its energies and its action benumbed, is not demanded by any con- 
siderations of civil servii'e reform (which I understand to be a great object with one 
school of Republican politicians); for tributes of praise and commendation of the 
efficiency and competency of the existing incundaents come from all sides of the 
Chamber. Then, so far as the competent and efficient equipment of this body is 
concerned, there can be no reason looking in the direction of civil service reform 
to justify this extraordinary action and the extraordinary delay which it has pro- 
duced. 

AVhat then is the reason why these gentlemen insist ujion subordinating the filling 
of the vacancies in the judicial system of the country, i if appointing ministers abroad, 
of perfecting our treaties with foreign nations, toth"e single and sole purpose of turn- 
ing out a few officers a.lmitted to be competent and efficient and putting in others 
whose com|)etencv and efticieucv is yet to be tested? 

What is the reason? It certainly cannot be in reward for distinguished political 
services to the party (which, I believe, is the doctrine of another school of Republican 
politicians!; for the most prominent gentlemen proposi'<l tcj be imt in that jjosition 
are men who have siu'ualized their talents and their activity in opposition to that 
party, not only in the last campaign upon which the Repulilican and Democratic 
parties met in conflict, but also in the preceding campaign, where the nominated 
candidate for the Secretaryship supjiorted other banners and other candidates than 
those under which the Republican organization of his State was mustered. Upon 
the contrary, in the !.)eginning of this debate a Senator, who avows himself lesponsi- 
ble for the nomination of one of these gentlemen n|'on this floor, announced himself 
not a Republican, hut an Independent. lie dei'lared himself to be a lielter Democrat 
than mv friend fronx Georgia [Mr. Hill] himself, but that he was an Independent, 
and would not support the Democratic nominations or Ije bound liy a Democratic 
caucus, although it ap|)ears that he is perfectly willing to be l.ound— no, sir, not^to be 
bound hv, but to biml in shackles and manacles, the Repul)li<-an caucus. So then it 
cannot b"e for the i)uriiose of rewarding political serxice that this extraordinary posi- 
tion, this extraordinary delay has been superinduced. 

The question grows in urgency. What is the iiressini; and all-controlling reason 
of public policy %• of public infl^rest that puts us in this extraordinary attitude of 
inactivity and "inaction? It certainly cannot be any great zeal in behalfnf loyalty to 
the Union. That is often a rallviuL' cry and a justification for many extraordinary 
measures. It is not proposed to jiut gentlemen out who were infected with the 
heresy of secession in order to put in others who have been distinguished for their 
loyalty; for, if I mist;d<e not, the title of one of these candidates to our confidence and 
suffrages, as presented by his sponsor on the floor, is that he was a captain of cavalry 
and did gallant service in the Confederate Army. ^ r, . ., 

I know that there is a distinction drawn, and repeatedly drawn by Senators on the 
other side, that, while they will condone and forgive connection and implication with 
secession and the secession movement, they will not do it, they will not grasp hands 
"across the bloody chasm," or any chasm, with any man connected with that move- 
ment who will not confess his s'ins, profess his repentance, and admit that he was 
wrong and thev were ridit; but, sir, that cannot be the motive here, inasmnch as 
the Senator wdio brings forward one of these candidates and avows his responsibility 
for hiin also avowed upon this floor that he was true to the Confederate (-■ause, did 
it service upon the plains of Virginia, and that be has no apologies to offer for it 
here or elsewhere. ., . , ,. , . ... . , 

Now, sir, while this stubborn, intense, inflexible, unyielding determination to put 



742 LVrirs (>. r. LAMAU: JUS JAFK, ETC. 

these gentlemen into otBce before any of the great interests of tliis country can be 
attended to by tliis body, evinces on "the part of these gentlemen a wholesome and 
salutary advance in liberal sentiments, it does not furnish, I think, an adequate mo- 
tive for the zeal, for the determination to subordinate every other great interest of 
the country to this single object. 

Then, sir, what is the motive? Wliat is the object? There must be something. 
What is it? Why do you not tell your reason for it? I challenge you, gentlemen ; I 
defy you to announce it; I taunt you to the avowal of it. It certainly cannot be, I do 
not believe it is, from any sympathy with the cause of that accursed doctrine of re- 
pudiation which all of you have so 'often held up to the execration and abhorrence 
of all the tribes of the earth. I know tliat no Senators ujion that side have any 
sympathy with that doctrine. They have alrcaily, those of them who have spoken, 
repudiated repudiation in the most unmistakable and emphatic language. 

Then, if it be neither civil service reform, nor the reward of political service, nor 
the condonation of service to the cause of secession, nor any newborn love of repudi- 
ation, what is your motive for holding this body here away from the discharge of its 
exalted duties upon a mere cjuestion of the distribution of a few offices? Well, sir, 
although not avowed, the true reason has been disclosed in one way or another. It 
appears that tliere was a schism in the Democratic party of Virginia. It also appears 
that the majority section of that Jiarty, the section that controlled the organization, 
did, in conjunction with the pulihc creditors, make a settlement of the debt of that 
Commonwealth acceptaljle to Ijcjth; that they stood for the discharge of public obli- 
gations and the preservation of the plighted liiith of that grand and gloriijus old 
Commonwealth. It aiipears that another wing dissented from the regular organiza- 
tion, raised the banner of revolt against it and against the public creditors of the 
State, denouncing the bill upon which they had settled as "a broker's bill," and pro- 
jjosing to settle upon other terms acceptable only to themselves. . . . _ 

I was saying that a division had taken place in the Democratic ]iarty of Virginia; 
that a majority of that ] larty, constituting its regular organization, had, standing upon 
the doctrine of inviolable public fiiith, settled the debt upon terms acceptable to the 
creditors of the State, and that a section of that party had bolted and raised the lian- 
ner of revolt against that settlement, and liad, by a combination with the negro 
voters of tliat State, taking them in large part away I'roni their Kepublican leaders, 
defeated the Democratic party and got possession of the Legislature. 

The ([uestion has been brought here in the distribution of these oflices of the Sen- 
ate, and we iind the Repulilican Senators,thirty-eight members of this boily, by their 
action ])roclaiming their readiness and willingness to combine with wliat the whole 
country calls the repudiating wing of the Democratic party in Viruinia. 

Now, sir, I do not charge tho^e Senators with any sympathy for the repudiation 
doctrines ascribed to that faction; but I do say, and I challenge contradiction, that 
they have proclaimed to the country that whenever any part or section of aparty 
shall bolt from the Democracy of a Southern State under the banner of repudiation, 
under tlie liauner of a refusal to pay the public debt of that State, the Republican 
party will — I do not say countenance repudiation, but in spite of it will — emlirace that 
repudiating faction, give it the strength and supjiort of its recognition, and clothe its 
leaders with the Jiiizes of national olfice and emoluments. 

The Senator from Virginia had liere just a year ago a brave, gallant, high-toned 
colleague [Mr. Withers], who stood side' by side with him on that ]>osition, which it 
so gratilied the Senator from Massachusetts to elii'it a public avowal of here on this 
floor. That Senator, who was my friend's colleague, went with him before the peo- 
ple on the issue, and they appealed to that peoi)le together. His colleague was a can- 
didate for reelection. He stood before his people, and appealed to them to hold alolt 
the character of the grand old Commonwealth. He told them that whatever might 
be their impoverishment, whatever the sacrifices they would have to make, repudia- 
tion would entail upon them still greater loss and embarrassment; that in the disre- 
gard of public obligations, the breach of plighted faith, the repaying of trust in their 
honor with perfidy and di<honor, they would turn their backs upon the noble quali- 
ties which are essential to the prosperity of States; while, resources undeveloped, en- 
ergies unemployed, vanishing capital would be their swift and sure retribution. 

But, sir, tho>^e appeals were in vain. The black allies of his opiionents rallied 
around the other doctrine, and he was defeated; but in this day of defeat I believe 
that he is sustained by a conscious rectitude which he would not barter for all this 
government's honors and all its wealth besides. 

"The Contest," said the Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Cameron] yesterday, 
" in which we are engaged is not simply to secure the officers and employees to party 
frien<ls, as the SonatiDrs on the other side pretend; nor is it solely a struggle of the 



APPENDIX, SO. 20. 743 

majority to maintain its right to control the organization of the body. There is soim- 
thing higher tlian and above all this." 

Well, that depends now upon the point from which you view it. "What eeeiiis 
heiglit to one man may seem <lepth to another. I^et us see what this higher thin"; is 
which the Senator froin Pennsylvania could not contemplate upon a deail level, but 
must look up to as sonietliinir above the importantbusiness before this.Senate. What 
is it.that is higher than the'business for which the President has called us together, 
involving as itdoes our relations with foreign nations and the supplying of this gov- 
ernment with its essential olhcers, agents, and employees? 

"There is something higher and above a!l this." Now hold your breath to hear. 
Let the Senate and the people listen to w hat has brought about this extraordinary 
contest in this Chamber: "It is the coming political contest in Virginia, The 
election of Col. lliddleberger to a responsible ollice in this body will be the best 
proof that could be given that for all true men who uphold the laws the Republican 
party has confidence, resjiect, and cooperation, ^^'e give our votes to that gentle- 
man "—speaking of Col. Riddleberger— "as an earnest that we are not sectional, 
and that we have no prejudices on account of old conflicts. Whoever is rightat^ the 
present time is our friend, and we are his. This, and this only, is the 'bargain ' we 
have to oiler to all om- Southern friends who will conic out from the party of reaction 
and grow with the nation's growth. All that we ask is that they shall stand with us 
in favor of securing to each lawful voter the ri-lit to cast one free and unintimidated 
ballot and to have it honestly counted. We know, and our opponents know, that if 
Virginia takes her stand upon that jilatform the solid South is a thing of the past." 

Here it is at last avowed. It is " the coming contest in Virginia " and "the election 
of Col. Riddleberger to a responsible office in this body." That is the true cause of 
all this contention, and it grins through the gossamer rhetoric with which the_ Sena- 
tor from Massachusetts has decked it. The coming political contest in Mrginia is 
the thing for which this Senate is here held inactive and prevented from performing 
the exalted functions with which it is clothed by the constitution and for which it 
has been convoked by the Chief IMagistrate of the nation; that you, the Rejiublican 
Senators, may organize this Senate of the United States with reference to the interests 
of a party campaign in the State of Virginia. 

This avowal of the Senator from Pennsylvania furnishes the confirmation, if confir- 
mation were needed, of the statement which I have made that this is a movement to 
ally the Republican party with any body of men wdiich will leave "ihe party of reac- 
tion," as it is called, and come into its embrace, no matter how much begrimed with 
the foul doctrine of repudiation or rca.ljustment, whichever term gentlemen may prefer. 
I do not mean to say that the Republican party means to adopt this doctrine itself; 
quite the contrary; but I do mean to sav that they intend to treat it as a subordinate 
issue, and no hindrance to their alliance with them, and are now seeking to confer 
the offices of this bodv upon men who are accredited by the leading Republican jour- 
nals of the country with allegiance to this doctrine, notwithstanding they may as un- 
repentant rebels avow themselves as having no apologies to make either here or else- 

Mr President, this is indeed a new departure initiated by Senators here, and I do 
not believe that it will result in success. I do n.it believe that the Northern people 
will sustain it. I believe that I know the public sentiment of the North better than 
the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Dawes] and better than his colleague [Mr. 
Hoar] ■ not that I arrogate immodestly to myself any superiority over them or even 
deny my own mental inferiority; but the costly experience of my people_ has con- 
Btrained me to studv the currents of public opinion at the North closely, intensely, 
and with anxious solicitude. The Senators are in it and of it,l3ut they do not see it 
in the perspective, they do not contemplate it in the objective, as I have found it nec- 
essary to do; and from a long and attentive observance of its indications, I say hero 
with entire confidence? that the people of the North, with all their complications of 
business interests based upon the inviolability of contracis, will not tolerate this alli- 
ance with repudiating movements in the Southern S;ates. I say, sir, that the senti- 
ment of commercial honor at the North will not stand it. I say that the scnsitiver.ess 
of the North as to the public credit of this nation will notabide it. Tlie combiiiation 
will be dashed to pieces, even though the shock of the blow should cause the Repub- 
lican party to totter upon its base. Gentlemen, say what you may, national hf-nor, 
national good faith, with all its vigor, cannot t;ike into its embrace the leprous body 
of State repudiation without becoming infected with the poison. 

Sir, with equal confidence I venture to predict that this movement will fail in tlie 
Soutli. The moral sentiment of that people is sound. The majority of the Demo- 
cratic party there is standing up for the obser\-ance of the strictest good faith m pub- 



744 LUCIVS Q. a LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

lie obligations, and those wlio would disregard them are sloughing off from that }iar- 
tyand seeking other alliances. Spewed out of its mouth, Kei)ublican Senatoi-s are 
snapping at and astounding the country with their convulsive ettbrts to utilize this 
offal. It is, sir, an attempt to bring the Republican party in the South into relations 
with this element such as it held to the carpetbag governments there, and to sul)sti- 
tute the one for the other, using the Federal patronage now where they used Federal 
bayonets then. 

The first experiment lirought untold suffering to the Southern people, but secured 
the Republican party no permanent establishment among the intelligent and respon- 
sible class of citizens in that country. The second will have no greater success. The 
same a])iiliances of Federal patronage ha\e been tried liefore, and have fiiiled. Wlio 
does not know that the high offices of this government have been held out to South- 
ern men as rewanls for political tergiversation? 

In the direful days of reconstruction, when every State in the South was a jierfect 
pandemonium, I heard a brilliant man from the North and another from the South, 
standing by his side, appealing to the young men of ambition, and of high and noble 
aspirations, to join their party, for the reason that it furnished the only avenue to 
honorable distinction, riches, and fame. A few were enticed by the glittering allure- 
ment, and are to-day bitterly lamenting their delusion ; but the great body of the 
young men of the South — the jirofessional men, the lawyers, the doctors, and the 
young planters and farmers — all hurled contempt upon the miserable alternative. 

They preferred to live a life of obscurity and poverty and to earn tlieir bread in 
the sweat of their brows rather than to rise while virtue', Imnor, intellect, and country 
were sinking. For ten long years they bided tlieir time in the trust that Ood, whose 
attributes ever side with the right, would again enthrone the right in triumph, and 
dispense its honors to the brave, the conscientious, and the tnie. " 

Sir, you cannot with the mere agencies of Federal power and pati'onage faliricate 
a party in the Southern Slates, not at least among that portion of the peojile which 
represents the highest, best, and mo>t controlling influences of Southern society. I 
do not mean to say that the Republican party may not obtain a footing among the 
class of people of which I speak. There are many conditions in the Soutli to which 
the princii)les of that pai-ty and its purposes and its genius ha\-c iiarmonious adapta- 
tion; but, sir, if you would lay the foundation of that jiarty tliere, you must lay it 
broad and lieep — broad in its sympathies and deep in the social and political and 
business life of the people. 

It cannot be superimposed from without ; it cannot come breathing rejiroach, denun- 
ciation, and appeals to the jirejudice of one i-ace against the other. In other words, 
it must dissectionalize itself 

Tlie Senator from Pennsylvania says: " We know, and our opponents know, that if 
Virginia takes her stand upon that platform the solid South is a thing of the ])ast." 

Mr. President, why should the solid South be broken, especially when it is to be 
done by the great sacrifice of principle which we think this coalition involves? Has 
not the Repviblican party the possession of all the departments of the government 
and nearly all of the great States of the North? Whence, then, tlie danger from tlie 
solid South? 

What harm has "the solid South" done to the prosperity and glory of this coun- 
try? It is l)ut a short time since it became "solid" by the cessation of the reign of 
force and l>ayonets. Take her history from that time as connected with this govern- 
ment, and show me wliere she has deducted anything from \our national security or 
abstracteil a single iota from your national pi-osperity. She I'ame here through her 
Representatives, fii-st as a part of the minority, and soon afterwards as a part of the 
majority in both liranches of Congress. She came at a time when your commerce 
was languishiuir, your agricidture prostrate; when mercantile insolvencies and bank- 
ruptcies were rushing like a simoon across this nation; when your currency was de- 
preciated; when the balance of trade was against you; and when, according to the 
statistics of your journals, three millions of tramps were wandering aimless and home- 
less through the length and lircadth of your land. The solid South has been here 
from that time to this; and durint: the entire period of the presence of her represent- 
atives in this Chamber and in the other House the world has heW its breath in si- 
lent astonishment at the progress that you, the country, have maile in all that adorns 
and fortilies and ennoliles a nation. Your commerce has i-evived; your agriculture is 
))rosperous; your manufactories are operating to the full extent of their cajiacity, the 
demand for their products far exceeding their abilities to supply them ; your currency 
is tlie best in the world; the balance of trade is in your favor; and all along this line 
of progress we find, according to the recent census, that the South in every element of 
prosperity is not far behind the foremost States of the North and AVest. 



APPENDIX, yo. 2". 745 

Now, sir, I do not pretend that tlie i>rcsence of "the solid Soiitli" liiUi caused this 
marvelous change in your prosperity; 1 would not presume to say that in the pres- 
ence of the honorable Senator from Ohio [Mr. Slierman], the late Secretary of the 
■Treasury, who was present in another department nf the government while "the solid 
South" 'was here, during all tlie pn igress of this marvelous national transformation; 
but what I do claim is that the presence of "tlie solid .South" in full force here in 
the councils of the nation, with her own chosen Senators and Kepresentatives, has 
not retarded the progress of our common country, has not abstracted from its pros- 
perity. I affirm the proirress of this nation in all tliat constitutes national glory ; and 
prosperity and honor, and the presence of the solid South in its councils, are facts 
that are coexistent even if they do not sustain to each other the relation of cause 
and effect. I say that its presence here has been at least no hindrance to the na- 
tional prosjierity, and therefore does not justify the great Kepublican jiartyof tins 
Senate in stepping down from its high pedestal of national honor to take within its 
embrace this ca^t-oft' element of tlie Southern Democracy. 

There is in the existence of the solid South and its presence here no such menace 
to any interest in this country as can justify or excuse the coalition here proposed. 

There was a time in the history of this country when "the solid South"— that is. 
"solid" as it is now organized— was not present] in the councils of this nation; when 
the men who are here now were proscribed, while reconstruction flourished over 
them; when the President, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the Federal judiciary, and 
the State governments were all in the hands of the [larty lepresented by the Senators 
on the other side of this Chamber, and "the solid South" could impress noneof its 
character, none of its intluence upon the action of this government or any of its de- 
partments ; when it was represented alone by the solid North and by the unscrupu- 
lous and irresponsible dependents of the Republican party from the South. 

Sir, will you have the picture of what this government was when "the solid South ' 
was not here? I will give it to you, although it was presented to the Senate on yes- 
terday bv the Senator from South Carolina [:\Ir. Butler]. A distinguished Republi- 
can Senator— clistinguislied for his learning, his judicial ability, his eloi|Uence, his 
hifh scholastic attainments, his devotion to the Rciiublican i.arty,and his intense, ir- 
reconcilable hostilitv to "tlie soli.l South"— has painted the picture of the period 
when this irovernment was not burdened with tlie hated presence of this accursed 
South: "My own public life has been a very brief and insignificant one, extending 
little beyond the duration of a single term of Senatorial office; but in that brief pe- 
riod I have seen live judges of a liigh court of the Tnited States driven from ofiK'e by 
threats of impeachment for corruption or maladministration." 

Since "the solid South" has l)een here, can you point me to five judges of the fed- 
eral courts that have been driven from their higli jilaces ujion charges of corruption 
and maladministration!' "I have heard the taunt from friendliest lips that when the 
United States presented herself in the East to take part with the civilized world_ in 
cenerous competition in the arts of life the only product of her instituti<ms in winch 
she surpassed all others beyond question"— no question about that; the one single 
thing in which om- government "surpassed all othere beyond (piestion, at that time 
when " the solid South " was not here, was in "her corrujition." 

I will read further: "When the greatest railroad of the world, binding together the 
continent and uniting the two great seas which wash our shores, was flnisheil, I have 
seen our national triumph and exultation turned to bitterness and shame by the unan- 
imous reports of three committees of Congress— two of the House and one here— that 
every step of that mighty enterprise had been taken in fraud." _ 

"Thesolid South" was not here when that shame fell upon the nation; anditseems 
to me, sir, that when men with this record fresh in their memories clanior about the 
dano-ers and the vices of "the soli.l South" their cheeks would mantle with shame. 

" I have heard in the highest places the shameless doctrine avowed by men grown 
old in public office that the true way by which power should be gained in the heput.- 
lic is to bribe the people with the offices created for their service, and that the true 
end for which it should be used when gained is the promotion of selfish ambition 
and the gratification of personal revenge." Sir, that tauiit^tonches no man on this 
side of the Chamber. " I have heard that suspicion haunts the footsteps of the trusted 

companions of the President." ,., „ ^, , v i, ^ 

One thincr is certain, sir, and that is that since the solid South has been here no 
such corruption has reveled in the high places of this government. I do not say ttiat 
it was her influeuce which has eliminated it; but I do say that contemporaneously 
and simultaneouslv with her presence here it took its flight, and I claim that she tms 
been no obstacle 'to the restoration of purity in the adniini--tration of your public 
affairs. 



74i6 LUCIUS Q. r. LAMAR; HLS LIFE, ETC. 

// A noted lobbyist is reported to have remarked that "since these infernal Democrats 
had gotten here to AVashingtun the lobbying bus^iness had dried up." Said he: "In 
the name of (iod, do you expect gentlemen of the lobby to live on oxygen?'' 

Mr. President, so nmch has been said about "tlie solid South," and so much agidust 
it as a justification of these extraordhiary comljinations and afliliations, that 1 pro- 
pose to go a little further into the subject. It is charged that by "the solid South's" 
allying itself with the I'arty that c institutes the minority at the Korth it seeks to get 
possession and control of the government, and to wield its i^ower for its own selfish 
purposes. Sir, if the Xorthein peojile cannot see for themselves the fallacy of this 
view and the unreality of the danger alleged, no argument that a Southern man can 
advance will avail anything. It is easy to see that if the Korth chooses to wield this 
government through the instrumentality of either yiolitical party it can do so and hold 
"the solid South" in an impotent minority, a minority as impotent in the Demo- 
cratic party as it is in the goveinment at this time. 

The idea that the South under any combination of parties will ever again obtain 
control of this government and direct its powers independently of the will of the 
North is of all ideas the most absurd and chimerical. The North is the majority and 
the dominant section of tliis country. The va<t preponderance of her population and 
resources will for an indefinite period control the national policy, whatever party may 
be in tlie ascendant. If the majority of the tlioughtfnl people of that section deem a 
change in the national administration necessary, they can make it without any rela- 
tive change in Southern power or iulluence. Six Northern States alone have a greater 
electoral vote than all the solid South, and all these States save one have given Demo- 
cratic majorities at different times within the last few years. Should these States for 
the time being choose to t;ike uj) the reins of the Democi'acy, all the South united 
could not impress its distinctive policy, if it had one, upon a Democratic caucus. 

But, Mr. President, it is not true that there is, as a distinct organization with a dis- 
tinctive policy, any "solid South " in this chamber or in the other. There is no such 
element here as a factor in legislation. You cannot point to any jiart of the legisla- 
tion of this country which rejiresents the views or the purpose of Southern Senators 
as a solid body. There is a greater diversity of sentiment among them upon every 
subject of national interest than there is in the representation of any other section of 
the country. I could give illustration after illustration. i\Iy frit'ud from Indiana 
[Jlr. Voorhees] this day stands in closer affiliation ui>onUie subject of the currency 
with the Senator from 'Texas than he does with any of his neighbors across the line 
of his own State. I could give measure after measure in which it will be shown that 
the affinities of political affiliation and legislative cooperation are in no sense of the 
term sectional in this Ijody, and that the Southern men exhiljit a variety and a di- 
versity and a fi-eedom and an indejiendence in their views and sentiments and actions 
which are shown among Senators from no other section of the country. 

There is one point, anil one only, upon which tliey are solid, on which tliey will re- 
main solid; and neither Federal bayonets nor Federal honors will dissolve thatsidid- 
ity. They are solid in defense ofand forthe protection of theirown civilization, their 
own society, their own religion, against the rule of the incompetent, the servile, the 
ignorant, and the vicious. 

I will now suljmit a proposition to the Senators on the other side on this point. I 
am not going into the history of the causes which led to a solid South; but I here 
challenge any Senator upon that side, with two exceptions that I will not name, to 
write fairly in his own language the condition of the Southern ].K-ople in any State 
while under carpetbag government. I will consent that he shall write the history of 
that government, the character of its officials, the nature of its administration, and 
the operation of its laws. I, say that I will consent for any Senator U]:ion that side of 
the House, with but two exceptions (whom, out of respect to them, I will not name), to 
write the history of the Eepublican government in the South, its nature, its charac- 
ter, its influence upon the hapidness and prospeiity of that people. I will agree to 
accept his description of it in his own language; and then I will submit the question 
to any tribunal in the world, to any community in the world, as to whether there is 
anywhere on earth a people who ought not to summon every energy, every man, 
every \\oman, every child, interested in the priceless and precious heritage of human- 
ity, to throw oil' that government and to keep united and solid to prevent its rees- 
tablishment. 

I said that I would allow Senators or any Northern man to write the history of one 
of those governments, giving tlie condition of it, and I would leave him to decide 
whether it would not justify the consolidation of all the social elements to get rid of 
it. I will go further, sir, and take it as they have already written it. Here is what 
one of them said while those governments were reveling in corruption and making 



APPENDIX, NO. 20. . 747 

the people of the South walk with unsandled feet over the burning marl of the hell 
which tliey had tliere organized: " For the l;ist few years the infamy and disgrace of 
certain Soutliern State governments liave l)een coni^lantly on tln' imieaire. There 
have been corrupt electors and corrupt elections; there have lieen corrujit legisla- 
tors anil corrupt legislation; there have been double legislatures, double t;overnors, 
double Representatives in this House, and double Senators year by year in many 
States; there liavo been bad men in tliese States, who have bought power liy whole- 
sale briljerv, and have enricheil themselves at the expense of the people by pecula- 
tion or open-handed robbery. Corruption and anarchy have occuined and possessed 
these unfortunate States." 

This opinion of the honoraljle Senator from Maine [Mr. Ilale], who was then a 
member of the other House, wlach does lionor to liis head as well as to his heart, is 
the opinion of " tlie solid Soutli ; " and if he were tliere instead of here, he would be 
a part of that "solid South," arrayed under tlie deternunation that anarchy and cor- 
ruption shall never again occupy and rob those "unfortunate States." 

I find that some extracts i'rom other s[)eeclies of Senators upon the opiiosite side 
that I bad collected have in some way been disturbed and mislaid. 1 shall ask per- 
mission to incorporate them in my leinarks unless 1 can get them here before I con- 
clude what I have to say upon this subject. 

Among these is the description of the Government of Louisiana under Republican 
rule by the present Governor of Ohio, Hon. Charles Foster, and also a gentleman from 
New Jersey, who has recently been nonnnated by the President for a distinguished 
foreign mission, and who by "his high and shining (|ualities will adorn any positiijn 
to which this government can assign him. They both descril>e that government m 
language stronger and more earnest than that which J have just quoted. ^ 

Gen. Grant also, in one of his messages deijicting the prostrate condition of the 
Southern people, said that he svmpatliized witli tliem in their prostrate condition, sub- 
ject, as they had lieen, to burdens of taxation without any adeijnate return. 

You sent your committees of investigation down there; aii'l while they would hunt 
up everything tliat could assail the character and stab the sensibilities of the South- 
ern people and pour it out here, thev could not belli stumbling over the corruption 
and the atrocity and the abhorrent'infiunies of the State governments which they 
were upholding. I recollect that there was a Senator from Indiana, now dead, who 
was upon one of these committees. His heart was full of prejudice against our peo- 
ple, but even he coulil not be blinded to the cruel oppression under which the South- 
ern people were writhing in agonv. Referring to the condition of the people under 
those governments, referring to the superincumbent weight of a crushing and devour- 
ino- tjixation, he says: " That is true of some of these States, I have no doubt. Had 
the Kuklux outrages been directed at these faithless public servants, the world would 
have been well rid of them and nobody complained." 

Mr. Cockrell: Who was he? 

Mr. Lam.\r: Mr. Pratt, of Indiana. 




and 

which is wholly incompatible with the theory of a downtrodden and oppressed peo- 
iTle which the Senator from Massachusetts represented the colored peoole ot tlie 
South to be. I will say one thing, and that is, that if you were to compare the condi- 
tion of the State of ]\Iississippi or Alabama or Georgia or A irginia or any other South- 
ern State in 18S0 with the statistics and history of its condition as prepared in is,t), 
vou will be forced to admit that there is not a nation on the face of the earth which 
in any two periods of its history exiiibits such a contrast in all that constitutes the 
strength of a Vieoiile and their prosperity. .-,,.,, i 

I have here a .lescription of the South as it now is. Here is what a reverend 
bishop of the Methodist Church (Bishop Simpson), closely allied w^ith the Republican 
party who had made a trip to the South as a part of his episcopal work, said. After 
traversing that country he returns to the Xortli and reports his impressions, but he 
sava nothing of a kind that sustains the denunciations of the Senator froiu Ma=siicbu- 
setts; he confirms no statement that there are men down there with their feet upon 
the downtrodden and op|.ressed; and nobody says so except prcju.liceil partisans 
and witnesses brought before committes to make false nnpressions. E" igbtened 
travelers from Europe and reverend clergvmen from the ^orth all coiitr l.u e their 
testimonv to the peace, the plenty, the order, the quiet, the ,.rosperity of both i aces 
and the securitv of the personal property of both races, black, an.l whi e. "e e is 
what that reverend bishop savs: " I am satisfied that the South is gradually but surely 



748 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAB: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

improviiif^ linauiially ; l)usiness is revi%nng, ami every indication points to a period of 
financial ease and comfort. . . . Antislavery as I always was from early youth, had 
my friend anked nie twenty years ago to express my utmost wish for the colored peo- 
ple, I should not have dared to ask for such advancement as has Ijeeu made." 

Here is the declaration of an antislavery preacher, a Utopian, benevolent mission- 
ary, whose every fiber was imbued with zeal for the cause of negro emancipation and 
advancement. "Ujion his visit to the Southern States, so mucli denounced after the 
solid South has gotten posse.-;Sion of that cimntry, he proclaims to the world that if he 
had l)een allowed to tell what he hoped in his brightest vision for that people it 
would have been ti-anscended Ijy what has been actually realized in their advance- 
ment. Now, withhold your denunciations from the statements of Southern men, and 
let them fall and strikethe hallowed associations that cluster around that man. 

Mr. Presii.lent, I am too much exhausted to detain the Senate longer. I have said 
nothing to-day that was intended to stir up any feeling of animosity between indi- 
viduals or sections. I belong to that class of public men who were secessionists. 
Every throb of my heart was for the disunion of these States. If that deducts from 
the force of the statements that I have made to-day, it is due to candor and to you to 
admit it. I confess that I believeil in the riglit of "secession and that I believed in the 
propriety of its exercise. I will say further that it was a cherisheil conception of my 
mind: that of two great free Republics on this continent, each pursuing its own des- 
tiny and the destiny of its people and their happiness according to its own will. 

But, sir, that conception is gone; it is sunk forever out of sight. Another one has 
come in its jjlace ; ami, by the way, it is my first love. The elements of it were planted 
in my heart by my father, they were taught by my mother, and they were nourished 
and developed by my own subsequent reflection. May I tell you what it is, sir? It 
stands before me now, simple in its majesty and sul)lime in its beauty. It is that of 
one gi'and, mighty, indivisible Repuljlic ujion this continent, throwing its loving arms 
around all sections, omnipotent fir protection, powerless for oppression, cursing none, 
blessing all! [Applause in the galleries.] 



Appendix No. 21. 

THE TARIFF. 
Speech in tfie Senate, Feliruary 7, 1S8S. 

The Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, and having under consideration the 
bill (H. R. ."w3S) to reduce internal revenue taxation, IMr. Lamar said; 

Mr. President : I have taken no part in the debate on this liill, but have listened to 
it with great attention, and have noted the votes on the various amendments which 
have lieen proposed to the measure under consideration. The progress of the discus- 
sion and the votes together show that it is imi>os>ible to eftectany large reduction or 
any material reduction of the taxes and at the sann' time retain the system of " pro- 
tection for protection's sake." One or the otlier must lie given n]i. Tlie demand for 
the reduction of taxes, which has of late years become so urgent, has imposed a hard 
and delicate task ujion the liarty in power, and they confessed their inal_>ility to per- 
form it by creating a tariff' commission. This exjiedient would ha\ e been entirely 
unnecessary had we nothing else to do than to settle the relation of taxation to reve- 
nue. Indeed, it would seem that with a too abundant revenue no ta^k would be 
easier to perform, and more agreeable and grateful in the performance, than that of 
lifting frfim the people the l)urden of taxation which they felt to lie unnecessary and 
therefore oppressive; ami I suppose that history cloes not furnish another instance of 
a people being heavily and needlessly taxed for a long series of years for no other 
reason except that their rulers were unable to devise a metliod of reduction. 

But, sir, the cause of this has been manifested in the progress of this measure 
through the Senate. This body is concerned, not with the relation of taxation to 
revenue — that wouI<I be a simple matter — but with the relation of manufactures to the 
method of collectinu' the revenue. Hence it is that upon eacli article of taxation the 
rate is determined here by the question, not how low a duty can be laid with a view 
to reilnce revenue. Tint liow lii'_'li a one is needed to maintain tlie manufacture of the 
corresponding article in tliis cnuntry. The Senator from Elaine, in an able speech at 
the last session, made this very clear. After declaring himself in favor of '' protection 
for protection's sake," he says: "If there was no jinblic del)t, no interest to pay, no 
(lension list, no army, and no navy to su])port, I should still oppose free trade and its 
twin sister, tarifl'for revenue, ami be in favor of protective duties." 



"^ APPENDIX, NO. 31. 749 

Well, sir, we liave been living for twenty-three years — eighteen of them years of 
peace — under a tariif for protection, whose duties are universally adniitted to ho too 
high with respect either to revenue or to taxes. It has been retained on the statute 
book and enforced upon the j)eople durin;; that long period, nut because it was needed 
to pay the jiublio debt or the interest upon it, imt because it was needed to support 
the army or navy, or to defray the other expenses of government, but because it was 
a sy^em of protective duties which could not bo disturlied witliout also, as it was 
urged, disturbing tlie manufactures which it had been designed to build up and shel- 
ter from competition. 

There is therefore this conflict between the public demand and the convictions of 
the party in power. Tlie jieople demand a reduction «jf this burden of taxation ; but 
the party in power has for twenty years insisted that it is no bunlen at all, but a bless- 
ing to the whole comitry. They assert, and have done so repeatedly in this tU'bate, 
that the duties upon imjiorted articles do not go into tho jirice of tlie articles at all, 
but that their effect is simply to put upon the market the cnrrespcjuding products of 
home manufacture at cheaper prices to the consumer, and to reduce tliose of the im- 
ported articles also. They have insisted that this high tariff has favored the working 
classes by reducing the money price of the most important productions, and at the 
same time bv increasing the wages of labor, so es.sential to the uuiintenauce of our 
institutions and the welfare of our people. They have pressed tlie argument tliat 
this protective system, as it now exists, by diverting labor from tlie iiiiremunerated 
pursuits of agriculture to the more productive industry of manufactures, inviting cap- 
ital into these more profitable investments, has increased the annual product of the 
nation's wealth and diffused its benefits throughout the Kepublic. They have pointed 
to the magnificent development of our varied industries, dwelling upon their benefit 
to all classes— farmers, capitalists, and laborers alike— and claim that it is due to the 
existing system of protection. x. i- c 

The great manufacturing industries have been bound to its support by the belief 
that their prosperity depends upon its maintenance. In a word, sir, as I first re- 
marked, they have inaintained and do maintain that this so-called burden of taxation 
which the people sav must be reduced is no burden at all, but a blessing, whicli in- 
creases the profits of capital, raises the wages of labor, cheapens the prices of products, 
and puts us all in funds. Its advocates, therefore, cannot take a step toward the re- 
duction of tariflf taxation without contravening the fundamental principles upon 
which the protective system rests; for if it confers all these blessings, if it does in- 
crease the annual product of the nation's wealtli, if it does raise the wages of labor 
and the profits of capital at the same time, and cheapen the products of consumption 
as well, to repeal it or to reduce it or to modify it is simply to diminish, it not to 
destroy, these areat and important benefits to the country. 

The" Senator from Vermont [Mr. Morrill], who has in charge the measure before us, 
in presenting it as a scheme of reduced taxation did not seem to enter upon his novel 
role with the zeal and ardor that are usual to a new convert. His introductory 
speech, made .January 10, 1883, seemed to me more calculated to invite opposition 
than to attract support to his proposed measure. Speaking of its revenue features, he 
says: "But without taking into the account any of these contingencies, which cer- 
tainly indicate their coming by the shadows visible in their front, there will be a 
positive deficit in the estiiuated"amount of revenue required to meet the expenditures 
of the government, unless much larger importations shall be received, from which the 
revenue from customs can be largely increased. It is true also that the coinage of the 
silver dollar is likely to continue, and this will absorb at least $24,000,000, or render 
that amount practically unavailable. Under these circumstances the sudden reduc- 
tion of so large an amount of the national revenues at a single blow, as proposed, is 
surely quite as far as prudence will allow us to go, and possibly further." 

But when he comes to the economical and social aspects of the measure his predic- 
tions are almost gloomy, and his words of warning are almost solemn. He says : 
" We must not conceal from ourselves that so general a change to lower duties, cariT- 
in" a downfall in values, will seriously afiect those with stocks on hand, and the doors 
which we also open to labor aliroad will to some extentshut out labor at home. Some 
industries, it is to be feared, cannot lie maintained except by a reduction of wages. 
Already some large iron establishments are shut up, and in Philadelphia alone ten 
thousand looms are said to be idle. There has been an overproduction m other arti- 
cles than whisky, and nowhere more extrav.agant than m the eleven thousandniiles 
of railroad built in 1SS2. Storm signals of late have been fre(iuentjy visible in the 
financial horizon. Those who lielieve that monetary crises are periodical now tear 
the decennial return of that of 1S73." i 1 1 

After such a peculiar advocacy as this, it is jierhapa not so strange tliat we sUouia 



750 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

■witness, as we do, a party proiiosiiig a measure puri-orting to be a general re-ductiun 
of revenue, and yet upon each separate item a majority of its members jirotesting 
against the reduction, because a liiglier tax is a protection and a lower one an incura- 
ble wound to some great industry essential to the welfare of the people. 

Mr. President,! think that the time has come when we should deal more explicitly 
with the American people upon this subject. I tlunk that our friends on the oppo- 
site side of the Chamber should say — and if they do not, tliat I should say — that 
])rotection and low taxation are not compatible. You cannot make the two systems 
blend. A protective tax is a high tax; and alow tax, to the extent that it does not 
check importations, becomes nonprotective. Why not let the peojile know the truth? 
They ai-e not averse to taxation. They have always been ready to tax themselves 
willingly whenever satisfied that the object is a legitimate one and the mode of as- 
sessing and collecting the tax a proper one. Why not declare to them: If you want 
the blessings of protection, if you want our industries maintained by the aid of the 
government as a great synnnetrical system, j'ou must make up your minds to pay the 
cost and make the sacrifice necessary to maintain such a system and scorn the temp- 
tation of low taxes and cheap foreign goods? 

The Senator from Vermont says that this bill is based ujjon the report of the Tariif 
Commission. I propose to call attention to that report. The testimony taken by the 
Commission fills two large volumes of twenty-six hundred pages. These pages cer- 
tainly jiresent a most remarkable — I may say imposing — exhibit of the condition of 
American manufactures and of the genius and capacitj' of our people for those me- 
chanic arts and scientific appliances which have done so mucli for the elevation and 
civilization of the human lace. As we read the reports made of the marvelous prog- 
ress and achievements of these varied industries, the efl'ect on the mind is as vivid 
as though it were produced by a scenic reiiresentation, or as if these great industries, 
could such a tiling be possible, were jjassing before us in stately procession. And, sir, 
when we take in the full magnitude of these interests, the number of estal:)lishments, 
the vast amount of productive capital, the number of persons employed, the aggregate 
sum of wages paid out, a:!il the value of their annual jproduct, reaching this year, it is 
said, to $5,000,000,000, making this the foremost manufacturing nation of the globe, 
we can but feel the sentiment of pride which the honorable Senator from Vermont 
so eloiiuently expresse<l. 

On the other hand, there are unfavorable indications, calculated to excite grave 
doubts as to their healthy condition, and to cause the suspicion that the elject of this 
protective policy has been to enervate and emasculate these industries, and has per- 
haps obstructed a growth wliich without such stimulus would have been not as rapid 
perhaps, but more sure, more heatliful, and more self-sustaining. According to the 
testimony of all the accredited agents and representati^•cs and organs of these indus- 
tries, their condition is, and has for years been, that of great depression and distress, 
and in many cases of impending insolvency. This is the uniform declaration of their 
associated agents and of every witness who apjieared in their behalf, so far as I can 
remember, before the Commission : that they were incapable of conducting their busi- 
ness unless aided and sustained bj' the taxes imposed upon the people through the 
agency of the government. From the uniform current of testimony on this subject 
I will cite a few instances as pi'inted in the rcjjort of the Commission. 

The Ikon and Steel Interest. 

~Sh\ James Park, President of the Convention of Iron and Steel jVIanufacturers, held 
at Cresson, Pennsylvania, September ll>, testified before the Coninnssion. He jilaceil 
Ijefore that body a paper prepared by IMr. Swank, who is known as an able defender 
of the system. In this paper he says: 

"In many cases treasury rulings adverse to the spirit fif our protective laws have 
been as fatal to our ire m and steel industries as adverse legislation. Under the rulings 
of the Treasury Do])artment upon a provision of the present tarifl^ the duty on tin 
plates has been fixed at 1.1 cents per pound, yet the tin jilate industry does not have 
existence in our country to-day. The duty on iron cotton ties has been fixed by the 
courts at 35 per C-'ut, but under this ruling their manufiicture in this country during 
the past few years has entii'ely ceased." . . . (Page 2019.) 

"It is a great fallacy to suppose that, because our leading imlustries have now been 
Iniilt up under a policy of iirotection, they no longer need the same measure of pro- 
tection that they liave received in the past. E\-ery industry in this country which 
takes raw materials and converts them into finished products by the labor of men's 
hands will always need just as much protection as \y\\\ cover tlie difference in wages 
between this country and Europe. The American statesiuan who should theoretically 
evolve a tariff system that would Ije based upon the assumed ability of domestic 



APPENDIX, i\n. SI. 751 

iii;umfiicturers to withstand sharper (•oiii)>ctiti(iu with l'nrci|j;ii nuunifactiircrs than 
they now have, woulil not onlv unwisely and unpatriotieally invite tliat coiupetition, 
with silent Ameriean workshops eeitain to follow, liut he would also eloscly inutate 
that peculiar Enirlish iihilanthropy wliieh takes no aceount of the riglits of lalwr, and 
concerns itself only with the demands of capital. Our protective pi >liey nuist lie main- 
tained in all its original scope and vigor for the Ijenelit of Aineiican lahor." 
(Page 2022.) 

[William H. Wallace, Steubenville, Ohio— pig iron interest.] 
" While it is no doubt true, as Mr. Swank says in his report, 'that a number of fur- 
naces must alwavs be out of blast while undergoing ii'pairs or waiting for fuel, while 
others are undesirably situated or are old-fashioned in construction and must event- 
ually be abandoned,' vet it is also true that that is not the only reason, and does not 
apply to a larire percentage "f cases. Within our own knowledge many furnaces have 
been stopped bv reason "of the fact that the business was uniirolltable; tiial the mar- 
ket would not a'bsorb the product except at the unremuneraf ive rates fixed by foreign 
competition. In fact, in the Ohio Valley regicpu it has become a common saynig that 
'a furnace without a mill attached to consume its [iroiluct is a poor investment.' \\ e 
think it is safe to say that there is no business in the country to-day of any magni- 
tude that is more uncertain and that promises less opportunity for prolit than the 
manufacture of pit; iron, and from the protection of which from foreign competition 
the country would derive gn^ater benefit. Makers of pig iron are more fearful of 
the foreign manufixcturer of the same product than the makers of any other niaiiu- 
factured product in the country, and watch with greater anxiety tlie rates of freight 
and the market prices of tlie" article in the warehouses and metal yards of Great 
Britain." . . . (Page 2030.) . , 

" The story is an oM one. AVhile all other branches of business are prospering, and 
while comparati\elv little of the finished product of iron is imported, we see our mar- 
kets constantlv filled witli foreign brands of pig iron, our liirnaces idle, and our pig 
iron producers crushed beneath the load of foreign iron made with cheap labor, and 
brought oyer with low freiglits, or as ballast," . . . (Page 20:'.l.) _ 

"In conclusion, we desire to say that we flrmlv believe that, with the present prices 
for ore in this section of the country, if the tariff on ]iig iron sb.uild be reduced from 
the in-esent rate of S7, it would cause a large jiroportion of our furnaces to be blown 
out; and if it is not placed nearer the old rate prevailing in 1S70. we shall go on in the 
unsatisfactory way that we have been doing— mir furnaces leading an uncertain ca- 
reer of running and stopping, at times a majority out of blast; at other times a ma- 
jority only, not all of them, in blast." . . . (Page 2031.) ^ 

" Something is radically wron<:, and it seems to us that it is the tariH. W e protect 
other manufactures of iron in which the workmen receive much higher wages; but 
pi<j iron, which employs and pays the lowest rate of wages in the business, is Uie 
branch which has the least proportionate protection, and which is the first to sutler 
from any threatened change." . . . (Page 2032.) . . ^ ^^ 

[John M. Stockdale et ,d., of AVashington, Pennsylvania— woolgrowmg '"tepfVi, 
"Our people allege that, taking into consideration the circumstances by wiucli they 
are surrounded— the increase of the price of the land, the increase of the labor ex- 
pended upon the production of wool, the increase of the price of food which they 
have to give to these sheep to make their business successful- the prices that they are 
able to command at the present are insufficient to justify continuance in the business. 
The production of wool basso enormously increased in Australia and contiguous colo- 
nies, from thirteen million sheep in ISfiO to seventy or seventy-five millions in 18S0, 
that competition is so great that it threatens destruction to the wool producing in- 
dustry in Washington County and other counties simdarly situated. As you know, 
farmers, as a rule,' are very slow to change their business; and to get into a new- busi- 
ness is also a very expensive thing, such as changing from the culture of sheep to cat- 
tle, from cattle to horses, or from one kind of stock to another; an.l it is a thing that 
they do not like to undertake. I have been told that withm the last year the ordi- 
nary .pursuits of agriculture in Washington County, properly followed, have been 
more profitable than the production of wool; and many of the largest wool P'oduce.> 
in our county are considering the propriety of changing their business to that "f » -,''- 
nary agriculturists. I should regard a general change of this character as a public 

^^'^Kni'yfQ further statfthatVhe present duties levied on the importation of wool of 
three cents per pound on the chea|,er qualities and twelve cents per PO>ind and elev- 
en cents per pound ad ralorem on the highest grades are wholly inadequate and iiisut- 
flcient to afford the protection absolutely necessary to successful production here. . . . 
(Page 1091.) 



752 LVCIVS Q. a LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

•' It should also be stated that the capital invested in the production of wool in this 
county alone is more than $3,000,UU0, and in the United States appriixiiuates $300,000,- 
000, and that the busine?s gives employment to hundreds of thousands of i)eople. 
For these and many reasons not here named, it is the opinion of this meeting that on 
wool that now pays a duty of three cents per pound there should be levied a duty of 
nine cents per pound, and on all other wool a duty of fifteen cents per pound "and 
twenty per cent ad valoriia. Eiuitable and impartial legislation would seem to de- 
mand that if the farmer is called upon to support and pay hi^h jirotective duties on 
the large number of articles which he is compelled to buy he is entitled to a protect- 
ive duty on tlie single article of wool which he sells." . . . (Page ]9'J1.) 

" We regard the business of woolgrowing in this region of country, in which I have 
been engaged for many years, and in which a large [lart ol' our capital is involved, as 
now in danger of being seriously or fat;dly crijipled, and that therefore the interests 
of the country and the welfare of the people that are engaged in the business should 
have the immediate consideration of those who influence protective legislation." 
(.Page 1991.) 

[Hon. W. S. Shallenberger, of Rochester, Pennsylvania — woolgrowing interest.] 

" In regard to the sul)ject of wool, I may say that of all industries it is the one that 
is purely national. We have increased tlie production of wool from about sixty mil- 
lion pound> in 1860 to two hundred and ninety million pounds at the present'time; 
and that should be a full demonstration of the fiict that we can produce in this coun- 
try all the wool that is needed, as in tact we do, with the exception of about thirteen 
million to fiflecn million pounds of fine w o<.)l — the amount imported into the country 
in ISSl. Out of the entire importation of fifty-live million to sixty million pounds 
of wool, the wool which entered into competition with American w"ool amounted, as 
I am reliably informed, to not exceeding fifteen million pounds. Hence I say that 
we have demonstrated the fact that under the existing tariff we have reached almost 
that point when we j)roduce as much as our manufacturers demand. 

" In the county which I am here to represent, as the gentlemen who are associated 
with nie will tell you, the iiroduction of fine wool is rather on the decrease. Land is 
too high, averaging perhaps i^7o per acre. The growing of fine sheep there i.s not 
found to Ije as profitable as it was a few years ago, and itVill become a serious ques- 
tion vfhh the farmers pretty soon as to "whether tliey shall not give up raising fine 
sheep and producing fine wool, and allow other sections of the country more favora- 
bly situated as to cheap lands and climate — I mean the Southern and AVestern sections 
of the country— to take up the business of woolgrowing." . . . (Page 2107.) 

" There has been a vast increase in sheep growing in Australia within the last two 
decades, so marvelous that to-day Australia has almost double the number of sheep 
in allhor provinces that we have in this country. She has a climate in which sheep 
can live all the year round without shelter, and upon pasturage which is abundant. 
The relafions of this country to Australia have changed during that time, and the ef- 
fect upon the price of foreign wool has been very apjiarent; so that if the taritt' were 
reduced now the importation, say of ninety-nine million or one hundred million 
pounds of wool in ISSO, and fifty-five million or sixty million poum's in ISSl, would 
be probalily one Imndred and fifty million or two hundred and fifty million jjounds 
annually, which would absoluteIy"destroy this industry of om-s." . . . (Page 2108.) 

"We have forty-two million sheep, wliile Australia"has seventy-two millioil. We 
have been testing for years under the stimulus of our present tariff the most favored 
sections of our country, and still the production is not equal to the home demand. 
Reduce the tariff, and"protection w ill be less, while iuiportation must be greater. If 
the older States, where land is high, cannot afford to grow wool under the ] resent 
tarilf, still less could they aftbnl it under a reduced tariff. If capital has not been 
tcmjited sufficiently thus far into more fiivored sections for the purpose cf growing 
wool at i)resent prices, still less will it be tempted to those sections should the tariff 
be reduced, and foreign W'ool brought into competition at .still lower juices. I do not 
think that any i)ortion of our country can or will produce wool as cheaply as other 
countries.^ Labor must be higher here, because itmustbeintelligent. Land is higher, 
and growing higlier. Climate anywhere rei|uires shelter and some feeding. 

"The mere question as to the ci>st of woolen fabrics is coniparativelv insignificant. 
Sheep husbandry cannot be imperileil without great loss to the country. It supplies 
cheap, wholesoine meat, which is one of the heavy items of expense in' every family. 
.\11 meat food is lower in price because of mutl;on in every market; but for sheep, 
fresh meat would Ije imjiossible in thousands of families. .Vn industry so general, 
that feeds and clothes our people as no other nation is clothed, that reclaims waste 
lands and enriclies all soil, is an industry that should receive fiill iirotection from 
tariff legislation. 



APPENDIX, SO. -'/. • 753 

"I would therefore protest against the slightefit reduction in the tari 11' duties on 
wool, unless possibly on the very lowest grades of wool, whieli do not enter into com- 
petition with tluit whi<'h is prolital)ly [irodnceil in tliis country." . . . (Pago L'108.) 

"I do insist that no reduction sliall 1)0 made upon clothing wool; and in doing 
that I ask that which is in tlie interest, as I believe, of the wlmle country, and not 
alone in the interest of any particnlar sectinn." . . . iPage I'Ulil.) 

"The production of wool is of infinite inijiorfance to the agricultural industry, by 
abstracting labor and capital from the i)rciduction of cereals, which have been produced 
so largely that, even with the increased ciinsumption, we are not able to consume all 
we raise, and have to export vast amounts." . . . (Page 2100.) 

" Then, again, the price of wool to-dav would not be on the average twenty cents a 
pound in the foreisrn markets but for the fact that we have three hundred million 
pounds of wool here to compete with it. The protective tarifi' has enabled us to pro- 
duce this amount of wool, and hence has kept down the foreign price. So with every 
other industry. 

" I trust the Commission will carefully consider these facts, and under no circum- 
stances recommend a reduction of tlie duties upon the medium grades of wool." 
(Paae 2109.) 

[John McDowell, President Wasliington County (Pa.) Agricultural Association— 

woolgrowing.] 

"Question (by Commissioner Garland). I believe that the number of sheep in 
Washington County is put at about six hundred thousand? 

"Answer. Yes, sir. 

" tiuestion. How does that compare with the number in 1867, when the present 
tariff was enacted? 

" Answer. I think there are fewer sheep now ; that is my impression.' . . . (Page 2111.) 

" Question. Can you give us an idea of the number of sheep in the United States 
that produce that quality of wool— I speak of the Saxony wool? 

"Answer. I will include the Saxony, the Silesian, and all. I do not think, putting 
all together, that there has been three thousand pounds of surperfine wool i)roduced 
in the United States for the last three years. 

" Question. How many sheej) of this class does Washington County sui>ply ? 

"Answer. There are liot five thousand head of this kind of sheep here." (Page 
2113.) 

[Julius Le Moyne — the wool interest.] 

" I have no particular statement to make except to say that our wool interest here 
in this immediate vicinity is declining rapidly. I think in the last ten years it has 
declined twenty-five per cent. These facts, I believe, are against the figures of the 
census, but we do not feel responsible for them. These are facts within my own per- 
sonal knowledge." . . . (Page 2114.) ■,,•<. 

"There is a dissatisfaction anions part of our woolgrowers in regard to the price of 
wool, but my conviction is that that has arisen from the high price to be obtained 
from other farm products." (Page 2115.) _ , . ., 

[Mr Asa Manchester, of AVashington County, Pennsylyania— woolgrowing.J 

" We claim that Washington County, Pa., West Virginia, ami Eastern Ohio produce 
the best wool in the world. It is a wool that we cannot well do without. All the 
finest class of goods are made from the wools that are produced here, and no such 
tjoods can probably lie made from wools brought fri>m any other place. I do not 
Uiink we can continue, however, to produce this wool in the face of the compe- 
tition we have to contend against in the importation of wool from Australia and 
other countries. Land there is cheap, and the exjiense of keeliing sheep is much less 
than it is here." . . . (Page 199.5.) . , . . ., • 

" One-fourth of the people who were in the woolgrowing business in this county- 
have already gone out of the business because they say it will not pay them; and 
if they are left without sullicient encouragement in the way of a jjiotcctive tariff, 
nearly all tlie rest of them will go into some otlier branch of Imsiness. W e do not 
want to do this; we would rather raise wool than to raise other proihicts, because 
we think our county is well adapted to the raising of wool. We ask, then, for an 
increase in the tariff rates; but if you do not think it is just and fair, why, do 
not give it to us. Tlie reason we ask for an increase is because there are to-day 
large duties put upon imported goods and other things that we use, and we only want 
to be put upon an equality with others. AVe think other interests m the country 
are better protected than ours. We ask you to look at the matter in this light; and 
if von can "ive us any encouragement, I hope you will do so." (Page l'''Jl'-l 

Mr. T. d Search of Philadelphia, representing the worsted spinners, addresssett 
the Commission as follows: 
48 



754 LUCIUS Q. c. LAMAR: lUS LIFE, ETC. 

" Gentlemen, ;i tariff to bo of value must be protective iu its operations, and to be 
protective it nuist insure the parties jjrotected by preserving to them a legithnate 
profit on the business- in which tliey are engaged, over and above their foreign com- 
petitors. This is the kind of tariff needed by tlie worsted spinners of this country. 
Tlie vital question before us, then, is to have a tariff so adjusted as to protect us in 
tliis profit in all the ordinary conditions of trade, and yet under extraordinary condi- 
tions, such as scarcity of raw material or some unusual demand for our products, one 
that will operate as a governor to save consumeis from exorbitant prices and increase 
of values that might otherwise prevail. The worsted spinners desire a tariff for pro- 
tection only, and not for speculative purposes." . . . (Page 2358.) 

" We have passed through many periods of deiiression, caused by the enormous 
competition among ourselves as manufacturers, these being eventually dispelled by 
the natural growtli of our country. Since the beginning of the year 1880 we have 
been i>assing tlirough just such a trial, working on the most favored styles with bare- 
ly a living profit, and on the great bulk of our business with practically none at all, 
and on a very considera):)le jiortion a positive loss; and during all this time the raw 
material values have been maintained almost without any fluctuation." 
(Page 2358.) 

" The protection on this class is not sufficient for us, considering the protection on 
the raw nutterial. We cannot make these fine yarns in competition with the foreign- 
er. Our facilities for doing so are too limited, and the demand, by reason of uneijual 
protection, too limited, to warrant the creation of plants necessarj' for their cheap pro- 
duction; and yet we see twenty-five million yards of cloth, largely of this character, 
imported into this country. 

" Here is a case in which further facts and figuivs seem unnecessary. Manufacturers 
here have, one after another, tried to make them, and failed. Within two years' 
time we have seen a most successful English manufacturer send his looms to this 
country, with skilled men to manage them, and yet absolutely fail to make the goods 
without loss here that lie is making in England and selling in America at a profit. 

" We believe this result to lie largely atfriliutable to an unforeseen action of our tariff 
laws. These laws .say that on all goods weighing four ounces and over per siiuare 
yard the duty shall be .50 cents per pound and 35 jier cent ad valorem; this is equiva- 
lent to 121 cents per yard and 35 per cent. This protection is prol lably sufficient; but 
the foreigner eludes it by making his gnods weigh very slightly less than four ounces 
per yard, and lands them here, paying only 8 cents per square yard and -10 per cent 
duty, a loss of 50 per cent and over of the specific tluty by conceding only 5 per cent 
on the ad valorem." . . . (Page 2359.) 

" We believe that instead of limiting tlie protection on yarns above 80 cents to 50 
cents and 35 jier cent, tlie duty sliould go on liy regular increments as the price on 
manufactured goods ailvances." . . . (Page 235!).) 

" Question. If tliey had had a purely ad valorem tariff' instead of this compound one, 
the difficulty would not have arisen? 

"Answer. No, sir; not if the tariff' had been a sufficientlv ad valorem tariff'." (Page 
2360.) 

[Frank L. Bodine, manufacturer of window glass, Pittsburg, Pa.] 

" Question. You state, tlien, that the glass manufacturers of the United States would 
be unable to stand any reduction in the present rates, if there was a general reduc- 
tion made on all articles nnw dutied? 

"Answer. I state that any reduction would destroy the business. I am unable to 
indicate any point where we could stand any reduction in the duties." (Page 2007.) 

[X. T. De Pauw, glass manufacturer. New Albany, Ind.] 

" Question. Are you satisfied with the present rate of duty? 

"Answer. We are satisfied with the duty upon the large sizes, which is four-fifths, 
or 80 per cent, of our product; but not upon the small, say one-fifth. I think that my 
father's idea is to ask an ailvance of the rate of duty on small glass." 
(Page 937.) 

"Question (liy Commissioner Porter). In brief, what dij you consider the advan- 
tages of your locatifin? 

"Answer. I consider that there is no better location to lie found in the Enited 
States. 

"Question. Explain why. 

"Answer. In the first jilace, New Albany is a healthy and desirable place to live; 
farm and garden products aie abundant and cheaji. We get our mixed sand as cheaply 
as it can be jirocured anywhere else, ami lime anil grindings much more cheaply; we 



AJ'l'JCXDIX, NO. 21. 755 

can get oiu' soda ash as oheaplv as it can be procured at any point in Ihc West." . . ■ 
(Page 939.) 

'' Question. You tliinlc the jjresent rates on tlie sniiiller sizes are not adequate to 
protei-t the manufacturer, as I understand; can you suirgest any shnplilieation of the 
present rates uf duty? 

"Answer. I ]>resume 1 could by a Httle study." . . . (Page IKili.) 

"Question. Wliat would be the ellect on your business of a reduction of the duty, 
say of 25 per cent? 

''Answer. It would sto]i us." . . . (Page 940.) 

"Question. What would be the t'onsequenco to the consumers of a reduction of 
duty? 

"Answer. I presume for a veur or two, probably, plate ^lass would 1)0 cheaper, and 
then it would probably go back to the old figure's, for this reason: the foreign man- 
ufacturers would put it down to drive us all out of the businc.-s. Every one who is 
engaged in manufacturing recognizes the fact that nothing ilepreciates so rapidly as 
manuf^icturing machinery when not in use. Three yeai-s would jait our factories in 
such sliape that it wouldcost nearly half their value to put them in order again. Of 
course if they did not put up the pi-ice, we would have no assurance in the world but 
what they would drop prices on ns again; hence no one would risk eapitid to put in 
order and start up the abandoned works, and the foreigners would again have the 
monopoly which they enjoyeil for so long." (Page 940.) 

[W. C. De Pauw, plate glass manufacturer. New Albany, Ind., page l."):;n.] 

" In conclusion, permit me to call your attention to the following facts: 

" 1. That all money put into plate glass works in America prior to hS79 had been a 
total loss. , , , , • 

"2 That some of the shrewdest, most energetic, and successful business men in 
Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, an.l Louis\ die, had in 
the aggregate invested millions in plate glass enterprises, and lost the whole of it. _ 

" 3.'^ That no plate glass had been made in America without loss to the maker prior 
to 1879. . , , , 

"4. That I, instead of having made a large fortune m a few years, as represented, 
have actually lost more than half a million dollars, over and above all small, very 
small, iiroflt made since 1878. j i • 

'•5. That after a long, earnest stru^le, I have succeeded in making good glazing 
plate glass at a small profit. „ , , ^ i ii 

"6. That Americans are paving about half as much for plate glass to-day as tliey 
paid prior to the time that pla"te glass was made in the United States at my works. 

Sir, do not these facts create the suspicion that this protective system, which has so 
long been burdening tlie people, has something in it which defeats its own object and 



ot our manuiaciures, as picuureu m Lutr^c >yi..i..<^o o».v» .^y .^".^ , ^ ;■ ^ „„,ioto 

floor, realizes the promises which were made of a gi-eat diveTSified industry, complete 
in all its parts and sufficient unto itself? Sir, putting out of view all the millions ot 
taxes which it is alleged— I think upon good grounds-it has cost our people to ])ro- 
duce this result, putting out of view the burden and oljstrnction to the growth and 
prosperity of all the other great industries of the country, I ask is this l";';«-'>^ i^^'l^^ wn 
of manufactures to the government, which has lieen brought about by be P ot^' t^ J 
system, and which would not have existed but for that system a desinxb e one? 
What is that result? A v:ist organization of capital and labor and product, depend- 
ent for its continued existence upon the taxes of the government. . \ . 

It seems to me that the most sanguine admirer of our system of manufacturing in- 
dustrTet in readin.^ the accounts which the manufacturers give of their own business, 
would tremble at the enormous proportions to wbiA they have gro^N^iwib <'"• •^'^n- 
der and uncertain foundation upon which the system rest,". They will U U >_ou, sir, 
theinselves, that they have no self-sustaining vitality; that the prmcipleoftheirexist- 




ai'd of taxes levied bv the government ; and if Congress, recognizing ■ 
du ierfofthe purposl of maintaining them, they are not really industries, but govern- 
S inamfactures, political establishments, branches of the public service, as much 
SXanmiid navy and diplomatic corps or any ot the departments of administration. 



756 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR; JUS LIFE, ETC. 

Sir, we liave had a great deal to say of late about the corruptions growing out of 
the vast ]iatronage of tlie goveinnient. The source of this evil was held Ijy both Mr. 
Calhoun and Mr. Webster to be in the dependence of eixty tliousand i>eople, who 
held employment under the government, upon tliose in power for their subsistence. 
They believed that a power so unlimited and desjiotic over this numerous and pow- 
erful corps of officeholders would corrujit ami deliase those who composed it into the 
supple and willing instruments of jiower, and at the same time work a fearful change 
in the character "of tlie government itself. Now this protective system produces 
precisely the same result that Jlr. Webster and Mr. Calhoun saw in the workings of 
official patronage. It has obtained control of the capital and labor of this entire in- 
dustry, and bound it, through its interest, to the support of the party in power. 

According to the declarations of the advocates of high duties, the !al)Orers in these 
manufactures built up bv protection depend for their bread upon tlie rate of taxes 
levied in this bill. If what they say is true, all this vast amount of capital and the 
operatives, amounting according to their representations to over a million of jiersons, 
are hanging in suspense for their fooil and clotlnng and shelter and supplies for 
their wives and children, as well as for emi^loyment at all, ujion a vote of ayes and 
noes. A policy which has established this relation of the government to so large a 
part of the capital and labor of the country — a relation of absolute control, on the 
one hand, and of absolute dependence and subjection, on the other— must in vol \ e many 
and disastrous changes in our jiolitical system. I call attention to one or two. It is 
an inculiusupon the government, and obstructs the freedom of its action in the adop- 
tion of any policy looking to tlie welfare of the whole people. Supp(jse that we should 
come to tlie ccjuclusion that commercial freedom was the true policy of this govern- 
ment; why, sir, a Congress of free traders charged with the responsibility of iornnng 
a revenue system would shrink from putting their own theory into operation in view 
of tlie ruin and distress which it is declared would follow upon these industries under 
a radical change of our system of taxation. 

Take another view. If there is any point on which the great body of the people 
of this country are united, it is on the" desire for a reduction of public burdens. Both 
parties profess to favor it. Suppose that we should begin an earnest effort to reduce 
expenditures to the lowest point of an economical administration of the governnient, 
so that the taxation could be correspondingly reduced and its liurdcn appreciably 
hghtened. It could easily lie done, sir. The payment of the puljlic debt will_ in a 
feV years cease to lie a charge upon the treasury ; it will either 1)6 extinguished 
under the policy of those who wish to rid the go\-ernment of its connection with 
banks, or it will become a permament fund, at a very low rate of interest, as the basis 
of our national Ixuik currem-y. In either event, it will not much longer be in the 
way of a reductiua of taxes. There are many other points in respect to which the 
expenses of tlie government could be largely reduced, and the people be thus pro- 
jiortionatelv relieved ; but, sir, the moment tliat we should take a step in that direiHion 
we would tind ourselves hampered and hindered by the necessity fastened upon the 
government of supporting these manufiicturing interests, whose prosperity, they tell 
us, depends upon high taxes, a plctiioric treasury, and large expenditures. 
/ Sir, why should this system of pi;otei'tion- be kept up at such a cost and such a 
// sacrifice to the people of this country when it lias produced such results? This 
/ doctrine of a protective system rests upim the assumption that it is necessary to the 
imlependence of the country that it should produce all the commodities essential to 
the use and consumption of the wdiole people ; that it gives us a diversified industry, 
and that it also builds up a con-nming class for the agricultural proilucts of the 
country. No argument is needed to demonstrate the importance and necessity of the 
development of manufactures as one of tlie elements of the national strength; but, 
sir, can we not have the manufactures without the liurden of a protective tariff? Is 
it true that diversification of industries is a tiling unattainable in this country, 
with its almost infinite variety of climate, soil, productions, and interests, except at 
the cost and sacrifice which this svstem of protection entails? 

Sir, there have been long periods of time in the history of this country when 
protective tariffs were not in operation. Diil our manufactures cease to exist during 
those iieriods? I have before me Bishop's "History of American Manufoctures," 
from the earliest time down to lS(i3. Noonecan read tliis history— although written 
by a protectionist— without becoming convinced that American manuf;ictures are the 
natural growth of this country, and have demonstrated their capacity to exist and 
grow and thrive under any kiiid of tariff, liigh or low, protective per se, or for re\enue 
onlv. Sir, long before the era of protective tariffs, long before we had a national 
tariff of any kind — indeed, from the earliest colonial period down to the Revolution- 
ary War— iuanufactures existed and flourished and attained a vigorous life and an 



M'i'i:.\i>LV, \o. J!. 757 

ample development exposed to foreit;ii eompetition, uiuiidi'd by tlio k'^isUition of 
the motluT country, and in delianee of its hostile and proliibitory eniu-tnients. 
Speaking of the natnrul tendency of settliTS to industries in the <lirection of manu- 
factures, the author of this work says: "tiathered from the jiroductive ranks of the 
most active and ingenious nations of Kumpe, with a ))reponderanco of the Anglo- 
Saxon element, their colonial training was well litted to develop haliils of patient 
toil, self-reliance, ready invi-ntinn, ami feililily in the use of ri'.sources. These ijuali- 
ties,so necessary to success in all the practical arts, were cons])ieuons in tliC American 
character. A varied and dexterous mechanical industry was ahnost universal. Upon 
this basis had been long growing up a comprehensive scene of domestic household 
manufacture from native materials of great aggregate value, which had materially 
lessened the annual balance against the Colonies, and liad promoted the comfort of , 
all classes." (Bishop's " History of American JManufacture," volume I., Jiage 13.) '' , 

Again, he says: "Even at the present day nuiny countries which were reckoned 
elders in the family of nations ere the ring of the ax was heard in the forests of 
America, are essentially less independent in regard to some products of manulacture 
than were the American Colonies at the period of the Eevolution." (I'age 1'4.) 

As illustrative of this tendency to arts and manufoctures may be mentioned the 
fact that the first exports sent "from the American Colonies to Europe "consisted 
almost exclusively of manufactures in the strictest sense of the term." 

We have heard some discussion here of the per cent necessary to secure the home 
market for the manufacture of glass, in which my friend from North Carolina [Rlr. 
Vance] participated with his usual ability. Pcrliaps it may shed some light upon 
this subject to state tliat one of the chief articles mentioned in the cargo of a vessel 
of the London Company employed in the early eflbrts to make settlements upon the 
coasts of North America, on her return voyage, was glass. Concerning this article, 
the author says: " The glass house stood in the woods about a mile froni Jamestown ; 
and, although very unjiretending in its dimensions and appointments, it was doubt- 
less the first maniifactorv ever erected in this country." ^(Volume I., page 26.) 

This was in 1608. Beverly, in his "Ilfstory of Virginia," oliserves that in 1620 
■" Many of the people became very industrious and began to vie with one another in 
plantiiiET, buildins, and other improvements. A salt work was set up at Cape Charles, 
on the K :stern Shore, and an iron work at Fallii g Creek, in Jamestown Kiver, where 
they made proof of good iron ore, and brought the whole work so near a perfection 
that they writ word to the companv in London that they did not doubt but to finish 
the work and have plentiful provision of iron for them by the next Easter." (Page 28.) 

The candid historian is, however, compelled to state that these manufacturing en- 
terprises were not destinccl to a long existence in Virginia. They had to succumb to 
competition, not the competition of foreign pauper labor, Mr. President, but to a 
competitor then, as now, more formidable than pauper labor— to wit, the suiierior 
attractions of agriculture. The cultivation of tobacco became profitable, and all the 
artisans quit their work and devoted themselves to its culture. In assigning the 
cause of this chauL'e of i>ursuit, Bishop says: "The Virginia colonists were essen- 
tially planters, and regarded commercial as well as manufacturing pursuits as less 
respectable than agriculture. The climate and the fertility of their soil and the 
cheapness and abundance of the land enabling many to acquire estates almost ma- 
norial in extent, all concurred with the native tastes of the inhabitants in fostering 
this sentiment." (Page 35.) ,,,.,,, ^, 

But when we come to the industrial history of the Northeastern and JMiddle Colo- 
nies we find a people and a countrv to whom manufacturing enterprise was more 
congenial. Bishop says: " AVith a sterile soil and a rugged climate, they early betciok 
themselves to manufiicturing and commercial enteriirises, and so successfullv that 
at the present day there is scarcely a useful art of ancient or modern times that is not 
' naturalized ' among them, and scarcely a region of the globe so remote or inaccessi- 
ble that is not familiar with the pro.lucts of their labor." (Page 36.) 

He states further that "the first products of the industry of the Plymouth Colony, 
of Ehode Island, and probably of others, sent to a forei-n market, were manufactured 
from thealmostinexhaustiblewealthof the American forests. (Ibid.) Shipbuilding 
commenced within three years after the landing of the Plymouth Colony- an indus- 
try in which this countiy reached preenunence at an early day and maintained it till 
a late period in our historv, when its decadence began and continued rai.idly from 
causes about which there is controversy. Just a century before the declaration of in- 
dependence seven hundred and thirty vessels were built in Boston and its vicinity. 

(Page 47.) ,.,,,. ., . i. i t 

I cannot here go over all the mannf\ictures of which thi.s author gives account; but 

there is not an industry whose produc's are enumerated in the schedules of this bill 



758 LCCirS Q. r. LAMAR: lUS LIFE, ETC. 

but was established and in operation tliroughout the American Colonies. Chemicals; 
pottery; glass; metals, iron and steel; woods; licjuors, distilled and fermented; cotton, 
woolen, silk, flax, paper, leather, lumber, and a long list of other fabrics. I can only- 
call especial attention to the condition then of the industries which are now Ijefore us 
asking protection — I mean cotton and woolen, iron and steel. In the earliest settle- 
ment of the Colonies, the manufacture of cotton, woolen, and linen, came into exist- 
ence and attained vigorous growth. In reference to cotton, the author from whom I 
am quoting, after a lengthened discussion as to the precise date, makes a statement 
which seems to me to be well supported by the facts adduced — namely, that " the use 
of cotton in textile fabrics has existed in this country from as early a date as in En- 
gland. The system pursued in the two countries also, and the description of cloth 
made, were not dissimilar." (Volume I., page oO',.).) 

It appears from this history that Col. Heathcote, who was a member of the council, 
made a report to the Board of Trade, in which lie says that he had "labored to di- 
vert the Americans fi-oin going on with their linen and woolen manufactures. He 
says they were already so far advanced that three-fourths of the linen and woolen 
used was made among them, especially the coarse sort; and if some speedy and etiectual 
ways are not found to put a stop to it, they will carry it on a great deal further, and 
perhaps, in time, very much to the prejudice of our manufactories at home." ( Page 329.) 
On page 330 Bisliop says: "Cotton was regularly imported in small quantities, 
chiefly from Barbadoes, but occasionally also from Smyrna and other places to which 
trade extended, and was made into fustians and other stiiHs with linen thread; but 
linen then subserved nearly all the purposes for wliich cotton is now employed, and 
hence the attention given to the cultivation of the llax and hemp ]ilants. The linens 
made at that time were for the must part of a coarse texture. The kerseys, linsey- 
woolseys, serges, and drugget,'^, consisteil of wool variously combined with flax or tow, 
and formed the outer clothing of a large part of the population during the colder sea- 
sons. Hempen cloth and linen of different degrees of fineness, from the coarsest tow 
cloth to the finest Osualiurg or Holland, constituted the principal wearing apparel, 
outward and inward, at other times." 

On page 331 he says: "The dress of apprentices and laborers early in the last cen- 
tury almost invariably comprised sliirts of this home manufactured ' Ozenbrig,' made 
of hemp or flax, and varying in price from 1 shilling to 1 shilling and 6 pence per 
■yard, and vests and breeches of the same, or of coarse tow cloth. Coats or duublets 
and breeches of leather or enduring buckskin, and coats also of kersey, drugget, cor- 
durov, frieze, etc., felt hats, coarse leather shoes with brass buckles and often wooden 
heels, and coarse yarn or wor-ted stockings, were the common outer habiliments of 
that class, and were principally of home manufacture." 

Further, on the same page, he says: "About the year 17U) a considerable imjirove- 
ment was made in the linrn munufacture in this country by a number of Protestant 
people from the North of Ireland, who introduced a better knowledge of the cultiva- 
tion and mannfaeture of llax and the linen or foot wheel for spinning flax." 

I wdl not go on further with the details of cotton, woolen, and linen manufacture. 
The author, speaking of tlie jirogress of it up to the Revolutionary AVar, concludes 
bv saying: "It may be questioned if the people of that day were not as really in- 
dependent i5f other countries for such necessaries as their descendants at present." 
(Page4Ui.) 

I commend this statement to tlie consideration of Senators who are insisting upon 
protection to this species of manufacture to-day. 

There are various accounts in this volume from which I am quoting of the estab- 
lishment of glass manufachires in j\Iassachusetts, New Jenijey, Penilsylvania. and New 
York. They were not quite so prosperous as other industries. One of the causes 
that he mentions as a ditliculty in their way was tlie temptation to artisans to aban- 
don their trades to become agriculturists and landowners. He says, on pages 236, 
237 : " In Januarv, 1767, Sir Henrv Moore, Governor of New York, writing to the Lords 
of Trade, in obedience to their circular letter of August of the preceding year, dwells 
on this tendency of labor to desert the factory for the field as an antidote to all suc- 
cessful attempts at manufa<'ture in the deiiendencies. Even servants, imported from 
Europe for difl'erent trades, so soon as their indentures expired, quit their oc:-upati(ins 
and obtained a small piece of land. The satisfaction of being landholders promjited 
them to endure every privation for a few years in preference to a comfortable subsist- 
ence easily procurable in their trades. He informs their lordships that the master of 
a glass house set up in th(> province a few years before, tlien a bankrupt, assured him 
that his ruin was attributable to no other cause than being desei-ted in that manner 
by liis workmen whom he had imported at great expense. Many others had suffered 
equally with himself from the same cause." 



AI'I'EXDIX, i\0. Jl. 



759 



But the pro<;ivsH oT the niaiiufactiue of glass iluriii;^ that perioil was remarkable. 
An extract is .niven Iroiu a letter written by Mr. David Kittenhoiise, si.eakiiij; of a 
glass tube made at a factory neai- l'liila<leliili"ia, where there were several iron furna- 
ces and glass works. It reads: " I am obligeil to you for the glass tube; it will make 
a pretty barometer, though the bore is somewhat too small. I have eonii)ared it with 
an English tube, and do notthink that the preference can with any reason be given to 
the latter." . ^, , . 

Contemporaneous with the manufacture of cotton and woolen in the Colonies was 
that of iron. As early as 1645 regular works were established at various points. ' < »n 
the (ith of May, 104(), Mr. Jenks was granted by the ].egislature a patent for fourteen 
years 'for the making of engines for mills, to go by water, for the more speedy dis- 
patch of work than formerlv, and for the making of scythes and other edged tools, 
with a new invented sawmill, that things may be att'orded i-heai>er than formerly, 
etc., yet so as power is still left to restrain the ex])ortation of such manulactures and 
to moderate the jirices thereof, if o<-casion so rei|uire.' In May, Kl.'i,"), he^ was accorded 
another patent for an improvement in the manufacture of scythes, 'for the more 
speedy cutting of grass, for seven years.' The innovation consisted in giving great- 
er length and thinness to the blade and in welding a bar of iron upon the back to 
strengthen it, as in the modern scvthe. This was an essential improvement upon 
the old form of the English scvthe, which was a very clumsy instrument, short and 
thick, like the bush or stub seythe._ No radical change has since been made in the 
form of the instrument." (Pages 4i(>, 477.) . . 

Furnaces, foundries, rolling mills, bloomeries, forge hammers, nail works, wire mills, 
all had a solid basis and rapid growth. I'.ells, firearms, sheet iron for tinware, wire, 
etc., were made in large quantities, (.ut and hammered nails, si)ades, sliov. Is, card- 
teeth, swords, scythes, metal liuttons, cannon balls, etc., were all at that tune articles 
of manufacture. , . .u <• 

The Senator from Vermont [Mr. Morrill] boasted the other day about the perlec- 
tion to which the American ax had been brought, and 1 believe he said that Mr. 
Gladstone, in making a present to some association, town, or city, had selected an 
American ax for that purpose. Let me convince the Senator that the perfected Amer- 
ican ax is the oft'spring of the unprotected genius and skill of colonial manufacture 
and not that of the modern protec-ted industry. On page G:;0, volume I., of the book 
from which I quote, I find: "A dangerous rivalry to British iron inteR-sts was^ ap- 
prehended in the American States, not onlv in the production of rough iroUj^ Ironi 




pean 

made from the best iron," etc. ^ , /-, , • • n. 

Wiredrawing is also mentioned as being an industry ot the Colonies in tne year 

I cannot go furtlier with these details. Though exposed to the full brunt of Brit- 
ish competition, these iron industries, as well as the woolen, hnen, and cotton in- 
dustries, not only maintained themselves at home, but they became the aggressors 
—they literallv "bearded the lion in his den," and exported their products to hn- 
t'land. From "nSS to the Revolution, pig and l)ar iron became articles of regular 
export to the mother country. Here are the tables which I believe I will ask per- 
mission to print as a part of these remarks. They are on page b2& of Bishop s " -• 
tory," volume I. 



'His- 



PiG AND Bar Iron Exported pro.m the North American Colonies from 1750 to 1756. 



1750. 

i:5i. 

1752, 
i7m. 
1754, 
1755. 



Bar.. 
Pi;,'.. 
Bar... 
Pig... 
Bar.., 
Pi:.-... 
Bar.. 
Pig- 
Bar.. 
Pig... 
Bar.. 
Pig... 



T. c. g.lb. 



21 1 

■"ij'i'e 



2 8 

i" 13 



2 8 
40 10 



19 
1 



4 16 22 



T. c. q. lb. 

""7ni"i""4 

2 
33 3 



41 5 



97 4 3 

Pi 10 n 

ii.'i ii; 2 

11 12 

457 S 



PeDDevlvania. 



T. c. q.lb. 

"si's "9 "si i 



I'.ll) 15 

64 11) 

156 8 

147 13 

242 16 

110 9 

612 19 
79 5 

836 6 



20 
1 



Marylaml mid 
Virginin. 



T, c. q.lb. 



2.508 

3 

2,950 

16 

Via 

97 

2,317 
153 

2.591 
299 

2,132 



17 3 

16 1 
4 2 
6 3 

10 2 

8 

18 

9 2 

15 1 
4 3 
1 8 

16 1 



T. c. q. lb. 

■■"r7"l4"'6""i2 
"20" 06 



10 
"20"0 0" 

"iT'iVr'n" 



. c. 

5 17 

2.924 

5 4 

3,210 13 

81 7 

2.9,S0 1 

247 19 

2,737 19 

270 15 

3^44 17 

389 18 

3,441 2 



q.lb. 
3 
20 
9 

26 



2 
I 

n 

3 2 
3 11 



760 



LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR.- HL'i LIFE, ETC. 



" In addition to tlie foregoing tliere were exported to Scotland dnring the last six- 
teen years the following quantities — namely : 



In ten years, 1739-1749.. 
In six years, 1750-1756... 



T. c. q. 10. 

10 13 2 11 



T. c. q. lb. 
2I>3 18 2 
228 13 1 10 



"From about this period to the Revolution there was a considerable increase in the 
exportation, especially of bar iron, as appears from the following table: 

Amodnt op Bar ani> Pni Ikon E.xpokted from ai.i. the Continental Colonies to England 
IN Each Year krom 1761 to 1776. 



Tt-:.r. 


Bar Ir..n. 


J'is Iro... 


Y.-!ir. 


Hir Iron, 


Pig Iron. 


1761 

1763!".'!!!!'.'."!;.'.'.';"."!!!"'.'.'.!" 

1764 

1765 

1766 

1767 

1768 


r. c.q.lb. 

39 1 

122 12 2 14 

310 19 3 2 

1,(1.59 IS (1 

1,07S 15 n 16 

1,2.57 14 3 9 

1,325 19 IS 

1,989 11 i; 


T. c. q. lb. 

2.766 2 3 12 
1,766 16 2 
2,.5(i6 8 25 
2,.5.54 8 3 21 
3.264 8 1 22 
2,.S.S7 5 1 15 
3,313 2 1 19 
2,953 2 14 


1769 

1770 

1771 

1772 

1773 

1774 


T. e.q.ib. 

1,779 13 1 23 

1,716 8 21 

2,222 4 3 24 

963 15 23 

837 15 6 

639 23 

916 5 2 11 

as 


T. c.q.lb. 
3,401 12 2 2 
4,232 18 1 18 
5,303 6 3 13 
3,724 19 2 25 
2,937 13 2 
3,451 12 2 19 


1775 

17711 


2,991) 2 24 
316 1 2 8 







While I am on the subject of exports, perhaps it mav be as well to say, for the ben- 
efit of my friend from Nebraska, that the Colonies in 1770 were expt)rting a large 
amount of lumber, embracing boards, plank, scantling; timber for masts, spars, and 
buildings ; staves, heads, headings, lioops, poles, frames of houses, etc. (See Bishop, 
volume I., page 115.) 

The growth of these industries was so rapid that they excited the jealousy and_ ap- 
prehension of English manufacturers. Remonstrances and representations from iron 
masters show that colonial iron manufacture was thus early regarded as a rival to that 
of the mother country. -. en aj 1 1 

"Iron masters, tanners, and owners of coppices in the neighborhood of bhettield, 
were alike apprehensive that tlie iron works erected at great expense would be 
ruined; the laborers be rendered destitute or Vie forced to emigrate; and the tanner- 
ies be left without l)ark from the woods remaining uncut, or the land being converted 
to tillage, unless the number of forges should be increased, and of furnaces lessened by 
removing the duty from pig iron only. The plentv and cheapness of wood would en- 
able American iron to undersell the British, and thus ruin the trade; while the iron 
manufacturers, rendered wholly dependent on so distant and precarious a source for 
material, would probably decay and reduce thousands of workmen to want and mis- 
ery." (Page6L'6.) 

"As a most effectual means," savs Bishop, " of preventmg such manufactures as 
would interfere with their own, the Parliament passed an act to encourage such crude 
manufactures as pig, sow, and bar iron, hemp," etc. 

But while the j.roduction and exportation of bar and j.ig iron was thus encouraged 
by having the duties repealed, the other clause, to arrest colonial manufactures, was 
as follows: "From and after the 24th dav of June, 1750, no mill or other engine for 
slitting or rolling of iron, or any plating forge to work with a tilt hammer, or anv 
furnace for making steel shall bo erected, or, after such erection, continued in any of 
His Majesty's Colonies of America." ^, . j n 

The navi>^tion act of Ifi.iO and 16-51 confined the trade of the Colonies and all co- 
lonial proiluction to British ports. Bv the Act of 1661 cotton and wool grown or man- 
ufactured in the Colonies were forbidden to be shipped to any port except England, 
and in 1669 all woolen manufactures were forbidden to be exported to any place. 
(See Bishop, volume 1.) , i • i 

This concludes what I have to sav, sir, of our manufactures during our colonial pe- 
riod down to the Revolution, during which time the Colonies grew and ])rospered not 
only unaided bv the legislation of the mother country, but in spite, as I said before, 
of 'her unfriendly and prohibitorv enactments. The only encouragement that they 
received was that of a few bounties and premiums from the local authorities such as 
our own States and towns often give in these days. 

All iKjiior to the noble men in whose patient toil, self-reliance, and unconqueralile 



APPENDIX, X(i. 21. 761 

■energy was laid the foundation of thet^e great arts which hiivodoiie so mucli to adorn 
and elevate and perfect the civilization of this continent! 

During the Revolutionary War the growth of manufactures was greatly stimulated. 
The efl'eet of the close of the war was injurious to the business interests of the coun- 
try at lirst. All its imlu^-tries shared in the depression. The manufacturing classes, 
being in cities and centers of j)0|iulation, could act in combination and get up petitions 
and memorials setting forth their sullerings, and thus make them more aiiparent than 
could the agricultural classes, who were scattered and less alile to move in concert. 
But, in truth, all interests were prostrated bv the Inng and impoverishing war. Of 
course Mr. Bishop attributes the prostration" of manufactures to "the flood of Euro- 
pean imports which were poured into the country." He says: "]\Iany new and im- 
portant establishments had been entirely ruined l)y enormous importations which fol- 
lowed the peace." 

In jioint of fact, there were, as shown fiom his own pages, no greater importations 
immediately after the peace than there were for some years before the war. 

Mr. President, at the adoption of the constitution there can be no doubt that the 
founders of our Republic were profoundly impressed with the necessity of j)reserving 
our manufactures. We had just emerged from a war in wbich our existence was at 
stake. The nation was then in its infancy, and weak in all the elements of national 
security. Their e_ves were fixed on their relations with other countries, and they felt 
the deep necessity of the full command by the government of the entire power and 
resources of the country to the preservation of the nation's iiulepi'iidence and exist- 
ence. Manufactures were regarded, and very wisely, as one of these elements of the 
national strength. But, sir, a close scrutiny of the views of these early founders of 
our Republic will show that they reg-arded "this fostering of manufactures as a tempo- 
rary policy adapted to a nation in the infancy of its existence. Washington placed 
his recommendation on that ground. In his first message he said : " The safety and 
interest of the people require that they should promote such manufactures as will 
render thein independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies." 

The first Congress in its action looked to the same result, and adopted a resolution 
ordering the Secretary of the Treasury to report some plan " for the prfunotion of such 
manufactures as will tend to render the United States independent of other nations 
for essential, particulai-ly military, supplies." 

Now, sir, I wish here to call special attention to the response which Alexander 
Hamilton, who was then Secretary of the Treasury, makes to this resolution. Ob- 
serve, sir, that this was in 17'Jl. His report shows the condition in which maimfac- 
tures were after undergoing and passing through all the prostration and distress con- 
sequent upon the return of jieace, " against wbich the old confederation could provide 
no remedy, while the inharmonious and conflicting laws of the several States could 
give but partial relief within their own jurisdiction." 

Sir, that report exhibited the fact that our manufactures had jiassed through that 
most trying of all ordeals: transition from disorganization to reconstruct ion, strong 
and vigorous. In January, 1791, Mr. Hamilton made his report. Of course it advo- 
cated protection to manufactures by bounties and tariff duties; but the point to 
which I desire to call special attention is his report at that time as to the condition 
of manufactures. 

Iron. 

Under the head of "Iron" he says: "Proofs have been received that manufacto- 
ries of iron, though generally understood to be extensive, were much more so than 
was commonly supposed. Iron works were carried on more numerously and advan- 
tageously than formerly, and the price of iron had risen chiefly on that account from 
$64, the average before the Revolution, to about ?;80. In the manufacture of steel 
considerable progress had been made, and some new enterprises on a more extensive 
scale had been lately set on foot. The United States already, in a great measure, sup- 
plied themselves with nails and spikes. . . . Implements of husbandry were 
made in several States, and could be made to supply the whole country. Edge tools 
of different kinds were also made, and much hollow ware. 

" Copper. 

"Manufactures of copper were also of great extent and utility. 

" Wood. 

" Several manufactories of this article flourished in the United States. Ships were 
nowhere built in greater perfection, and cabinet wares generally were made little if 
at all inferi.)r to those of Europe. Their extent was such as to have admitted of con- 
■siderable exnortatirui, and exemption from duty of all woods u^ed in manufacture 
seemed to be all that was required. 



762 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

" Skins. 

•■ In the principal brandies the progress was such as nearly to defy foreign compe- 
tition. Tanneries were carried on both as a regular business and as incidental family 
manufacture. 

"S.UL Cloth 
already employed a flourishing factory at Boston. Manufactures of paper were 
among those which arrived at tlie greatest maturity, and wei-e almost adequate to the 
national supply." 

The first tariff that was imposed certainly recognized tlie princijile of protection. 
So far as it can be invoked on the cr.mstitutional question it furnishes a precedent, 
though certainly the duties were for revenue purposes, and at the lowest rates which 
have ever existed in this country. 

1789-1801. 

The Senator from ."Maine [Mr. Frye], in the speech to wliich I liave already referred, 
uses the following language: " History repeats iteelf Our periods of i)rosperity have 
been the years of protection; of adversity, those of free trade. By free trade I mean 
a tariff for revenue only. In 1789-lsOl we had protection ; in 1801-1812, free trade; 
in 1812-181(1, protection; in 1810-1824, free trade; in 1824-1833, protection ; in 1833- 
1842, free trade ; in 1842-1S47, protection; in 1847-1861, free trade; in 18(il-18Sl, pro- 
tection again." 

Mr. President, was the tirst tarifi", the tariff of 1 789, a tariff for protection? I respect- 
fully deny it. I will show tliat that tariff was a tariff for revenue, with incidental pro- 
tection, and that protection very sliglit. It is here before me in "Young's Statistics 
on Customs-Tariii" Legislation:" "On cloth manufactures and textile fiibrics, seven 
per cent; on iron manufiicture, seven and one-half per cent ad valorem." 

I can cite abundance of authority to my aid on these points. Horace Greeley, in 
his work on " Political Economy," page 34", speaking of our manufactures, character- 
izes tlie first tariffs as " .scarcely a skirmish line of legislative defense against a power- 
ful, determined, and often crushing foreign rivalry." On page 247 he gays: "Thougli 
protection to manufactures had "been declared in its preatnlile as one of the purposes 
of the first tariff formed and jjassed under the Federal Constitution, ... it was 
not until 1S24 that a measure of exclusive protection . . . became a law of the 
land." 

I could quote an abundance of other authorities. Albert Gallatin speaks of the 
growth of our manufactuies as due to many causes, with no other aid except the in- 
ciilental jirotection derived from the tariff. I admit, sir, that it was a period of great 
prosperity, ami tliat manufactures prosjiered under that low revenue tariff' with inci- 
dental protection. 

1801-1812. 

But, sir, why does he put down the period from 1801 to 1812 as a jieriod of free 
trade? I cannot tell; for all the tarifl's imposed after 1798 until 181() continued to as- 
sess higher and higher duties, but all of tlieni were low revenue tarifl's with inciden- 
tal protection. Nor do I see why this period from 1801 to 1812 sliould be character- 
ized by liim as one not only of free trade, but cif adversity. It was during this j.eriod 
that our nation, thanks to a low tariff, was enaliled to avail itself of its neutrality and 
to olitain tlie large carrying trade of tliat period and to assume such a high and hon- 
oralile position among the commercial nations of the earth. 

Tlie export trade of the United States in tlie year 1807 reached a higher value than 
in any other year jirevious to 18.38. It had increased in sixteen vears to ^89.331,109. 
The domestic "exports amounted to $48,000,000, and the foreiLrn to §^9,000,000. Assum- 
ing the population to have been six million three hundred thousand, the total exports 
of the country averaged S17.19 for each individual, while the total value jicr capita 
of exports in 1 790 was §4.84. (See Bi-hop, volume II., pages 120, 121.) These exports 
embraced manufactures to the value of $2,309,000. The American tonnage employed 
in the foreign trade, as compared with that of all other powers so employed, was in 
the proportion of more than twelve to one. There was a large suriilus in the treasury 
after paying a large amount of iiuljlic debt. It was a period of steady growth and 
prosperity. 

Mr. Saulsbury: Lousiana was purchased in that period. 

Mr. Lam.\k: Yes, sir: we were enabled not only to extend our commerce, but. as 
the Senator from Delaware suggests, also to extend the area of our national territory 
by tlie purchase of Louisiana. 

Speaking of the year 1807, Bishop says that "laborand capital began from this time 
to be more than ever directed to manufactures, and small cotton factories were rapidly 
multiplied." 



APPENDIX, i\0. 21. liS'i 

Tliu number of cotton factories, woolen factories, gUis- factories nf blown ami cut 
glass, nail factories, breweries, copper and tin factories, wireweavins; and riddle lac- 
tories, brass foundries, potteries, and tanneries is so great tliat I sball not take the 
time of the Senate or incnmber the Recuril with the account of them as chronicled by 
the authi«' that I am (piotinf;. Perhaps it will putlice to call attention ic. Mr. Galla- 
tin's report on manufactures, subnutted to Congress on tln' 7th of June, ISOS. 1 com- 
mend it to your study and consideration. 1 cannot quote from it at any length, but 
will give one or two extracts fnim it. He says: 

"Tlie following manufactures wen; ascertained to l)e rai-ried on to an extent which 
might be considered adciiuate to the consumption of the United States, as the value 
of their products annuallv exported exceedinl that of the foreign articles annually im- 
ported "—manufactures of wood, or of which wood is the princijial material; leather 
and manufactures of leather; coarse earthenwaie; and many other articles. 

"The following branches are lirmly cstalilished, supjilying in several instances the 
greater, and in all a consideralile, j)art of the consumption of the Fnited States — 
namely, iron and manufactures of iron ; maniifactures of cotton, wool, and flax; hats, 
paper," printing types, printed books, playing cards, spirituous and malt lii|Uors; sev- 
eral manufactures of hemp, gunpowder, window glass, jewelry, and clocks; .several 
manufactures of lead, straw Ijonnets, hats, and wax>andles. Progress had also lieen 
made in the following branches "—I cannot go on, Mr. President, with these details; 
but the whole report shows that the manufacturing condition of the country during 
this period, whit'h the Senator calls the period of free trade, was one of almndant 
prosperity in all the departments of American industry. And I desire to impress 
upon Senators that at this early dav an Amei-ican Secretary of the Treasury had de- 
clared as " firmly established" the very industries which to-day are declared to he in- 
capable of being carried on without the jirotection of high duties. 

On May 1, 1813, a digest of the census of 1810 was submitted to Congress by Mr. 
Tench Coxe, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. That report declared that the sev- 
eral branches of manufacture had advanced since the autumn of 1810 at the full rate 
of twenty per cent. I will give but one more extract from this rejiort: 

" The whole population, taken at tight nuUions of persons, will produce in thei cur- 
rent year an aggregate value of manufactures, exclusive of doubtfiil articles, of $200,- 
000,000. . . ." The i.'eneral result fuinishcd a gratifying comparison with the prod- 
uct of English manufactures, which, in 1787, when the population of England alone 
was about the same as that of the United States at this time, or 8..-i(i(),()00, was com- 
puted at 152(3(1,000,000. This state of manufactures has been in a great measure at- 
taine<l bv the United States . . . with onlv an im'idental support from govern- 
ment, while England has been for hundreds of years progressing under tnany forms 
of government aid." . j j, j 

This concludes the period of ISOl to 1812. "Would any one call it a period of adver- 
sity? The Senator calls it a )ieriod of free trade. Jlr. (iallatin and Mr. Greeley and 
Mr. Coxe called it a period of revenue duties with a slight inciilental protection. 

1812-1816. 

But the Senator savs that from 1812 to 181(1 was a i.eriod (jf protection and prosperi- 
ty. Sir, it w^asa period of wtir and of war duties, and manufacturers enjoyed that kind 
of development and prosperitv which war engenders. This prosperity was the result 
of the concurrence of manv causes. The exemption of mamilactures from all comp(3- 
tition by the entire suspension of commerce by the war and the embargo precedmg it 
•was one cause; but another was the great inflation of the currency growing out of 
the enormous issues of paper money, both bv the government and the numerous 
banks which were chartered at that time, each pourintr out its worthless issues that 
were never to be redeemed. Prices rose high; profits of all kinds of industry in- 
creased ; and manufacturers, sharing in the profits, mnltii>lied in number and increased 
in productiim. . ^ , . . , •* -t j. 

The Senator says that it w^is a. period of prosperity. I ailmit it, aiul cite it to 
show the continued and increasina prosperity of Ameri<an manufacturers through pe- 
riods of low duties and high duties, tlirough peace and war, up to the year 181fi. 

181(1-1824. 

I can account for the Senator's declaration that the perio.l from 181(1 to 1824 was a 
period of adversity. It was so in manv respects, as I will show directly. But wdiy 
should he call it a "period of free trade?" Why, Mr. President, the tariff of ISIG 
was the inauguration of the protective svstem in the T'uited States. Can it be possi- 
ble that I have to prove this? Hear what Mr. Welnster says about it in his speech 
in 1824- "We hear of the fatal pohcv of the taMfl'of 18Ui; and yet the law of 1Mb 
was passed avowedlv for the benefit of manufacturers, and, with very few excejitions. 



7G4 LUCIUS Q. a LAM AH: lUS LIFE, ETC. 

imposed on imported articles very great additions of tax, in some important instances, 
indeed, amounting to a prohibition." 

I cite Mr. Greelej' next: "Hence," said lie, "John C. Calhoun, though a protec- 
tionist while in the House, as he showed in framing and advocating the tarifl"in 1816, 
became an intense free trader," etc. 

Again, Mr. Greeley, on jtage 247 of his " Political Economy," says that "the tarifl 
of 181G was made undeniably and stringently protective in its duties on cotton fab- 
rics and on some manufactures of iron." 

I make one other citation, from Lopsing's "History of American Arts and Manu- 
factures:" 

" Tlie Congress now jjossessing ample powers to levy taxes and to regulate the com- 
merce of the country, ilomestic and foreign, proceeded, under the wise leadership of 
Alexander Hamilton, the tirst Secretary of the Treasury of the new nation, to the 
delicate and important task of laying the foundations of the financial and commercial 
policy of the United States. That policy was defined in his report of December,1791, 
on the manufactures of the country, in which he proposed a taritf for revenue so high 
that it would operate practically as a taritf for protection. It was not, however, until 
1816 that a tariff was established avowe<lly for protection. 

"Up to that time there had been twenty-tive acts in which tarifl's had been estab- 
lished, all for revenue; in the spring of that year the first of a series of tarifl's for the 
protection of American manufactures was establislied, under the sanction of Pi-esi- 
dent Madison. It was the progenitor of all the subsequent jirotective tarifl's." 

Sir, if the Senator could satisfy the intelligence of this country that the tariff of 
1816 was ncit a protective tarifl', lie would perform a service for John C. Calhoun in 
vindicating his name and fame from a charge of having once suiiported a jirotective 
tariff which Mr. Calhoun when living confessed upon the floor of the American Sen- 
ate that he could not perform for himself In one notable debate between himself 
and Mr. Webster, ujion the subject of protection, ]\Ir. A\'ebster, after summarizing 
rapidly his own reasons for supporting protection, many of which were the repetitions 
of those which Mr. Calhoun had given in ISKi, he turned to that Senator and said: 
"Mr. Presiilcnt, in all this I maybe wrong and in error; but if so, there sits my sedu- 
cer." After Mr. Clay and Mr. Clayton twitted hiiu with being the author of the pro- 
tective system in this country he arose and, with that candor which marked all his ut- 
terances, declared that the state of the ci >ii ntry immediately after the war of 1812, and 
his desire to make our nation secure and indejiendent and complete in every resource 
of power, misled him into a policy whose practical effects had convinced him of its 
unjust, oiijiressive, and pernicious character. 

There is no question, sir, aliout the distress and disaster and universal dejjression 
which occurred during this period last referred to. Here sir, is what Mr. Henry C. 
Cary says of that period : 

"Protection aflbrded by the war causeil a considerable increase in iron manufac- 
tures, but there exist no reliable statistics in reganl thereto. Peace in 181.5 was fol- 
lowed by the so-called revenue taritf of 1817, and that in turn, as is so well known, 
by the closing of flictories and furnaces ; by the ruin of manufacturers and merchants ; 
by the discharge of workmen everywhere; by the stoppage of banks; by the bank- 
ruptcy of States; liy the transfer of the real estate of the Union, and by an impov- 
erishment of our people generally beyond all former ]irecedent." 

Mr. Matthew Carey, speaking in his " New Olive Branch," thus describes the condi- 
tion of Pittsburg in isiO: 

"This city in 181.5 contained about six thousand inhabitants. It exhibited as ex- 
hilarating a scene of industry and prosperity as any place in the world. Its immense 
local advantages — seated at the confluence of two noble rivers forming the majestic 
Ohio, its boundless supplies of coal, and the very laudalile enterprise of its inhabitants 
— had for a long time rendered it the emporium of the Western world ; but, alas! the 
immoderate influx of foreign manufactures [ioure<l in tlieie shortly after the peace 
produced a most calamitous reverse." 

I pau.se in this quotation a moment, sir. to remark that the influx of foreign manu- 
factures at that time was less than it was in 1807 (a period of great manufacturing 
prosperity, as I have already showu\ and couM not therefore have [iroduced the 
calamitous I'everse. But to ]>roceed with the quotation: 

"The operations of the hammer, the hatchet, the shuttle, the spindle, the loom, 
ceased in a great degree. Noble establishments which reflected honor on the nation 
were closed, the proprietors ruined, the workmen discharged, a bliL'ht and a blast 
overspread the face of the city; and the circumjacent country which had shared in 
its iirosperity now equally partook of its decline." 

Now, sir, if these terrible scenes so vividly described by the two Careys were due 



APPENDIX, NO. 21. 7G5 

to the tariff of 1810, then, sir, it must be concedeil tliat tlicy were the ret-ults of a 
tariff which Mr. Webster decliired "was passed tor the lieiiVlit of iiiamilactiirers," 
and ]Mr. Greeley declared was undeniably ami strictly protective in its duties. They 
certainly cannot be ascribed to the inlhience of ''a tarilf for revenue only." 

I do liot say (for I do ncit thinlv) that this stair of things was caused by that tarill'. 
In the recent discussions on tlie Ihiancial ([Ueslions both sides agreed that the great 
revulsion of that period was auised by a disordered currency. 

Upon the return of peace and the renewal oi trade our manufacturers, habituated 
to the absolute command of the home market and intlated prices, had to meet foreign 
competition with prices down to their natural level. The currency was sudilenly 
contracted from $14.5,000,000 to $4.5,000,00t). A revulsion followed, fearful in its ex- 
tent and terrible in its ravages; but it embraeed in its desolating sweej) all the in- 
dustries, agriculture, manufactui-es, and trade alike. Its eti'ect upon agriculture was 
more enduring than upon manufactures. 

The farming people at sut'li times, ]\Ir. President, live very closely, and try to bear 
the hard times with greater self-denial and patient toil ; but the manufacturers clamor 
for legislative relief and high tariffs; and, sir, not without ell'ect. The tarilf of 1818 
was passed; but the duties, though much higher than those of 181U, were not high 
enough to satisfy the manufiictureis. Anotlier still higher tariff was jiassed in 18_1'.»; 
but protection bi'gets protection, and this was followed by the tariff of 1824, which 
Mr. Greeley styled "the tariff of unqualilied protection." 

But, sir, 'injurious as was tliat financial crisis upon agriculture and commerce and 
manufactures, ujiou investments of capital and profits of business and rewards of 
labor, the facts chronicled in tlie history from which I have so often (|iioted prove 
that manufacturing as an industry was "not overthrown nor its power of growth vi- 
tally impaired. 

A brief account of the increa.se of manufacturing establishments during this period 
shows tliat, while protection could not avert the disasters which caused a general 
overturn of all industries, there was in American manufacture the same recuperative 
power, the same native genius, skill, and capacity to adapt means to ends and de- 
velop greater resources under adversity, that mark the American character in all other 
departments of human endeavor; tha't, while the war had increased the nundjer of 
mills and draw^n larser cajiital and extended the industry, it had lagged behind m 
the improvements that had taken i>lace elsewhere; that the competition which drove 
weak and unskillful establishments from the field could not shake those establish- 
ments which resorted to modern imiirovements in machinery; it shows tliat, no 
matter how depressing the times might be, capital and skill, which in eras of cheap 
prices are hunting for safe and profitable investments, found them in the new manu- 
factures which were being established all over the country. 

1824-183.3. 

Tlie Senator from Maine says that from 1824 to 1833 was a period of protection and 
prosperity. True, so far as the protection is concerned; for tlie tjiriff of 1824 was a 
tariff of "unqualified protection," and that of 1828 was the well-known "bill of 
abominations." 

I must say, however, that the picture drawn by Mr. Clay, ana quoted by the bena- 
tor, of the unexampled prosjierity of that period, wa- a little too bright with the tints 
of oratory and rhetoric. In the sober colors of historical statement tlie ell'ect is some- 
what subdued. Bishop savs: "An unusual degree of distress prevailed at this time 
among the manufacturers 'of New England, particularly in the cotton branch, pro- 
ducing numeious failures and great depreciation of the value of stocks. The cause 
was by some ascribed to the disaiijiearance of specie, and by others to overspecula- 
f ion, which had tempted great numbers into manufacturing with insufiicient capital, 
and consequently overproduction." „ . , ^ e 

Again, Bishop tells us that, in consequence of the tariff of 1824, a large amount of 
capital had, durin'r a number of yeais past, been attracted to the woolen manufacture. 

But what was the result of this policy of diverting enterprise from agriculture into 
this and other branches of manufacture Iiy the liigher duties of the tariff of 18247 
It was this. When the author comes t(3 the year 1827 (rememl >er, sir, that it was the 
period of protection") he has to state that "the woolen interests at this time,_ as 
well as the ao-ricultural branches connected with them, found themselves sufi^ermg 
under the severest depression and unal)lc to struggle with the^ various adverse influ- 
ences by which they were surrounded." (Volume II., imge 313.) 

Well, sir, in 1829, another year of this halcyon period of " protection and pros- 
perity," the same historian has to record that " the continued distress of the woolen 
manufacturers, who had been fast sinking under foreign competition, or, witli very 



766 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

few exceptions, had barely sustained themselves in the hope of some jieriiianent 
measures for their relief, and the equally dejiressed condition of the iron interest, 
jjroduced a resolution of the House empowering the Committee on Manufactures to 
send for and examine persons on oath concerning tlie present condition of manufac- 
tures," etc. (Volume II., jiage 321.) 

So, sir, it appears that during this period of high taritf protection distress to an 
unusual degree prevailed among the cotton manufactiues in 1829; that the woolen 
interests were suffering then, as in 1827, under "tlie severest depression;" and that 
iu 1S2S the iron interests were " in an equally depressed condition." 

Another fact worthy of consideration is that in that period of liigh protection our 
foreign tonnage steadily decreased, and at the end of the period had fallen off thou- 
sands of tons. Our coasting tonnage fell off still more. Its effects upon the capacity 
of our manufacturers to meet the competition of foreign countries were still nioi'e 
marked. During that same ))eriod our exports of American manufactures declined 
steadily to the close. It is also true, sir, that if in this period pro.sperity bloomed 
around the manufacturing sections adversity lirooded over others. Here is a picture 
not so attractive as Mr. Clay's, but quite as graphic and more true to fact. 

Mr. Calhoun says; "Desolation spread itself over the entire stajile region; its com- 
mercial cities were desolated. Charleston parted with her last ship, and grass grew 
in her once busy streets. The political condition of the country presented a 23rospect 
not less dreary; a deep and growing conflict l.ietween the two great sections agitated 
the wdiole country, and a vast revenue beyond its most extravagant wants gave the 
government boundless patronage ancl power which were rajiidly changing the char- 
acter of the go\ erument and spreading corruption far and wide through every con- 
dition of society." 

Sir, if manufactm-es could not prosper during that period, their case would indeed 
be a hopeless one. With seven years of enibai'go and war, free from all foreign com- 
petition, nine more of protection, ten more of extreme jirotection, certainly, sir, they 
had an opportunity to lay the foundations of theii- prosperity broad and deep. 

1833-1847. 

The Senator fi'om Maine says that the jieriod from 1833 to 1847 was one of free 
trade and adversity. It was a period of compromise, of progressive reduction from 
protective to revenue duties. What I mean is that the Compromise .'\ct which jiassed 
in 18.33 provided that all duties on imports exceeding 20 ]ier cent on the vahie thereof 
should be reduced after the 31st of December following one-tenth of the excess above 
20 per cent, and that a like reduction should be made every second year until 1841, 
when one-half of the excess remaining should be taken off, and the remaining half 
after the 30th of June, 1S42. But the effect of the lower or revenue standard of du- 
ties was never tested, for the compromise act was repealerl in 1842. 

This has been designated also as a period of adversity. Mr. President, there are 
many who have insisted that, even in spite of the financial troubles which grew out 
of a disordered currency during that period, agriculture, manufacture, and commerce 
all made greati'r progress under the Compromise Act than they did under the high 
protective tariffs of 1824 and 1828. I do not make this assertion myself, for my jiur- 
pose is not to show that manufacfures weie more or less prosperous at any one period 
than at another, but that they were aljle to maintain themselves equally with other 
industries. At the same time I must say that there are some striking facts in suppoit 
of their assertion. I have mentioned that the tonnage fell of}' very largely under the 
tariff acts of 1824 and 1828, and the exports of manufactured products also decreased. 
Under the com|>romise tariff the tonnage at once liegan to increase until at the close 
of the period it had nearly doubled itself 

The exports of domestic products also increased under the compromise tariff; and, 
though clieckcd by the financial embarrassments of 183G and 1837, yet in nine years 
the exports of American manufactures greatly increased, such was the effect of low 
duties in enlarging the market for our manufactured products, and infusing into our 
manufacturing industries the vigor to compete in foreign markets; and the same was 
true of our agricultural interests. 

Under this system of progressive reduction new factories were springing up over 
the country, and old ones undergoing large extensions. 1 c^innot take up the time of 
the Senate in reading the account of them as given by this history. I may avail my- 
self of the privilege accorded me to append a short synopsis of the most important. 

1833-1843. 

"Fall River, Mass., where the first cotton mill was erected in 1S12, had in this pe- 
riod, from 1833 to 1843, thirteen cotton factories; one satinet factory, employing one 
hundred and fifty hands; and the Anawam Iron Works and nail factories. 



APPENDIX, NO. 21. 7()7 

" The Work Manufacturing Company, of Saco, Me., completed a new four-story cot- 
ton mill in the place of one destroveil by fire, and within the next four years added 
two other largo mills. They had iil^o at this time a r<illing iiiilj and a nail factory. 

"The cotton manufactures exported in 18H:! aiiiouiited to SL',."):!L',."ui7. 

"In New Jersey there were sixteen extensive factories of saddlery anil harness; ten 
carriage factories^ having seven hundred and seventy-nine worknjen; and shoe facto- 
ries, eighteen in nnml)er; thirteen hmneries; considerable manufactures of iron and 
brass cannon castings, and malleable iron coach si)rings, tin, sheet iron ware, and 
stoves; hardware maimfactures, and two patent leather manufactories. About 
$200,000 manufactures, principally shoes, were sent to New York in two days during 
1833 

"The Novelty Works, for the manufacture of platform scali s and domestic hard- 
ware, established at I^ittsburg, Pa. 

"A gimlet foetory at Wakelv, Brickley, and Keene and Frankhn Counties, New 
Hampshire; and one in Connecticut. The new twist gimlet was considered as 

luch superior to the old English gimlet as the American screw auger was to the old 



auger. ■ , i 

" In 1834 the American market was in a great measure supplied with donjcstic car- 
petings of all kinds. In that same year the foreign articles consumed m the coun- 
try, after deducting teas, wines, cotiee, and spices, did not exceed $oOO,00(),000 per 
annum, wdiile the value of the manufactures of the United States was estimated at 
$350,000,000 per annum. . , • * xt 

"New machinery for spinnmg flax and hemp for cordage introduced mto JMew 
York. . . , 

" Great perfectioi. at this time exhibited in the art of casting iron. Iron castings 
at Albany, N. Y., were particular!-' noted for excellence, and \x ere equal to any in the 
world. The hollow ware of Bartley, Bentz & Co. was preferred to the best Scotch 
castings, and American stoves received the preference wherever known The recent 
progress in the manufacture of American hardware was indicated by the increasing 
number of articles of domestic production which eomiiosed the stock of the liardware 
merchants. Several dealers in the principal cities devoted themselves chielly to the 
sale of American hardware. Hammered brass kettles, or battery, began at this time 
to be first made in the United States. 

'■ Wood screws first made this year by machinery at Providence, K. 1. 

"The Ames Manufacturing Company commenced operations this year in an estab- 
lishment erected at Cabbotsville. . 

"American axes and locks acknowledged to be the best in the world. _ 

"Oliver Ames of Eastern Massachusetts, had at this time three extensive shovel 
factories— one at Easton one at Baintree, and one at East Bridgewater; and his esti- 
mate 1 profits were $1-5,000 per annum. ^ ,-, ,T 

" In 1835 haircloth manufactures were established at Deerfleld, Mass. 

"Six companies incorporated by Massachusetts for the manufacture of India rub- 
ber goods. 

" Boston and Lowell Railroad opened for travel. 

" Several cotton factories erected. , , t , , t:- i „^ 

" The Newport IMamifacturing Company, opposite the city, established. Employed 
two hundred hands. INIade woolen goods, cotton bagging, cotton yarn, and bale rope, 

*''"'iLnufect°res'*'of" Covington amounted to $508,500, of which $200,000 was the 
product of an iron rolling mill and nail works. ,• ^ j 4. » n „„„„„/i 

" The arrivals of steamboats at New Orleans this year estimated at two thousand 
threehundred, an inrrease of seven hundred since 1832 i, „„j 

"The Howe IManufacturing Company was established this year at New ^ ork, and 
another at Derby, for spnn-head pins. . »t ,- . i rr^i „ u„j™^, tho 

"The manufacture of locomotives was begun m New York by Thomas Rodger, the 
eminent manufacturer of cotton machinery and railroad w-ork. _ 

" Fourteen locomotives wore built this year at Philadelphia, and forty m l-'^f • }he 
Korris Locomotive Works also in operation. One of his engines, the f-eoigo Wa.^- 
ington,' established his reputation as a builder, and he added other improvements the 

'''^" Nearly one hundred thousand wood and brass clocks made this year in Con- 

"''" A°n immense number of patents taken out for all kinds of improvements in ma- 

^ " In'^me charters were granted in Massachusetts to seventy-three manufacturing 
companies and to thirteen railroad companies. 



708 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

" First manufacture of wrought iron tubes and fittings for gas and steam works in 
the United States began this year at the Paselial Iron Works, in Philadelphia. 

"One of the most extensive copjier mines in this eountry was opened aliout this 
time in Bristol, Conn. 

"The productive value of all branches of manufacture, including raw material, in 
the city of Pittsburg, Pa., was estimated at $15,575,440. Sixty-one steamboats were 
Ijuilt there this vear. 

" The celebrated Eagle Brewery of Vassar & Co. erected at Poughkeepsie, N. Y. 

" India ruljber factory put up at Troy, N. Y. 

"A large ingrain carpet manufactory put up at Poughkeepsie, N. Y. 

"Thirty-sev-en experiments in smelting iron with anthracite coal liegun this year 
and successfully accomplished. Seventy-six furnaces in operation, thirty-seven for 
casting iron. 

"The manufacture of machinists' tools commenced at Nashua, N. H. 

"One of the most complete wire manufactories in the country was that at Falls- 
town, Beaver C<junty, Pa. 

" Pressed glass tumlilers and other drinking vessels were first made at this time. 

"Covered coat buttons were extensively nmnufactured at Haydenville, Mass. 

"A large nmnber of charters granted this yeai-. 

" Ricli veins of lead ore were ojiened at this time. 

"Tlie Howe ^humfacturing Company commenced this year the manufacture of 
scjlid-headed pins. 

"The nuumfacture of gold sjjectacles and nf gold and silver thimbles was com- 
uieuced tiiis year at Long ^leadow, ilass." 

The above is a mere abstract, but is taken exactly from the text of Bishop's work, 
tliough n(.)t in the order in which they appear. 

It was during this period, 1S37, tliat "experiments in smelting iron ore with an- 
thracite coal were begun and successfully accomplished," cipeniiig up a new era in 
tlie manufacture of ircm. 

Referring to the decade from ISliO to 1840, Bishop says: " We are now approaching 
a i)eriod when the manufacturing industry of the country, established on a solid and 
permanent foundation, had attained such wonderful expansion that it is no longer 
possible to trace its piogress in detailed statements or isolated facts. _ In sjjite of tem- 
jiorary checks and adverse legislation, the Anglo-Saxon steadily widened the circle 
of his enterprises until tlie sound of his hammer rang throughout the whole extent 
of the populated jiortion of the Republic." 

What, Mr. President, do you suppo.se was the "adverse legislation" referreil to? 
Xotliing, sir, but the gradual reduction of taxes under the Compromise Act. It is 
furtlier stated that the production of cotton goods had increased in the ratio of one 
hundred and thirty percent. 

It is also stated that "the iron manufacture constituted one of the industries of 
the country, which, though temporarily depressed at this time in common with niost 
brandies of trade and commerce, showed a gratifying result in the jiast ten years." 

I leave this period with the single remark that, notwithstanding the depressions 
conseciuent upon the financial jianic of 1S37, manufacturing industry under the oper- 
ation of this comiiromise tarilf (whether you style it free trade or protection) had 
become vigcji'ou^, expanded, and capable of entering on equal terms the field of uni- 
versal competition. 

1S43-1S47. 

From 1.S42 to 1S47 the Senator says was the jieriod of protection and prosperity. 
The tarilTof 1S42 was euacted under these circumstances: In 1S40 there was a great 
political revolution which swept the Democracy out of power and brought the Whigs 
in. Contrary to the expectation of the people, and in violation of their pledges and 
ill violation "of the compromise of lSo2, that law was repealed, and the taritf of 1842 
was enacted, for which the Whig party was hurled out of jiower in the sulisequent 
elections; and the tariff of 1842 was repealed as soon as the Democracy could get the 
op]iortunity. The conse'iuence w;is that it was not in operation over three yeara 
and eleven months; and to attribute to it the impulse and revival of imiustries in 
this countrv, which liegan l)efore that tariff was enacted and continued after it was 
repealed, through a lon^' (leriod of unexampled prosperity, is simply to make an asser- 
tion which needs no rejilv. 

1847-1861. 

" The next period of fi-ee trade and adversity," says the Senator, " was from 1847 
to 18(11." Sir, it was a period of revenue tariffs with the incidental protection that 
such tariffs afford. I remember well, sir, the circumstances under which that tariff 



APPENDIX, yo. 21. 7(!9 

was enacted. I wus one of a class of stmlent? wlio read the Congressional debates of 
that day. 1 recollect the predictions of evil and the promises of good made hv the 
opponents and ailvocates, respectively, of that measure. I remembei- well the 
prophecies of what would be its ruinous effects: they predicted that American 
manufactures would expire under its baleful operations, and that our country would 
become little more than a conmiei-cial dei)endency of England. 

I remember also the promises of good which its friends made in its behalf. I tm 
almost tempted to read to the Senate a portion of the great report of Robert J. Walker, 
in which he depicts the future grandeur and glory of the country in all its interests 
as the effect of the revenue tarilf j)r(iposed by him. Sir, time has jiassed ; which was 
right? Whose predictions have been verified, the prophets of evil or the jjiomisers 
of good? IJid that tariff entail ruin and destruction upon niaimfai'turing industries? 
On the other hand, did it not accomplish that which its friends and advocates jirom- 
ised it would achieve? Sir, we might well allow the history of the effects of that 
tariff to be written by its strongest and most uncompromising opponents. 

I will, therefore, for the last time, invoke the testimony of tlie historian, and I 
will say here that there is not in this Senate a more intense and uniiualified advocate 
of protection than the author of the work which I have been (|Uoting. There is not a 
chapter, and I might say hardly a page of it, in which he iloes not dwell upon the benign 
influence of legislative fostering upon the growth of manufactures and upon the de- 
pression and checks wdiich they suffered from legislative neglect. It has been dilli- 
cult to even quote his statement of facts disengaged froni the political opinions with 
which he connects them. Speaking of the immense extension of domestic manu- 
factures in the decade from 1840 to 1850, he says: "The astounding fact was revealed 
that the capital invested in manufactures, not counting any establishment that ]iro- 
duced under SoOO a year, exceeded 5550,000,000, and that the annual product had 
reached $1,019,000,000. 

He proceeds: "Vast a-s this production is, we find ten years later an increase of 
more than 86 per cent; and if to tins amount was added the very large amount of 
production-! below the value of $500 (of which no official cognizance is taken), the re- 
sult would indeed be one of startling magnitude." 

1850-1860. 

Sir, from 1850 to 1860 the wealth of this country increased, as estimated, 126 per 
cent. During that same period the capital in manufactures increased 90 per cent ; the 
product,86 percent; and the profits on capital, 47 percent. It isstated by Mr. Bishop 
that in this period the ca]>ital in jiig iron increased nearly 50 per cent, and the prod- 
uct over 5C per cent. In bar, sheet, and railroad iron, capital increased over 45 per 
cent; products, over 100 percent; and profits rose from 18 jiercent on capital to 30 per 
cent. Steel products rose during the same period tenfold. In the same decade the 
capital of cotton manufactures increased 29.6 percent; products, nearly 80 ])er cent; 
and prollts, from 13J to 45 per cent. In the same decade the capital of woolen and 
worsted manufactures increased 18 per cent; products, 41 percent; and profits rose 
from 43 to nearly 50 per cent. Agriculture prospered in corresponding ratios. I am 
indebted for these figures to the able and exhaustive speech made by a distinguished 
gentleman from Virginia, Mr. J. Randolph Tucker. 

1861-1881. 

This is a jieriod, sir, wliich the Senator says is a period of jirotection and prosper- 
ity. It is the ]ieriod which we are now in. I liave no desire to compare this period 
with that under the revenue tariff. The distinguished gentleman to whom I have 
already referred [.Air. Tucker] has done that in a manner far beyond the happiest ef- 
forts of mv humble jiowers. My object is a different one. I simjily wisii to show the 
fact that through revenue duties, through the periods of so-called free trade, thrnngh 
periods of depression, through pci-iods of every kind, manufactures have continued 
to grow at a pace corresponding with the wants of the country, and have taken no 
step backward under any circumstances, and have lieen overwhelmed by no adverse 
fortunes. My purpose has been to convince Senators that if they wish to respond to 
the demands of the people for reduced taxation, apprehension as to its effect upon 
manufactures need not stand in the way to obstnict this iiojiular aspiration. 

I miglit devote some of my time to the discussion of the jiresent condition of manu- 
factures under the protective system now in oiieration. I do not deny that cur conn- 
try has progressed. There never has been a period in which we have not increaseil 
in prosperity, and that, too, in advance of our increase of population. If T desired to 
go into the causes of this grand and rapid development of our material civilization, 
one among the chief, I would sav, was not our restriction on foreign trade, but the fact 
that we have on this continent 'the grandest exhibition of the blessings and Ijenefits 

49 



V'70 LUCIUS (J. <: LAMAR: His LIFE, ETC. 

of tliat absolute freedom of commeri-e between the States which our constitutinn has 
established. ISowhereou earth has commerce been so unrestricted, upon such a scale, 
and through such vast sections, divided by great mountains and rivers, and abound- 
ing in all varieties of sciil, climate, productions, and conditions. Sujipose that we had 
reversed our constitutional policy, and that, instead of having the free trade which 
has pre\ailcd throughout all the" States, there had been custoujhouses erected along 
the lioundaries of each particular State; would not the picture of our civilization be 
reversed? 

But, sir, to return to the point from which I started in the beginning of these re- 
marks: what is the condition of your manufactures under this protective .system? 
Why are they depressed? Why are they tottering on the verge of universal bank- 
ruptcy, according to their own representations? It cannot, as in 1S37 and in 1817 and 
in 1857, be attributed to financial crises ; for never was our currency in a better con- 
dition than it is at this time. It is perfectly sound, and it is plentiful. There is but 
one embarrassment possiljle — and that is one which has not yet developed itself — 
gi'owing out of the overvaluation of our silver. I re])eat, sir, that there never was a 
time when the currency of the country was in a condition more f;ivorable_ to the pros- 
perity of industries than it is now, in its uniformity and in the steadiness of ex- 
changes. 

In 1873 there was the same sort of distress that exists at this time. I do not say 
that it grew out of the protective tariff. It was the result of the sudden contraction 
of the currency following an enormous inflation. It was one of those terrible cur- 
rency disasters, not like the ones to which I have just referred — violent in their out- 
burst and brief in their duration — but, like some fatal epidemic, it spread tlcep and 
wide, desolating one comnumity after another, until gloom and ruin settled upon all. 
I repeat, sir, that, while the protective sy.stem is not to be reproached as the cause of 
this widespread distress, it is certainly true that it could not shelter its jjrotectpd in- 
dustries from the devastation. But, sir, this distressed condition of manufactures is 
not confined either to the present time or to the financial crisis of 1873. 

In 18G8, long before the catastroplie of 1873, when the protective system was in its 
full play, what was the condition of your manufactuiiug industries? Sir, I will not 
trust myself to depict that condition, but will fjuote from a Senator who is the lead- 
ing champion here of the protective svstem, and in that character sings annually its 
io'triomphi' to the Senate. Mr. Morrill", of Vermont, in 1868, in the Senate, made the 
following remarks: "Look at the industries tliat are at the present moment unusually 
depressed. Take, for instance, the entire woolen interest. There is not an establish- 
ment that is not losing money to-day. Take the woolgrower. Not a pound of wool 
raised last year will bi-ing ten cents per pound of its cost. Take the cotton interest. 
Tlie whole circle of manufacturers are in no better circumstances. Look at the value 
of their stocks. For instance, take the Bates manufacturing stock, of IMaine. . . . 
And so I might go on almost through the whole list. They all suffer. Take the 
West — (Jhio, Illinois, or Iowa. Look at their hog cop. Why, if they had given 
away all their hogs, or if they had slaughtered them a year ago and tin-own them 
away, they would have been better off to-day. They have absolutely lost theii' liog 
crop by feeding out grain to them which, unfed, would have brought more than all 
their pork." 

Mr. Kelley.in the House of Representatives, in a speech delivered January IS, 1868, 
said: "The loom and the spindle, no longer able to yield a profit to their proprietors, 
stand idle; the fires are extinguished in forge and furnace; and the rolling mill does 
not send forth its hum of cheerful and profitable industry. On one day of last month 
eighteen liundred operatives in the glass factories of Pittsburg were tleprived of the 
privilege of earning wages by honest toil at the trade in which they were skilled; the 
establishments in which they worked are closed. In the aVisence of productive em- 
ployment for men or machinery, the smaller holders of bonds are selling them to save 
the"msel\-es from bankruptcy if "they are proprietors of establishments, or to feed them- 
selves and families in involuntary idleness if they are laborers whose hard-earned 
savings have been loaned to the government in its exigency. Look where we may, 
to any section of the country, we hear of shrinkage in the value of manufactured 
goods", of reduction of wages or of the hours of lalior, of factories running on part 
time or closed or to be closed. I [iresent no jaundiced or partisan view of the case." 

Sir, these are not the accusatinns of an enemy to the protective system; they are 
the reluctant admissions and confessions which "inexorable fact extorts. Behold, sir, 
the fruits of the protective system! Depression, poverty, imjioverishment, and niin 
iu 1868; in 1873, impotent to' stem the tide of financial ruin that swept far and wide 
the wrecks of capital and lalior; and in 1883. the entire fabric of manufacturing cap- 
ital and laljor resting upon the narrow and uncertain basis of government taxation! 



APPENDIX, NO. SI. 771 

Mr. President, I intended to discuss somewhat in full the economical principles of 
this system, but it has taken me so much lonj;er than 1 supposed it would to j)iesent 
the historical argument that 1 shall not do so. There is one point, however, to which 
I will call the attention of the f^enate, for I tliink that it is one upon which the advo- 
cates of this system now mainly put their support. It is this: that the dill'erence be- 
tween the wages of labor in this country and in England and the rest of JOurope is so 
great that unless a tax is put upon the imp'irted article equivalent to that disparity 
of w.ages the American manulacturer of the corresponding article is unal.de to conipete 
with ft; that unless a system of duties is arranged so as to cover by taxation this dis- 
parit}' the American industry must perish in the unequal cimllict. 

I think that tlieargument is a fallacy. The general rule is that the nation whose cajj- 
italists em[iloy laboi-'at the highest wages has the advantage in competition with those 
countries whose capitalists emi>loy labor at lower wages. \\'ho, sir, is our most foruud- 
able competitor, not onlv in the markets of the world, but here in our own market? 
Is it the nation that pays the lowest wages for labor? It is England, sir, that pays 
the highest wages for labor of anv in the civilized world, our own, perhaps, excepted. 
I repeat that it is England that"pa\s wages far above those of France or Germany 
or Belgium or Russia,"and }'et occupies their own markets with her products until 
they are driven, even with" their low wages and cheap labor, to throw uji a wall of 
protective and prohibitory duties against this fornudable commercial rival. 

The products of the hildier waged labor of English manufactures vie with us on 
our own soil. We, with our bulky and perishable products of the field transported to 
the seaboard and thence across the ocean, occupy and possess the markets of the 
world against the product of laborers whose wages per diem would not pay for the 
dinner of an American laborer. In the markets of England, Fiance, and Geiniany our 
cotton and cereals and meats meet in successful competition the low waged labor of 
Russia, of India, of Egvpt, and even the slave labor of Brazil. Sir, in the face of 
the fact that tlie two highest wage-paying nations of the world— England with her 
manufactures and America with her stap)les— are the ones whose prod\icts undersell 
all others, this fallacv of high wages must do disservice to the cause that relies upon it. 

There is no principle better understood among political economists than the dis- 
tinction between tlie wages of labor and the cost of labor in relation to profits ; and, in 
spite of the sarcasms which are so often launched at this science hy those whose con- 
tempt for it will not allow them to study and understiind its principles, I will invoke 
its authority. I quote Fawcett's " Political Economy," page 109 : " In any given case, 
the more that is taken in the I'orm of profits, the less will be given in wages. If wages 
take a larger share of the produce, profits must take a smaller share. Suppose, how- 
ever, thatindustrv, by the introduction of new machinery, is rendered more pi-oduc- 
tive ; there will tlien be a greater quantity of produce to be distributed, and more may 
be apportioned to profits, without the slightest reduction in wages." 

On page 170 he says: " Mr. Jlill has shown that the correct way of stating the ])rni- 
ciple IS, that the rate of profit depends on the cost of labor. The cost of labor is de- 
termined l)y comparing the wages the laborer receives with the amountof wealth 
which is produced bv his labor. If, therefore, labor is rendered more efficient, the 
cost of labor is manifestlv diminished, because either more produce is raised by the 
payment of the same amount of wages, or an e<iual amount of produce results from 
the expenditure of a smaller sum in wa^'es. When labor is rendered more eijicieiit, 
it has been shown that the rate of profit will rise, although the same amount^is iiaid 
in wages. The rate of profit therefore varies inversely with the cost of lal'or. 

Fawcett gives an illustration of tins in the following language: "The worst land 
that is cultivated in Australia is fiir more fertile than the worst land cultivated in 
England. Hence, agi-icultnral labor, being applied to a more productive soil, is far 
more efficient in Australia than in England. The same amount of labor tliat is 
employed upon the poorest farms in England would, if applied to anv land that is 
cnltiv.ated in Australia, cause a creat deal more ]iroduce to be raised. Hence, in con- 
sequence of the increased efficiency wdiich is thus given to agricultural labor in Aus- 
tralia, the wages of agricultural laborere may be higher in Australia than in England, 
and yet the cost of this labor in Australia mav be less than it is in England. 

Acain: "The difficulty arises from confusing wages with the cost of labor. \\ ages 
may°be very low, and yet the lalwr be so inefficient that the cost of labor may be ex- 
tremely high." 




er, 

which requires W ,^« v^.^..^> .^■-. ... •- ,. 

sible that an emplover may pay hish wages, aivl yet the cost of the labor to liim may 
prove to be low liy reason of the laljorcr's superior efficiency. On the other hand, tne 



772 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

employer may pay wages on which the laborer can only live most miserably, and yet 
the employer be greatly straitened to get back these wages in the value of his prod- 
uct, so poor and wasteful may be the services rendered." 

And again: " It is probably true tliat, as a ride, the highest ])aid labor is that which 
costs the employer least. This is evidenced by the two facts: that, generally speak- 
ing, employers, when they reduce their force, discharge their lowest paid laboreis first; 
and that, generally speaking, it is the countries where the lowest real wages are paid 
which feel the necessity of imposing commercial restrictions to keep out the products 
of others. Thus, India, where the cotton spinner gets only twenty pence a week, is 
flooded by the cottons cjf England, where the spinner receives twenty shillings. 
Among all fully settled countries, the rule without exception, so far as I am aware, is 
that tliat country in which the higher wages ai'e jjaid offers its products at lower prices 
than the competing products of countries where the lower wages are paid. 

It is not high wages in the United States which hinders the successful competition 
of American manufactures with the products of England. The protective system it- 
self interposes a much greater hindrance in the increased cost of ]iroduction which it 
has always brought about. Tliis has often been shown by the history of all protect- 
ive tariffs. But if further proof were required, these two large volumes gi\en us by 
the Tarift' Commission are full of irresistible evidence that the whole effect of all past 
[irotection, from 1861 to 1883, has Ijeen to make the manufacturers more clamorous for 
protection than ever and more afi'aid of foreign competition than ever. 

I do not therefore propose to repeat the argument so often made that a liigh pro- 
tective tariff raises prices, and thereby so increases the expenses of manul'acturing as, 
sooner or later, to make the cost of producing equal to that of the impc;>rted articles 
with the duty added, thus creating a necessity for still higher iluties. It has never 
been answered. 

The Senator from Texas [Mr. Coke] so forcibly presented this yioint in his speech 
last year that it answers my purpose to quote his remarks here literally: "So it was 
in 1789 when the first tariff law was passed, with an average ud rdlorem duty of eight 
ami one-half per cent, its operation limited to 1796, avowedly 'to give our infant in- 
dustries a start,' and only temporary. The very nest year tariff duties were raised 
to an average of eleven per cent. In 1792 they were raised to tlnrfeen and one-half 
per cent. In 1816 the average rate of duties was thirty per cent under additional 
legislation wliich liad been passed in the meantime. Under the taritl' of 1824 they 
were raised to an averatre of thirty-seven ]ier cent ; and under the act of 1828, just for- 
ty years after the first tariff law had administered an aliment of eight and one-half 
per cent as a purely temporary expedient to <iur ' infant industries,' the rations of 
that 'infant' were increased to an average of forty-one per cent. It is always thus 
with industries taken out of the pure, l)racing atmosphere of free competition and 
healthy, hardy self-reliance into tlie hothouse of government jirotection, to lie fed on 
the stimulus of government bounty. Tlie cry forever is : 'More! more!' On the 1-ith 
of July, 1832, tlie tariff was again remodeled in the interest of high protection, and 
out of this act grew the South Carolina nullification troubles." 

But there is another mode by which this same result (i. c, increased cost of produc- 
tion) occurs undei- the protective system. It is thus most clearly and forcibly jiut by 
Mr. J. S. Moore in his most interesting and admirable essay read before the Tariff 
Commission. After showing how insignificant would be the duty needed simply to 
cover the difference between the wages here and in England for the manufacture of 
woolen goods, that gentleman says: "Unfortunately pi'otection begets protection. 
The cloth is protected because the wool is protected; again, it is protected because 
the dyestuffs are protected; once more, it is protected because oil and chemicals are 
prDtected; then, there is a cry that rasichinery is protected; in short, all and every- 
thing used to manufacture woolen goods is protected." 

.\nd he ex|)resse3 the opinion tliat it put upon an equal footing with English man- 
ufactures as to free raw materials and free macliinery the higher wages in the United 
States would not be a formidable drawback. 

Mr. President, there is one competition which our manufacturing industry has to 
encounter that is more powerful in limitini: its growth than perhaos any other cause. 
It is found in the inviting and liounteous fields of American agriculture. This was 
the case in nur colonial times; it is so now: and it will continue as long as we have 
fresh, virgin soil and large areas of territory for our people- 
It requires bi'.'h wages, the very hiirhest; and even they are often insufHcient to 
keep a man in workshop, mill, coal|iit, or glass foundry, wlien within his reach is a 
home of hi< own on his own land, where in his double capacity of proprietor and la- 
liorer he and his family can enjoy the entire fruits of his own labor. It is not that 
the profits of farming are greater tlian other avocations; they are proverbially small-" 



APPENDIX, NO. 21. 773 

er at this time; but there is an instinctive tendency in tlie Anglo-Saxon blood to 
landowning. This instinct gives to agriculture a social dignity and personal inde- 
pendence which compensate for its meager jirotits, and very often the cares and dis- 
appointments to which it is subject. The magic of the freehold is more potent than 
that of wages of hire. The thrilling associations of the homestead, where wife and 
children live in security and j)eace and love, cannot be measured by a scale of dollars 
and cents. 

It is therefore the cheapness of lands and the superior atti'actions of agriculture 
which have made it the more powerful industrial competitor of manufactures. 

Now, sir, the avowed object of the protective system is to counteract this superior 
attractiveness of agricultural industry and to divert, capital and labor from it into man- 
ufactiu-es. It is not for jirotection against the competition of foreign pauper labor that 
the duties are levied, but against the competition of our own home agricultural indus- 
try. It is the competition of the industry which produces our exports, and which 
brings back imports in exchange, against wliich this tarift' system is designed to oper- 
ate; and hence its effects have never foiled to arrest the increase of the production of 
wealth by means of agriculture, and to cause tlie profits earned in the field to be paid 
out to the forge and the mill. This jioint has been elaborated by other Senators. 

Mr. President, if in the course of my remarks I have said anything which has left 
the impression that I am in tlie slightest degree indifl'erent to the j)rogress of manu- 
factures in this country, I have expressed myself unfortunately. If 1 have not im- 
pressed those who have heard me with my deep sense of the importance of them as 
diversifying our indu-stries, as a source of national wealtli, as a means of elevating and 
advancing the human race and ennobling our civilization through those great appli- 
ances of science and art Ijv wliicli the mighty powers of nature are made subservient 
to the wants of man, and i"f I have not expressed sympathy for them whenever I have 
been compelled to cast a vote that seemed not tending to foster by taxation their in- 
dustries, it was because professions are so cheap that but little faith is attached to 
them. 

If they would listen to me, I would say to them that wisdom would dictate conces- 
sions material and large upon this question. I believe that the movement for reve- 
nue reform and lower taxation can be largely guided by them so as to cause no shock 
to existing interests if tiiey will deal with it' in a wise an.l sober spirit of concession 
and comi>romise. If we could, on the one hand, have a bill which would bring the 
duties down to a revenue standard, arrangements in the details looking to protection 
as an incident would find, I ayiprehend, but few opponents; liut I would warn them 
(in the kindest spirit) that it is impossil)le for any combination of capital or labor to 
resist a popular movement animated by a strong sentiment of moral right and justice. 

Macaulay in one of his speeclies —I think that it was on this very subject of the tar- 
jff_once warned the monopolistsof Great Britain, citing two signal events in history 
as containing for them lessons of wisdom and admonition. One was the wisdom, sa- 
gacitv, and forecast with w-hich tlie Englisli aristocracy adapted theniselves to the 
great popular movement of parliamentary reform. By taking part in it theywere 
enabled to ilirect its movement safely and' wisely for themselves, thereby retaining to 
this day their moral and intellectual' ascendency. He sliowed the reverse in the case 
of the 'French nobility, who, with dogged obstinacy, made a vain resistance to the 
great popular movement there, which resulted in their overthrow and banishment, 
eking out the remnants of their miserable existence as dancing masters and music 
teachers in countries where thev were strangers and aliens. 

I. sir, have seen sometliiii<;of tins in my own experience. I saw a great institution, 
which was more firmlv intrenched in statutes and organic law tlian the manufactur- 
ers are in this tarifi' law, become an object of jiopular uprising. I was among those, 
sir, who shared in the attempt to resist 'it; and I saw that institution go down— with 
all its vast capital, with all the political privileges which it conferred, with all the con- 
stitutional rights In- which it was L'uaranteed— go down beneath the irreversible fiat 
of the American people. Sir, I warn the manufacturers of this country. The hand- 
writing is upon the wall of this protective system, and I trust that they will have the 
intelligence to comprehend its import. 



774 LUCIUH Q. C. LAMAR: UIS LIFE, ETC. 

Appendix No. 22. 

* ON NATIONAL AID TO EDUCATION. 

. Speech 171 ilie Senate, Friday, March 2S, 1S84. 

No state stMiuls sure but on tlie ground of right, 
Of virtue, knowledge, judgment to preserve, 
And all the powers of leai'ning i-equi?ite. 

The Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, having under consideration the bill (S. 
39S) to aid in the establishment ami temporary support of common schools, Mr. La- 
mar said: 

Mr. President: I shall detain the Senate only a few moments, not with the expecta- 
tion of adding anything new to the arguments that have been advanced on this sub- 
ject, but simply to state my own reasons for the vote which I shall give. I have be- 
stowed upon tlie constitutional question involved in this measure the study which 
its importance deserves. I shall not go over the ground already occupied by the Sen- 
ator from Florida [Jlr. Jones], the Senator from Aikiinsas [Mr. (Jarland], and the 
Senator from Alabama [Mr. Pugh]; nor will I recite the imposing authoiities arrayed 
by the Senator from Georgia [Mr. Brown]. I have no doubt al)out the constitutional 
authority of Oongi-ess to pass this measure. Indeed, if we should reject it on the 
ground that it is unconstitutional for Congress to give aid to the States in the exercise 
of their exclusive jurisiliction o\'er the education of tlieir people, we would be revers- 
ing the settled policy of tlus government. 

The refinements and subtleties about the distinction between the granting*of land 
and an aijpropriation of money for educational purjioses do not satisfy my mind. 
Even if such a distinction woul(l hold, it does not apply to the constitutional qutstion 
that is made. It is not the kind of aid granted, whether it be in land or in money, 
but the purpose for which it is granted, that is to be considered. It is the threatened 
intervention of the Federal Government in the educational afii)irs of a State to which 
the constitutional ol)jection applies, and intervention is as menacing when it comes 
in the form of a land grant as when it comes in the shape of an appropriation. I do 
not regard it as a menace in either case. 

Nor do the objections so forcil^ly presented by the Senator from Missouri [Mr. Vest] 
strike my mind as sufficiently strong to justify a vote against this measure. The 
specification of the studies, the mere jrescription that geograjihy, reading, writing, 
and arithuietic shall be taught in those schools, I do not think can lie called a condi- 
tion or dictation ; they are words of description. It is simply saying that common 
school educatiou shall lie taught, and it is another mode of expressing tbe very object 
of the bill as it has been reported. If, instead of the words "readirg, writing, arith- 
metic, and geography," the words "the usual common scliool education" had been 
substituted, it seems to me that the same oliject would liave been accomjilished. 

I, however, do not intend, I say, to repeat the argunjent whicli has been forcibly 
presented in support of the cou'^titationality of this measure. I do not see any enter- 
ing wedse, as it is called, in this bill t(jw;u'd Federal intervention in the jurisdi'tion 
of the State over tlie education of its children ; and if there exists any such tendency 
in the public mind, in my opinion the passage of this bill will arrest it. 

Nor do I se? any dangerous precedent in it. I do not think thfit it is w ise or just 
reasouing to .say that a thing which is right in itself, benefic< nt in its objects, may be 
in the future perverted into a wrong; nor do I anticipate it. I have watched the 
progress of this sclieme from the time that it wtis first introdncid into the other 
House, manv years agii, dowu to the present time, wlien it 1 ns taken its present shupe 
as presented l)y the Senator from New Hampslnre. I 1 ave watched it w ith deep in- 
terest and intense solicitude. In my opinion, it is the first step, and the most im- 
portant step, that tliis government lias ever taken, in tl e direction of tbe solution 
of what is called the race problem; and I believe that it will tell more powerfully 
and decisively upon the future destinies of the colored race in America than any 
measure or ordinance that has yet been adopted in reference to it — more decisively 
than either the thirteentii, fourteenth, or fifteenth amendments, unless it is to be con- 
sidi>red,as I do consieler it, tlie logical sequence and the practical continuance of those 
amendments. 

I think that this measure is fraught with almost unspeakable benefits to the entire 
population of the South, while and bl;ick. Ajiart altogether from the material aid — 
and tliat cannot be overvalued — apart from tbe contribution of this bounteeius dona- 
tion of monev, it will sive an impulse to the cause of common seliool education in that 
sectiou which will tell on t'.ie interests of the people through the long coming futrre. 



APPENDIX, yo. 2S. 775 

It will excite ii new interest anicmg our people; it will sliiiiulalc both Stale and local 
couiinunilies to more energetic exertioii.-i and to greater sacrillccp, because it will en- 
courage them in their hopes in grappling and struggling with a task liefori? whose 
vast proportions they have stood appalled in the consciousuess of the inadequacy of 
their own resources to meet it. 

It is true, as some gentlemen have stated, that l)efore the war the common school 
system did not llourish in tlie Soutli. We had an education there, and an eilucaled 
people whose culture was as high as that of any iieople on earth. Tliey were a peo- 
ple — one-fourth of them at least, perhaps — who had all the function and discipline 
and intellectual development that the finest education could give, not only from their 
own colleges at home, but from the best universities in America and Kurope. It is true 
that, owing to the sparseness of our population and to other causes, the common 
school did not thrive; and there were prejudices against the common school as an ef- 
ficient means of dilTusing education — jirejudices they may be called, but such as are 
now entertained and expressed by some of the ablest writers in the North. Be that 
as it may, thi.iugh the common school education did not prevail in that section to as 
great an extent as in other pai-ts of the country, they were a better educated jieople 
than one would imagine from the statistics of illiteracy. They were educated in the 
school of American citizenship, and they reached a discipline and a maturity of 
thought and an acquaintance with iniblic and social dutit'S that showed iteelf in a war 
in which grand armies stretching neai-ly across the continent found themselves baf- 
fled with altei-nate victory and defeat, and tlie fate of this Union held in the balance 
for four years. No ignorant and debased population could have stood before such a 
power with such heroic resistance for such a time. 

But the result of the war overthrew the conditions of society; and colleges, schools, 
and academies shared in the general crash and desolation. In that section the edu- 
cated classes suffered more than all others. Thej' were more impoverished than any 
other class, and their children more imperiled by falling back into ignorance than 
any other class; and now tlie common school system has become the indispensable 
iiiotor in diflusing education generally throughout the South. 

The people of the South have attempted to meet the emergency. They have re- 
built in a large degree their colleges, academies, and schools in the towns, villages, 
and cities, ami they have made great sacrifices. Although the remark has been made 
more than once that it is impossible for any except one who lives in their midst to 
know tlie extent of the efforts and sacrifices that they have made, I must yet call at- 
tention to it here. 

Guizot, in one of his great speeches, once said that the overthrow, prosf;ration, and 
demolition of the political institutions of a country were ecjual in the political world 
to the swallowing up of a city by an earthquake, and that it would l>e as difficult to 
reconstruct the one as it would be to resurrect and rebuild the other. Extravagant as 
the illustration is, we have learned by a costly experience that there is much truth in 
it. Yet we liave made the effort; and our people have taxed themselves, and are still 
taxing themselves, at a rate that is equal in some of our States to that of any other 
section of the Union. 

But the progress has been slow; the difficulties have been great; the burden has 
been grievous; and we stand, I say, almost appalled by the immense obstacles in the 
way. The generous, wise, and beneficent action of the government proposed by this 
measure, as I said before, will reanimate and infuse new hopes in our people; it 
will be a manifestation of respei-t and confidence and aflection which will draw them 
into closer relations, if possible, to the government, and dispel whatever impressions 
past events have produced that it stands in an attitude of sternness and hostility 
toward them. 

The objection which has been made in the course of the debate — that this donation 
is too laru'e, that the fund is too big, and comes too abruptly to be availed of in that 
section — is based upon a misapprehension of facts, and the conclusion is erronecms. 
There is machinery there fully adequate to the disbursement and application of this 
fund to the wisest purposes for which it is intended. We have school bouse acconimo- 
dations for far more scholars than have attended or will attend. I speak from positive 
knowledge when I state to the Senate that there is in the shape of teachers — compe- 
tent, well educated, full of aspiration for honorable usefulness and distinction in that 
field— material, I believe, superior to tliat in any other section of the Union; for we 
have not the diversified avenues to careers which you have in other sections. 

I have some tables here which I shall not trespass upon the time of the Senate in 
reading, but I will ask the privilege of incorporating them in my remarks, to show the 
extent to which we liave laid the foundation upon wliicii any superstructure, no mat- 
ter how large, might be raised for common school education. 



776 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAIi: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

We have, aa 1 said before, schoolhouses ; we liave teachers and the material for mak- 
ing teachers. AH that we need is the moiiuy to ajiply to tliese ends. We can carry on 
in tlie«niral districtvS this instruction for four niontlis in some of tlie States, as in 
my own, and in the cities and towns for eight months; but we liave not the means for 
prolonging the tuition. If we had, the blessings of education would be multiplied be- 
yoml the mere proportion of the extension of the time ; for such is the character of the 
occupations of our people that they are not able to send their children to school in 
large numbers at any one time and for any very protracted period. The culture of 
the cotton crop, especially in the lower portions of^the Gulf States, requires nearly all 
the months in the year. They begin in the early part of the yeai-, sometimes in De- 
cember of the preceding year, to bed up the land ; the field work goes on until in July, 
when we have a short vacation through August into September ; and then the children 
go in larger numbers to the schools until about the middle of Sei)teniber, when cot- 
ton picking commences, and continues until Christmas, and often later. But if our 
terms were prolonged, as they would be if we bad the means c f employing the teach- 
ers, there would be all through the year <'hil(lren sent to those schools for short 
periods, where they are now excluded by the shortness of our present period. 

The Senator from Indiana [Mr. Harri^oIl], in the remarks wlii<h he submitted to 
the Senate yesterday, stated that there was not a child within llie linnts of that State 
within the ages prescriljed for education who did not have the means to acquire, or 
at least who could not ac(iuire, the elements of a conmion sibool education. Sir, that 
remark is as apjilicable in its fullest, most literal meaning to Mississippi as it is to 
Indiana. There is not a chilil in tliat State from Ave years old to twenty-one (and, if 
he chooses to go, after he is twenty-one) who would not be admitted into scliool should 
he apply. No matter what his color, he can then find the means of education. 

I would regret very much if the amendment offered by one Senator should, by its 
adoption here, mar and impair the effect of this bill — I mean the amendment which 
proposes that the fund sliall go into the hands of Federal agencies, and be distributed 
by them to the exclusion of the State otticers. The ett'ect of such an amendment 
would 1)6 a discrimination. It would give to the measure, instead of its present gen- 
erous and beneficent aspect, a harsh and ungracious look and effect. 

Senators have expressed the opinion that this fund will not be fairly administered; 
that such is the prejudice of race, that such is the darkening influence of slavery, 
that, with the best intention, our people and officials are incapable of administering 
this fund equally and equitably to all. 

I say that I should regret the adoption of such an amendment, for the reason that 
it would change the entire aspect and character of this bill, and show that this gov- 
ernment intended to keep up discriminations; that, while it is animated with a desire 
to benefit a,nd improve and elevate and edify one race, it looks upon the other as an 
object of distrust and suspicion. It would be the enactment of the color line. 

Mr. Harrison: Is the Senator from Jlississiiipi speaking of my amendment? 

Mr. Lamar: No, sir. I have looked over the Senator's amendment; and while it 
will not receive my sui))>ort, I will state with perfect frankness that I do not think 
that it is amenable to that criticism. 

Mr. President, the surest way to make a people worthy of trust is to trust them ; 
and the surest mode of producing alienation and making them stimd aloof in sullen 
oiipo'.^ition, or perhaps active obstruction and antagonism, upon such a subject as this, 
is to treat thein as objects of distrust and disapproliation, and to manifest tow anl them 
a want of confidence which they feel that they do not deserve. I say with entire con- 
fidence that this distrust is not deserved; that Senators are mistaken as to the state 
of feeling in the Soutli with reference to the education of the negro. The peoiile of 
the South find that the most precious interests of their society and civilization are 
bound up in the question of his education, of his elevation out of his present state of 
))arbarism. 1 shall enter into no argument n])OU that snljject. I intended to read 
some authorities upon it, but my friend from South Carolina [Mr. Hampton] has an- 
ticipated me. I will call attention, however, to the fact that distinguished educators, 
who are supposed to be fauiiliar liy observation with the temjier and character of our 
l)eople and the history of their course upon this subject, entertain quite an opposite 
view. 

A Northern man, Hon. J. H. Smart, for many years Superintendent of Public In- 
struction in the State of Indiana, speaks upon this question jifter an extended ob- 
servation tlirongh the Southern States. I invoke attentio!i to the testimony of this 
distinguislied educator. Fie says: "I want to say that throughout the length and 
breadth of the Southern States, without one exception" -mark it, sir; his language 
is exhaustive, " without one exception " — " the colored peojde are given the same cd- 
vantages that the white people are given." This is with the taxes imposed upon the 



APPENDIX, NO. ;'2. 777 

white people themselves l)y themselves. "An<l 1 lielicve from what I saw that wu are 
able to trust the existing State organizations represented by these gentlemen; we are 
able to trust them with wliatevtT means we can appropriate, and I speak alter some 
investigation ami after deliberation." 

Dr. Maycj, of Massachusetts, uses the following language. 1 shall not read it all to 
the Senate, but simply wish to concentrate his testimony ui)on this point: 

" I have no hesitation in announc-ing to you, gentlemen, my conviction that never 
within ten years in the history of the world has an eliort so great, so persistent, and 
so absolutely heroic been made by any peoi)le for the education of the children as by 
the leading class of the people in oiu- Suuthern States. 

" I'ractically within ten years every one of these Southern States has put on its 
statute book a system of public schools; practically within this time every district of 
country in the South has received something that can be called a school. This school 
— ' public,' as we may call it, consisting of State oflicials, of school oflicers, of superior 
teachers, of thoughtful people all over the South— is to my mind the most lorcible the 
most persistent, the most devoted public school now in any part of the world. There 
is no body of superior teachers doing so much work for so little pay and under such 
great disadvantages as in the South to-day ; there is no minority of people working 
so hard to overcome this terrible calamity of illiteracy anywhere in the world to-day 
as in the South." 

Sir, should such a people be smitten in the face? Let me read you some other re- 
marks of this gentleman in a more elaborate address upon this suljject. After giving 
the difficulties under which the South labored after the wai-, and speaking of the im- 
periled condition of the educational interests of those States and the necessity for go- 
ing to work at once to recsbililisli their colleges, academies, and schools, he uses the 
following language: " To this work they bent themselves with a singleness of purpose 
and a pertinacitv thoroughly .American and deserving of all praise. . . . So for 
the past fifteen years these people have toiled as nobody can know but themselves, 
through sacrifices almost incomprehensible to our wealthy Northern communities, to 
rehabilitate their little colleges and academies and to furnish the small amount neces- 
sarv to give their children such education as they might in these schools. I under- 
take to say that this elfort alone entitles the South to the profound interest, even ad- 
miration, of all thoughtful schoolmen everywhere." 

I am sure that if honorable Senators had known these facts they would not liave 
uttered upon this floor the language of depreciation, distrust, and suspicion. 

" But to do this," he savs, "it has been necessary that the most eminent teachers 
should be overwhelmed with work and live on starvation wages; that great numbers 
of women of the highest social position, and the daughters of the leading families, 
should give tlieir lives to the work of instruction; tliat familieH, strangely impover- 
ished should contrive to pinch themselves for the schooling of their young people; 
and that great numbers should still be dependent on the benevolence of neighbors 
and school corporations for what they obtained." ,,.,.,,. , t 

It is impossible, of course, to say how much this great rehabilitation has cost 
the Southern people. He goes on to say: "But the Southern people have not 
paused with this attempt at the reconstruction of the secondary and higher edu- 
cation for the white race. Beyond this, of their own notion"— mark it, sir, "of 
their own notion"— "in every State, within the past ten years, the people's ele- 
mentary common school for white and colored children has been placed on the 
ground,' defended through the dangers of its infancy, made better every year, 
until it'has become a vital institution of Southern civilization." 

Black and white. Here is the language in which he speaks of the teachers en- 
gaged in this work: "A better class of people, more earnest, more determined to 
improve more self-denving, working on wages painfully and sometimes pitifully 
inadequate, cannot be founfl in any Christian land than the majority of the public 
school teachers of the South. The State superintendents of education and many 
of the city and county supervisors are the same sort of people as our leading edu- 
cators of the North. . . . And now the traveler through the Southland finds 
himself everywhere in the presence of an educational revival as marked as in 
New England in the days of Horace Mann." 

The Senator from Massachusetts -[Mr. Hoar] spoke of that great movement of 
education as characteristic of that State which, he said, leads the column of edu- 
cated States. 

Mr Hoar: If the Senator will pardon me, I should like very much to say that 
the name of Mr. Mavo, whose testimony he has just read, deserves to be ranked 
with that of Mr. Mann as an authority, and that he is entitled to the gratitude of 
the American people for his work in this cause. 



77S LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

Mr. Lamae: I am very much obliged to the Senator from Massachusetts for 
this tribute to the character of Dr. Mayo, and upon this indorsement by the Sena- 
tor from Massachusetts I reiterate his assertion here in the presence of the Sen- 
ate: "And now the traveler through the Southland finds himself everywhere In 
the presence of an educational revival as marked as in New England in the days 
of Horace Mann: and the blessedness of this revival is that it is bringing together 
the children and youth, their teachers, the younger parents, and the more 
thoughtful people of North and South, as no movement in the political, the eccle- 
siastical, or even the industrial sphere of national life, can possibly succeed in 
doing." 

I have no further extracts to read iipon this subject. My object has been not to 
recriminate or even to repel, but simply to adduce testimony of an incontrover- 
tible character to convince honorable Senators upon this floor that their appre- 
hensions upon this subject are needless, and that the precautions which they 
would take are useless, 

I would regret the proposed amendment for more reasons than those which 1 
have given. It would impair the working of the common school system of the 
South, or of any other section of the country, to introduce two sets of agencies in 
its administration. Instead of being a harmonious cooperation of State organiza- 
tion and national aid. there would be perhaps an antagonism, certainly discon- 
nected effort and discordant forces. There would be both time and money spent, 
which, if you used a single agency under the present system already occupying 
the ground, would be concentrated in one harmonious effort. Besides, as it is 
now, the agencies which this bill selects are the agencies which are amenable to 
the public opinion and the restraining moral sentiment of the people among 
whom they will operate: whereas the other would be in the hands of comparative 
stiangers, who would have no relation to the constituency in which they are 
working, and would be uninfluenced by the supervision of the people at home. 
They would be responsible to no one there, to no restraining public sentiment, 
but simply to the appointing power at a great distance, too often governed by po- 
litical considerations instead of the interests intrusted to them. 

I said at the beginning of these remarks fand I have protracted them much 
further than I intended) that, in my opinion, this bill is a decided step toward the 
solution of the problem of race. The problem of race in a large part is the prob- 
lem of illiteracy. Most of the evils, most of the diflSculties which have grown up 
out of that problem, have arisen from a condition of ignorance, prejudice, and su- 
perstition. Remove these, and the simpler elements of the question will come into 
play with a more enlightened iinderstanding and a more tolerant disposition, I 
will go with those who will go farthest in this matter. 

Lilierty cannot be manufactured by statutes or constitutions or laws. It is a 
moral and intellectual growth. It is the outgrowth of men's natures and feelings 
and passions and instincts and habits of thought. A people who remain ignorant 
and superstitious and debased cannot be made free by all the constitutional guar- 
antees and statutes with which you surrotmd them. You may force power upon 
them and subject others to their rule, but the great attribute of self-government 
and that real liberty which comes from it you cannot confer on them while they 
remain ignorant and in bondage to their own passions and to their own prejudices 
and superstitions. 

Sir, in my opinion, institutions and laws and governments and all the fixed facts 
of society are but the material embodiment of the thought of a people and the 
substantial expression of their inner life: and liberty, which is the culmination of 
them all, is a boon that cannot be conferred upon men, but to be permanently 
possessed and enjoyed must be earned, as the reward of the development of our 
moral and intellectual faculties. 

Xo st;itt! st.iiuls sure but on the grround of i-ipht, 
Of virtue, knowledgre. .judjiment to preservo, 
.\nd all the i>o\vpr.sof le.arntnir i-eqiiisite. 

Mr. President, no one has the right to predict that this or any class of people 
will not rise to that plane of intelligence and moral elevation necessary to the en- 
joyment of this great blessing and therefore refuse to vote for a measure like this 
which proposes to aid them in their effort to emerge from that condition which 
centuries of barbarism have entailed upon them. For my part, I say that I would 
leave no legitimate effort unused and no constitutional means unemployed which 
would give to every human being in this country that highest title to American 
citizenship: virtue, knowledge, and judgment. 



ArVKM)IX, -\0. J3. 779 

I am not an optimist as to tlie rapid progress of tlio lilaok people in education. 
However earnest they may be, tliere will be great difficulty even with the aid of 
the Federal Government in establishing effective scliools for all. We are yet but 
in the incipience of this great work, hardly gone further than establishing the ed- 
ucational machinery on the ground. A task of colossal magnitude is before us, 
and a dense mass of ignorance has to be penetrated; but, sir, whatever of disap- 
pointment may attend it, whatever of failure, whatever of error and mistake and 
even abuses of trust may cripple and embarrass this movement, the great idea of 
popular education which has animated the North, and is animating the South, 
and in which this bill has originated, will inspire both to guard and guide the vast 
host in its slow, hesitating, but onward, advance to knowledge and true freedom. 
Mr. Hariusox: Mr. President, I understood the Senator from Mississippi, who 
has just concluded his remarks, to say that the criticism on the objection which 
had been made bv some of us to what we thought to be the too liberal appropria- 
tion in this bill— namely, that there was not in the South the adequate prepara- 
tion to i-eceive and use wisely this money — was not well taken, in his opinion; and 
I understood the Senator to say that his own State was as well supplied with com- 
petent, well-equipped teachers to take charge of the common schools as any State 
in the Union, perhaps better supplied, by reason of the fact that there were not 
there so many avenues into which the enterprising and talented and educated 
could go. 

Now, Mr. President, I desire simply, in response, to read from the report of the 
Superintendent of Schools for the State of Mississippi for the year 1880-81 his 
statement as to the condition of the supply of teachers in that State. He says; 
"The State is sadlv in demand of educated and trained teachers in her public 
schools. How this demand is to be supplied is a question of great importance. . 
That we have some as good teachers as are to be found elsewhere is true no doubt; 
but thev are. comparatively speaking, few." 

So that the Superintendent of Education for that State, speaking with reference 
to the limited revenues which he was superintending, declares that there is an in- 
adequate supply for the schools now established; and he discusses the question as 
to how suitable teachers are to be secured, urging the establishment of a normal 
school for white teachers in order that this want may be met. 

So. then, it seems, upon the testimony of that officer of Mississippi who is 
charged with the duty of superintending the schools, that there is now an inade- 
quate supply of competent teachers to teach the schools that are at present estab- 
lished in that State. That is all that I desire to say. -wv, .- 
Mr. Laiiar; Just one word in reply to the Senator from Indiana. I admit that 
the quotation is perfectly appropriate to my remarks; but I speak from a knowl- 
edge equal to that of the Superintendent of Public Education in Mississippi in_ re- 
iterating my statement, and it is not inconsistent with the one which has just 
been read. "There is an inadequate supply of competent teachers in view of the 
limited revenues for the purpose of employing them in that State. Yon cannot 
command such teachers with the small salary that we are compelled to give them, 
for the short period of time that we employ them, from the State revenue that we 
raise bv our taxation; and it is true of other States. I know something about 
this difficulty, for I have been connected with the education of the youth of the 
South, and i say that there is no State and no society composed of more culti- 
vated upright and ambitious voiing men, with trained faculties and with ambi- 
tion to excel in this department of teaching, than the State of Mississippi; but at 
the very inadequate remuneration which is given to teachers, on account of the 
limited "resources of the State and local communities, they are forced to seek other 
vocations as a livelihood. 

Appendix No 23. 

JOHN C. CALHOUN— HIS LIFE. CHARACTER, AND PUBLIC SERVICES. 

An Oration delivered before the Ladies' Calhoun Monument Association and Ihe Puhlir, at 
Charleston, S. C, April 36, 1SS7. 

We are assembled to unveil the statue which has been erected to commemorate 
the life and services of John Caldwell Calhoun. It is an interesting fact that 
this statue is reared, not in tlie center of political nower (the capital of the na- 
tion) or in the emporium of American material civilization, but In his own native 



780 LUCIUS Q. C. LA.UAR: BIS LIFE, ETC. 

State, where he lived all his life and where he was buried. This circumstance is 
iu harmony with the life and character of the man. One of the most impressive 
traits of that life and character was the attachment between himself and the peo- 
ple of South Carolina. His devotion to their welfare was sleepless; and they al- 
ways felt a deep, unfaltering, proud, and affectionate reliance upon his wisdom 
and leadership. This faith in him grew out of the fact that he was, notwith- 
standing his imposing position as a national statesman, a home man — a man 
identified in sentiment and sympathy with his own people, who, as neighbors and 
friends, standing face to face with him, had that insight into his private life and 
character which is seldom, if ever, disclosed in the public arena: the real life of 
motive and purpose and feeling. In this intimacy of personal intercourse, 
wherein the qualities of mind and heart are unconsciously drawn out, there were 
revealed to them a noble, lovely character, full of tenderness and self-sacrifice, 
gentleness and candor, and a simplicity and beautiful truth of soul which made 
him the light of their eyes and the pride of their heart. 

Mr. Calhoun had a profound faith in the worth and dignity and destiny of man 
as the noblest of all God's creatures on earth, endowed with those great faculties 
and capacities which fit him, through society and free institutions, under divine 
superintendence, for progress, development, and perfection. Conscious of his 
own great powers he must have been; but exalted as he was in position, thought, 
and purpose, so far was he from feeling that these advantages lifted him above 
and apart from the mass of men, that he regarded them as so many ties of union 
and brotherhood with his fellow-men. to be devoted to their welfare and happi- 
ness. Whenever, therefore, he returned from the brilliant scenes of the national 
capital to his home, instead of coming as a great Senator, to be admired at a dis- 
tance, he met the people as friends and brothers, all of whom, of every degree and 
class and character, felt in the warm grasp of his hand a fraternal regard that 
entered with deep and unaffected sympathy into their feelings, their interests, 
their wants, their sorrows, and their joys. 

Their instinctive perception of the genuine greatness of the man, of his open- 
hearted largeness of nature, the simple, unostentatious, disinterested consecra- 
tion of mind and heart to the promotion of the virtue and happiness and liberty 
of his people, naturally drew them into a closer attachment, a deeper and an al- 
most personal cooperation in his high aspirations and aims. 

When not in the actual discharge of his official duties he spent his time In re- 
tirement at his private home at Fort Hill. He was occupied in agriculture, in 
which he took the deepest interest. Would that I had the power to portray a 
Southern planter's home! The sweet and noble associations; the pure, refining, 
and elevating atmosphere of a household presided over by a Southern matron: 
the tranquil yet active occupations of a large landowner, full of interest and high 
moral responsibilities; the alliance between man's intellect and nature's laws of 
production; the hospitality, heartfelt, simple, and geneixius! The Southern 
planter was far from being the self-indulgent, indolent, coarse, and overbearing 
person that he has sometimes been pictured. He was, in general, careful, patient, 
provident, industrious, forbearing, and yet firm and determined. These were 
the qualities which enabled him to take a race of untamed savages, with habits 
that could only inspire disgtist, with no arts, no single tradition of civilization, 
and out of snob a people to make the finest body of agricultural and domestic 
laborers that the world has ever seen. and. indeed, to elevate them in the scale of 
rational existence to such a height as to cause them to be deemed fit for admis- 
,sion into the charmed circle of American freedom, and to be clothed with the 
rights and duties of American citizenship. 

The Southern planter penetrated the dense forests, the tangled brake, the 
gloomy wilderness of our river swamps, where pestilence had its abode; and 
there, day by day and year by year, amid exposure, hardship, and sickness, his 
foresight, his prudence, his self-reliance, his adaptation of means to ends, were ' 
called into requisition. In the communion with himself, in the opportunities for 
continued strdy. and in the daily and yearly provision for a numerous body of 
dependents — for all of whom he felt himself responsible, about whom his anxie- 
ties were ever alive, whose tasks he apportioned, and whose labors he directed — 
he was educated in those faculties and personal qualities which enabled him to 
emerge from his solitude and preside in the county court or become a member of 
his State T^egislature. to discharge the duties of local magistracy or to take his 
place in the national councils. 

The solution of the enifma of the so-called slave power may be sought here. 
Its basis lay in that cool, vigorous judgment and unerring sense applicable to the 



APPENDIX, NO. SS. 781 

oidinaiy affairs and intercourse of men wliich the Southern mode of life engen- 
dered and fostered. The habits of industry, firmness of purpose, fidelity to de- 
pendents, self-reliance, and the sentiment of justice in all the various relations 
of life, which were necessary to the management of a well-ordered plantation, 
fitted men to guide legislatures and command armies. 

In confirmation of what I say, I have only to point to the fact that it was in 
such communities as these that a Washington, a .Jackson, a Taylor, a Lee, and a 
host of others, acquired those qualities which enabled them, in the position in 
which their country placd them, to add such undying luster to the American 
name. It was in such comunilies that men like Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Polk, 
Lowndes, Calhoun, Clay, Macon, Marshall, Taney, and many others whom I could 
mention, acquired those characteristics which their countrymen, both North and 
South, instinctively discerned whenever they were "called upon to face some 
awful moment to which Heaven has joined great Issues, good or bad, for human 
kind." 

Another reason why this statue should be erected to his memory is that it is 
due to him for his intellectual contributions to the age in which he lived. Apart 
from his career as a statesman in the House of Representatives, where he was 
conspicuous for his nationality in maintaining the independence of his country 
among the powers of the world: apart from his se\cn years' service in a Cabinet 
office, where his powerful mind impressed itself on the organization and practical 
operations of the executive department of the government; apart from his long 
years of service as Vice President of the United States; apart from that unparal- 
leled parliamentary career in the T'nited States Senate, where, opposed by those 
giants of debate, the mighty Webster of the North, and Clay of the West, backed 
by other Senators gifted with talents of the highest order, he, single-handed, 
maintained his position in those grand orations, one of which the best of judges 
has pronounced "unsurpassed by any recorded in modern or ancient times, not 
even excepting that of the great Athenian, on the Crown" — putting. I say. out of 
view all his achievements and measures as a public man. constituting as they do 
some of the brightest chapters in the history of this country, he has left in his 
writings, considered as the productions of an author, a legacy which will perpetu- 
ate the sway of his immortal thought over the minds of men. In these writings 
he has given to the world profound studies and original views upon the principles 
of government and free institutions; the deepest analysis and the most systematic 
classification of those universal laws which, hidden from ordinary observation, 
operate silently on human society and influence the fate of nations in all ages of 
the world. 

His published speeches, although made upon the political measures and the 
national policies of the particular time, are philosophical expositions of the gen- 
ius and structure and principles of the American Constitution, replete with the 
deepest wisdom and the most unerring sagacity. Each speech is a consistent 
chapter of a continuous discourse, a harmonious part of a connected system of 
political science, which will place their author among those great spirits who 
bless and instruct mankind long after the celebrity of politicians and statesmen 
has faded from remembrance. 

But there is a third reason why South Carolina should have on her soil a statue 
to Calhoun, and that is his stainless purity of life, his sterling virtue and integ- 
rity of character. This, more than any other, was the cause of his unparalleled 
hold upon the love, reverence, and trust of his people. With ample opportunity 
to promote his private interests in the high trusts which he held, he was as fas- 
tidious as Washington, and never accepted gifts. So simple was his life, so unos- 
tentatious and fru.gal in his habits, that he was never incumbered in his public 
duties by the thought of a benefaction even from his friends. His was the great- 
ness of a soul which, fired with love of virtue, consecrated itself to truth and duty, 
and. with unfaltering confidence in God, was ever ready to be immolated in the 
cause of right and country. This moral excellence, this uprightness of motive 
and action, was the granite foundation of his character, underlving and support- 
ing the splendid superstructure of his noble and exalted qualities of genius, elo- 
quence, wisdom, and patriotism. The people of South Carolina, whatever may 
be their admiration of brilliant intellect and the achievements of statesmanship, 
have never yet put their country's interest and honor under the lepdershin of any 
one unless thev had confidence in his moral superiority. In erecting thi= statue 
to Calhoun 'hey feel that they render and perpetuate their homage to the majesty 
of moral rectitude. 

And now. fellow-citizens. I must take him away from your hearts, where he is 



782 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

enshrined in choicest affection and reverence, and bear him before those stern, 
ultimate Judges: history, posterity, country, and God. These are to take the ex- 
act measure of his life, his services, his character, and his motives, without any 
favor or affection, and with the inflexible tests and scrutiny of justice. 

In the early history of our Republic two differing powers were in the presence 
of each other: the principle of local State sovereignty and that of National Un- 
ion. Although both of these powers were to be found in the embryo of our polit- 
ical system, they existed in confusion and without precise legal definition, both 
having claims to urge and fact.s to allege in support of their respective pretension 
to supremacy. The principle of State sovereignty was the first brought into 
operation, and therefore preceded the other in legal recognition and actual pre- 
dominance. Previous to the Declaration of Independence, tne colonies were each 
a distinct political community: each had its own separate political organization, 
the legislation of which extended no farther than its own territorial limits. The 
only political bond which held them in union was the sovereignty of the British 
nation. When they threw that off the States had no common government. The 
general sovereignty over them as a whole disappeared and ceased to exist, at 
least in visible and legal embodiment of organized power, and passed into the 
several States, which had become each independent and sovereign in its own 
right. The constitution was framed by delegates elected by the Legislatures. It 
was the work of the sovereign States, as independent, separate communities. It 
was ratified by conventions of these separate States, each acting for itself. By 
this constitution certain well-defined and specified powers were delegated to the 
Federal Government: but it expressly declared that "the powers not herein dele- 
gated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited to the States, are 
reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." 

If the constitutional history of the United States had stopped with the adop- 
tion of the Federal Constitution by the original thirteen States, it would hardly 
be questioned that this government was a government of sovereign States with 
every attribute of State sovereignty retained in its system. But the law of devel- 
opment applies to human society as much as to any other created being. In all 
nations in which there are any stirrings of constitutional life there is more than 
one fundamental principle or power. These several principles or elements are 
not all developed at the same time or in equal degree. Events and influences will 
develop one element into ascendency: subsequent conditions and events may 
cause a different element to shoot forward and overcome the others. Now. al- 
though the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation and 
the Constitution of the United States were all based upon the assumption of the 
independence and sovereignty of the several States, yet in point of historical fact 
the inhabitants of the American Colonies, both before and after independence, 
were, in many important respects, one people. These colonies, as one body poli- 
tic, were one people in being subiect to the authority of the British sovereign: 
they were one people as being subject in their civil and social relations to the 
common law of England; they were one people respecting their rights as English- 
men, which, to the honor of England, were planted by their cradles in the infancy 
of their colonial existence; they were one people in language, in blood, in man- 
ners, and especially in being subjected to a common oppression and thrilled by 
the intrinsic glory of a noble cause into a unity of .American patriotism. Al- 
though these facts may not be found in State papers and records of legislation, 
they shot their roots deep into the tho\ight. the belief, the instinct, of the great 
mass of the people, and sometimes found expression in public documents. For 
instance; "When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for our 
people to dissolve," etc. 

And while it is true that when this national sovereignty of the British Govern- 
ment was overthrown there was no organization of national power for the time 
over the whole people, yet it is also tnie that even in the absence of such power 
those States were never for one instant disunited: that, with respect to foreign 
relations and all matters touching their relations to each other, the sovereign 
power was ever exercised by the States united, and never, not in a single instance, 
by a several State. 

.\fter the adoption of the constitution, the moral, social, and material forces 
which have always been more powerful in molding the institutions, in determin- 
ing the destinies of nations, than external legal forms, combined to increase the 
power and magnify the importance of the general government of the Union at the 
expense of that of the particular government of the States. When independence 
was first achieved the original States lay stretched along the Atlantic coast. 



APPENDIX, i\0. 2S. 783 

sparsely peopled, separated by vast wildernesses, with no means of internal com- 
munication and trade, except by stages, pack horses, and sunipter mules on land, 
and flatboats, rafts, and bateaus on the water. Since then the locomotive and the 
steamboat not only annihilate distance, but. "like enormous shuttlecocks, shoot 
across the thousand various threads" of disconnected sections, localities, inter- 
ests, and influences, and bind them into a web; while the electric telegraph trans- 
mits to every part of the country, at the same moment, the same intelligence, 
thus uniting the minds of a vast population in the same thought and emotion. 

But a cause more potent than any yet mentioned has operated to determine the 
character and tendency of our political system. I refer to the acquisition by the 
Federal Government of the vast territory embraced in the Louisiana purchase 
and that ceded by Spain and Mexico to the United States. These territories, far 
exceeding in area that of the original thirteen States, belonged exclusively to the 
Federal Government.* No separate State Government had the slightest juris- 
diction upon one foot of the soil of that vast domain. The public lands were sur- 
veyed by officers of the Federal Government, and titles to them were conveyed by 
the Federal Government in its character of private proprietor as well as of public 
sovereign. The population who settled these territories had no political rights 
save those imparted to them by the Federal Government. Their very limited 
powers of self-government were enjoyed under territorial constitutions framed 
and prescribed for them by the Federal Congress: and when they became States 
it was by the permission of Congress, which admitted them under such condi- 
tions and terms as it deemed proper under the constitution. It is true that as 
soon as these new States were admitted they shared equally with the original 
States in the general sovereign powers of the whole and the sovereignty reserved 
to each; but while this was true in constitutional theory, the actual historical fact 
was that when the forces which had been so long agitating the country culmi- 
nated in war. the relation of the States to the Federal Government had become 
almost the reverse of what it was at the birth of the Rep\iblic, In 1789 the States 
were the creators of the Federal Government; in 1861 the Federal Government 
was the creator of a large majority of the States. In 1789 the Federal Govern- 
ment had derived all the powers delegated to it by the constitution from the 
States; in 1861 a majority of the States derived all their powers and attributes as 
States from Congress under the constitution. 

In 1789 the people of the United States were citizens of States originally sover- 
eign and independent; in 1861 a vast majority of the people of the United States 
were citizens of States that were originally mere dependencies of the Federal 
Government, which was the author and giver of their political being. With all 
these forces on the side of the Union, backed by a majority of State governments, 
with their reserved powers, with a very great preponderance of population, re- 
sources, and wealth, it was a natural consequence that the unity and integrity of 
the United States as a sovereign nation should be established on the battlefield; 
that its government should come out of the conflict with a prestige and power 
greater perhaps than any on earth, and that the eleven minority States, after a 
resistance as heroic as any recorded in the annals of Greece and Rome, should 
succumb to overwhelming forces. 

It is not necessary here to go over the policy of reconstruction. It was the 
offspring of misconception and distrust of the Southern people. Its theory was 
that the Federal success in arms over the South was only a partial one: that the 
sentiments, passions, and aims of the Southern people were still, and would con- 
tinue to be, rebellious to the authority and hostile to the policy of the nation: 
that, the termination of the war having put an end to the absolute military con- 
trol, it became necessary to substitute another organization which, though not 
purely military, would be no less effectual in its function of repression and force. 
Its unmistakable purpose was the reversal of every natural, social, and political 
relation on which I will not say that the civilization of the South, but of the 
world and of the whole Union, rested. But in process of time a large portion of 
the dominant section saw, not only the odious injustice of the system fastened 
upon the South, but the danger to the whole country which its maintenance 
threatened. Then followed a course of magnanimity on the part of the Northern 
people unexampled in the annals of civil war and accepted by the South in a spirit 
not less magnanimous and great-hearted. The result was the full and equal 
restoration of the Southern States, with all their rights under the constitution. 



*Tlie eieat Xorthwest Territoi-r, then a wildeine.ss,out ot wliidi powerful States have been sub- 
sequently tovnieii, was ceded by VivKiiiia tn the United States before the constitution was adopted. 



784 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LlIE, ETC. 

upon the one condition that they would recognize, as elements of their new po- 
litical life, the validity of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments to 
the constitution, guaranteeing and establishing the indissolubility of the Ameri- 
can Union and the universality of American freedom. The disfranchisements 
and disqualifications imposed in an hour of passion and excitement upon a mis- 
taken theory of public necessity, and unwisely retained from a lingering preju- 
dice and distrust, have been in the main removed, or have ceased to apply to the 
majority of the Southern population. Those which yet remain on the statute 
book are hardly defended by the public sentiment of the Northern States, and 
must erelong be offered upon the altar of the free and equal citizenship of the 
Republic. 

Prom that time we have seen those States, by their faithful adherence to this 
pledge, steadily advancing year by year, in their right of self-government, taking 
their place with larger numbers and wider influence in the councils of the nation, 
and doing all this with a temper, moderation, and patriotism that are fast com- 
manding a general belief among the mass of the Northern people that the full 
and equal presence of the South, according to the measure of her population and 
resources in every department of the government, so far from being a danger to 
the national security, is a contribution to its highest and best interests. 

I have prefaced what I have to say of Mr. Calhoun with this brief sketch of the 
controversy in which he bore a part, because I believe if he were here to-day and 
could see his own South Carolina, the land of Rutledge, Moultrie. Laurens. Hayne, 
Lowndes. Sumter, and Marion, restored, largely through the efforts of her lion- 
hearted Hampton, to her proud position of dignity and equality in the Union, he 
would say to her that, the great controversy being closed at the ballot box, closed 
by the arbitrament of war, and, above all. closed by the constitution, always 
deemed sacred and inviolable by her, she sacrifices no principle and falsifies no 
sentiment in accepting the verdict, determined, henceforth, to seek the happiness 
of her people, their greatness and glory, in the greatness and glory of the Amer- 
ican Repul)lic. 

He would have told her. if such counsel were necessary, that a people who in 
form surrender and profess to submit, yet continue to secretly nurse old resent- 
ments and past animosities and cherish delusive schemes of reaction and revenge, 
will sooner or later degenerate into baseness and treacherv and treason. He 
would say that a heroic and liberty-loving State, like South Carolina, should 
cherish for the great Republic of which she is part that ardent, genuine patriot- 
ism which is the life and soul and light of all heroism and liberty. Ah. fellow- 
citizens, had he lived, his great talents would ha\e been, as they had ever been 
before, directed to save this people from the horrors of disunion and war. In 
this I am confirmed by one whom the South placed at the head of her great move- 
ment. Mr. Jefferson Davis. He says: "It was during the progress of these mem- 
orable controversies that the South lost its most trusted leader and the Senate 
its greatest and purest statesman. He was taken -from us. like a summer-dried 
fountain, when our need was greatest, when his intellectual power, his adminis- 
trative talent, his love of peace, his devotion to the constitution, might have 
averted collision." 

In the brief compass of this address I cannot undertake to review the incidents 
of Mr. Calhoun's early youth. He had arrived nearly at the age of manhood ere 
his school life began: but his constant contact with men. his access to books, and 
the social life to which I have already alluded, gave him opportunities which 
were well calculated to develop those qualities in a gifted and aspiring youth 
which would fit him for a life of usefulness and honorable distinction. He had 
thought profoundly upon the nature of man and human society; he had studied 
the science of government, its origin, its forms, and its administration: he read 
the best treatises on politics, ancient and modern, within his reach, and made 
himself convei-sant with the constitutions of Greece and Rome, the British sys- 
tem, and the polity of modern States, 'mien he entered Congress, therefore, at 
the age of twenty-eight years, his mind was stored and fortified with principles 
which were the guide of his political conduct. 

He rejected alike the dogma of the sovereignty of monarchies and aristocracies, 
on the one hand. and. on the other, the shallow fiction of the social contract as 
the foundation of government. He asserted boldly that society and government 
both were of divine ordination: that the Supreme Creator and Ruler of all had in 
his infinite wisdom assigned to man the social and political state as the best 
adapted to the development of the moral and intellectual faculties and capacities 
with which he had endowed him. The fundamental principles of government— 



APPENDIX, yo. 23. 785 

please remember, fellow-citizens, that I am giving you his views, and not my own 

— he found in the wants and feelings and tendencies of man, wrought there by the 
hand of God, which, in their dovolopnicnt. assumed the altrilnitcs and functions 
of formal governments. The external forms and organizations designed to pre- 
vent the tendency of government to disorder and injustice, called constitutions, 
are the contrivances of men, who are left to perfect by their reason and free will 
the government that the Infinite has ordained, just as he created the hiaterial 
laws of the earth, and left man to impress it with his own personality. The right 
to prescribe these constitutions and to coerce society into submission to them is 
sovereignty. That power in a nation which holds this supreme authority in the 
last resort, from which there is no appeal to a higher power, is the sovereign 
power of that nation. Where that supreme, absolute, and ultimate power re- 
sides is a question which has not only challenged the speculations of philoso- 
phers in the closet and statesmen in the national councils, but has also been de- 
bated on bloody fields in arms. On this question Mr. Calhoun was, from pro- 
found conviction, always a Republican and an American Democrat. He main- 
tained that the people were the legitimate source of all political power: that 
governments ought to be created "by them and for them;" that powers conferred 
upon government are not surrendered, but delegated, and as such are held in 
trust, and not absolutely, and can be rightfully exercised only in furtherance of 
the objects for which they are delegated; and in order to guarantee the responsi- 
bility of the rulers to the ruled and to secure the control of those electing over 
those elected, universal suffrage is the primary and indispensable foundation of 
Republican governments. 

Fellow-citizens, are these mere commonplace truisms? They were not so in 
his day. At that time disparagement and distrust of Republican governments 
were prevalent. Alexander Hamilton, the founder of that school of politics to 
which Mr. Calhoun was opposed, and whose disciples have always opposed his 
doctrines, was not in favor of a Republican government. 

It is due to this eminent American statesman and ardent patriot to say that at 
the close of the convention he expressed his anxiety that every member should 
sign the constitution, "although no man's ideas were more remote from the plan 
than his own were known to be. The question was between anarchy and con- 
fusion, on one side, and the chance of good to be expected from the plan, on 
the other." He afterwards advocated its ratification in the Fnlcrriliyt, and the 
action of New York was no doubt brought about by his powerful influence; and 
yet he to the very last expressed his doubts of what he called "the experiment." 

He did not think that it could be established successfully in America. In the 
debates of the convention which framed the Federal Constitution he openly 
avowed his opinion that the monarchy of England was the best government in 
the world; that the aristocracy of that nation was a most noble institution, and 
that her hereditary king was the only model of good executive government; and 
he expressed his doubts that anything short of it would do for America. As he 
was a classical scholar, he no doubt derived these doubts from the history of an- 
cient and modern republics. Aristotle declared that the worst of all tyrannies 
was the tyranny of democracy; Thucydides often dwelt upon the fact that the 
evils andvices of society always rose to the ascendant among the Athenian 
ih'iiiox: while Tacitus and Livy made frequent i-eferences to the disorganizing and 
demoralizing influences of the Roman populace. Even Montesquieu and Guizot 
and Gibbon and Hume, and those eloquent Liberals, Burke. Mackintosh, and 
Macaulay, have all expressed apprehensions as to the permanence and the bless- 
ings of pure democratic governments. But Mr. Calhoun's faith in man and his 
capacity for self-government under proper conditions never for an instant in his 
life deserted him. Nothing in the works of theological writers can be found 
stronger than his repeated assertion of the superintendence of Divine Providence 
over the government of man. He also firmly believed that the voice of a great 
people uttered for the benefit of the whole community through organs so consti- 
tuted as to suppress the voice of selfish factions and interests, and to express the 
sentiment of the entire communi+y, was. without impiety, the voice of God. 

I know of nothing in IMr. Calhoun's career more striking than what occurred on 
the very threshold of his public service, 

Mr Clay more than once has declared that in no Congress of which he had 
knowledge has there been assembled such a galaxy of eminent and able men as 
were in the House of Representatives of that Congress which declared war 
against England in 1812. Mr. Calhoun was elected to that Congress at the age of 
twenty-seven years. He had been admitted to the bar only two years before; 

50 



786 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAH: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

yet this unknown young man, and obscure attorney, from an obscure country vil- 
lage, a stranger to the elegant accomplishments and the graces of scholarship, 
before he had made a speech, took his place at the head of these distinguished 
and brilliant men as their equal, and even their superior, and maintained it with 
increasing power and ever-widening fame to the end. In the light of after events 
the cause of this extraordinary circumstance could be easily discerned. In the 
presence cf a great impending crisis, full of solemn import to men of sense and 
virtue, whose extent the most farsighted cannot fully measure, and before whose 
dangers the most resolute naturally quail ; v/hen the voice of faction is hushed, 
and rivalries and animosities cease — in such a crisis, demanding immediate ac- 
tion, mastery and leadership go of their own accord to the master spirit, to the 
man of transcendent intellect, bravery of soul, promptness of decision, energy of 
action, all strengthened, sustained, and vivified by an ardent and disinterested 
patriotism. Just such a mompntoi;s crisis wrs upon that Oonsrress of l*"!!-!!!. 
when Mr. Calhoun took his seat, and the qualities just mentioned found their 
embodiment in his character. 

From the day that our government was established our relations with foreign 
nations were troubled and u-certain. Soon after the constitution was pu" into 
force a mighty war broke out between France and England, during which both 
belligerents disregarded the rights of the tTnited States and their interests as an 
independent nation. Washington and his successors, who were statesmen in 
the Revolution, anxious to secure our as yet untried political institutions from 
the hazards of war until they could be settled and established, patiently bore 
these wrongs, although they would have justified a resort to war. Under the in- 
fluence of this policy, when these wrongs reached to the spoliation of our ships 
and the seizure of our citizens, the United States Government withdrew our com- 
merce and our citizens from the ocean, and appealed to the justice of these nationB 
to cease their outrages. ITnheeding these appeals, the Government of England 
pursued a course which amounted to a desolating v»ar upon American commerce. 
American vessels, laden with the product of American industry and skill, were 
seized in our own ports and confiscated: while three thousand American sepmen 
were seized and imprisoned, and made to serve on English men-of-war. It was 
in the midst of the agitation caused by these wrongs that the Congress of ISll 
met. Mr. Calhoun was placed second on the most important committee, that of 
Foreign Relations. He was at once its animating spirit and the mainspring of 
its action: and under his influence it soon submitted a report, said to have been 
written by him, which recommended immediate preparations for war with Great 
Britain. In the debate that followed. Mr. Calhoun made a speech in its support, 
which stamped him as an orator and a statesman of the first rank, and made him 
the foremost champion of the war and the author and supporter of the measures 
for its vigorous prosecution. The effect of his speech, in arousing the country 
to a sense of wrong and danger and to the vindication of our national honor and 
threatened independence, was like magic. He showed thpt the object of England 
was really to remard the T'nited States to the condition of commercial depend- 
ency which existed in her colonial state. He made the people of the country see 
that the simple issue was war or submission to the loss of independence and na- 
tionality. The commandin.g power of the speech lay in the intrinsic force and 
the grandeur of truth, and its eloquence in the noble utterances which appepl to 
the moral sentiments of the people and address themselves to the highest facul- 
ties of the intellect and the noblest aspirations of the heart. 

"The question." said he. "is reduced to this single point; Which shall we do. 
abandon or defend our maritime rights and the personal liberties of our citizens 
in exercising them? . . . The gentleman from Virginia is at a loss to account 
for what he calls our hatred for England. He asks ns how we can hate the coun- 
try of Loi^ke, of Newton. Hampden, and Chatham — a country having the same 
language and customs with ourselves and descending from a common ancestry. 
If we have so much to attach us to that country, potent indeed must be the cause 
which has overnowered it. . . . But the gentleman in his eager admiration of 
that country has not been sufficiently guarded in his argument. Has he reflected 
on the cause of that admiration? Has he examined the reason of our high re- 
gard for her Chatham? It is his ardent patriotism, the heroic courage of his 
mind, that could not brook the least insult or iniury offei-ed to his country, but 
thought that her interest and honor ought to be vindicated at every hazard and 
expense. I hope that when called upon to admire we shall also be asked to imi- 
tate. I hope that the gentleman does not w-isli a monopoly of those great vii'tues 
for England. . . . Our rights are vitally attacked. . . . The only alterna- 



APPENDIX, NO. 23. 787 

tive is war or degradation. ... I liope that tlio decision is already made by 
a higlier authority than the voice of any man. It is not for tlie human tongue to 
instill the sense of independence and honor; this is the work of nature, a gener- 
ous nature that disdains tame submission to wrongs." 

What he said was true, but it is the prerogative of genius to put into the mate- 
rialism of words the thouglits which lie inarticulate in the consciousness of a 
brave people, whose heart leaps in spontaneous sympathy to her voice. 

It is not necessary to repeat to this audience the glorious incidents of that war, 
and, after many vicissitudes of reverses and success, its victorious termination 
and its effect in giving to the United States a proud and established position of 
dignity, equality, and power among the nationalities of the world. 

Nor have I tlie time to dwell upon the measures which Mr. Calhoun introduced 
or supported during his service in the House of Repfesentatives, which termi- 
nated in 1817, or of his services as Secretary of War under President Monroe, or 
as Vice President of the United States. 

Perhaps a better idea can be given of his position before the country during 
that period by restating the opinions of him expressed by the great state.smen of 
that day. Mr. Dallas, who was in the Cabinet of Mr. Madison, as Secretary of the 
Treasury, said that Mr. Calhoun was "the young Hercules who carried the war on 
his shoulders." After one of his speeches during this service in the House. Mr. 
Grosvenor, of New York, one of tlie ablest and most distinguished members of 
the opposition, between whom and Mr. Calhoun an unpleasant difference had 
arisen during the discussion of a war measure, said: "I have heard the able, 
manly, and constitutional speech of the gentleman from South Carolina." Here 
Mr. Grosvenor paused, remembering this personal difference, and then resumed: 
"Mr. Speaker. I will not be restrained: no barrier shall exist which I shall not 
leap over for the purpose of offering to that gentlemati my thanks for the judi- 
cious, independent, and national course which he has pursued in the House for 
the last year, and particularly upon the subject now before us. Let the honor- 
able gentleman continue with the same manly independence, aloof from party 
views and local prejudices, to pursue the great interests of his country and fulfill 
the high destiny for which it is manifest he was born. The buzz of popular ap- 
plause may not cheer him on his way, but he will inevitably arrive at a happy 
elevation in the view of his country and the world." 

The great William Pinckney, of Maryland, who was also a member of the 
House, upon one occasion, following Mr. Calhoun in debate on the same side, 
said of him: "The strong power of genius, from a higher region than that of 
argument, has thrown on the subject all the light with which it is the prerogative 
of genius to invest and illuminate everything." 

How he performed the duties of his position as Secretary of War can be also 
better determined in the sam.e way. Henry Clay said of him: "Such was the high 
estimate I formed of his transcendent talents that, if at the end of his service in 
the executive department under Mr. Monroe's administration he had been called 
to the highest office of the government. I should have felt perfectly assured that 
under his auspices the lionor and prosperity and the glory of our country would 
have been safely placed." 

John Quincy Adams, who was his colleague in Monroe's Cabinet, thus spoke of 
him before his judgment was clouded by personal resentment: "Calhoun thinks 
for himself, independent of all the rest, with sound judgment, quick discrimina- 
tion, and keen observation. He supports his opinion, too. with powerful elo- 
quence. . . . Mr. Calhoun is a man of fair and candid mind, of honorable 
principles, of clear and quick understanding, of cool self-possession, of enlarged 
philosophical views, and of ardent patriotism. He is above all sectional and fac- 
tious prejudices more than any other statesman of the Union with whom I have 
ever acted." (J, Q. Adams' Diary.) 

.Tudge Story said of liim in a letter to a friend: "I have great admiration for 
Mr. Calhoun, and think that few men have more enlarged and liberal views of the 
nation." Mr. Webster at the same time wrote to his brother: "I hope that all 
New England will support Mr. Calhoun for the Vice Presidency. He is a true 
man. and will do good to the country in that situation." He was elected to the 
A''ice Presidency, and New England, with the single exception of Connecticut and 
one vote from New Hampshire, united in the overwhelming majority that carried 
him to the Vice Presidential chair 

A brilliant and able Carolina statesman, on whose shoulders Mr. Calhoun's 
mantle had worthily fallen, and would have been worthily borne but for the cut- 
ting short of his career by death, said that the war of 1812 was the turning point 



788 LUCIUS <l V. LA.UAJ!: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

in the history of the world, giving, as it did to the United States, independence 
abroad, as the Revolution gave them independence at home, and that Calhoun's 
course in that war would never fail of the admiration and. applause of future 
times. 

But Mr. Calhoun's career in the House of Representatives did more than give 
him renown as a statesman preeminent for his nationality. The experience of 
its harsh trials, its obstacles, reverses, disappointments, followed by despondency 
subsiding into apathy, and from that into dissensions; the ruined trade and de- 
preciated currency and paralyzed industries which it caused; the numerous dan- 
gers of utter discomfiture, from which the escapes seemed, and perhaps really 
were, hairbreadth — made deep and lasting impressions on his mind, the influence 
of which may be seen in his sentiments and feeling and action through the whole 
course of his subsequent career as a statesman. For special reasons hereafter to 
be disclosed, I ask your attention to one of the principles which that war fixed in 
his mind and interfused with the very elements of his soul. I will state it in his 
own words: "The chief object for which the constitution was formed was to give 
the genera! government power, security, and respectability abroad. In our rela- 
tions with foreign countries, where strength of government and national security 
are most required, the powers of our government are undivided. In those exte- 
rior relations, abroad, this government is the sole and exclusive representative of 
the united majesty, sovereignty, and power of the States constituting this great 
and glorious Union. To the rest of the world we are one. Neither State nor 
State Government is known beyond our borders." 

In that great work upon the Constitution of the United States, some of the 
pages of which were wet with ink but a short time before he expired, he repeats 
this principle. Speaking of the two great divisions of Federal power, he says: 
"One of them embraces all the powers pertaining to the relations of the United 
States with the rest of the world. . . . From the Declaration of Independence 
to the present time, in all the changes through which we have passed, the Union 
has had exclusive charge of this division of powers." Again, speaking of the 
United States being unknown to the rest of the world, except in their united char- 
acter, he says: "Abroad, to the rest of the world, they are but one. It is only at 
home, in their interior relations, that they are many." 

There was another principle whi':'h formed one of the foundation stones of his 
political creed. It is that when a nation is in a state of war or preparing for 
war. whenever it undertakes to protect the rights of its people or to preserve 
their independence and honor from violations, injustice, and oppression, or inva- 
sion of another nation, that government has a legitimate right to the full com- 
mand of all the resources of the community. He lays down this principle in his 
"Disquisition on Government" in the following terse words; "When this" — 
\. c„ national security — "is at stake, every other consideration must yield to it. 
Self-preservation is the supreme law, as well with communities as with individ- 
uals; and hence the danger of withholding from governm,'nt the full command of 
the resources of the entire State." This principle lie insists upon: that govern- 
ment, in order to fulfill the end of protecting its citizens from dangers from with- 
out and the devastations of war. must have and must exercise powers sufficient 
to call forth the entire resources of the community, and be prepared at all times 
to command them promptly in every emergency that may arise." 

I have called attention to these principles, not only on account of their vital 
importance, but for another reason. Mr. Calhoun has been charged with gross 
inconsistency of conduct at this time with the course pursued by him at a later 
epoch in his life upon the subject of a protective tariff, internal improvements, 
and a national bank. These measures may be said to have virtually originated in 
the war. for the conditions and disorders of war continue long in a body politic 
after terms of peace are entered into and proclaimed. The questions which then 
agitated men's minds, and upon which political parties arranged themselves In 
support and opposition, were not questions of internal policy: they related ex- 
clusively to the national security, growing out of the state of our external rela- 
tions. Mr. Calhoun advocated in 1S16 the protection of manufactures "as a 
means of national defense and protection against dangers from abroad." with 
which we were at that time imminently threatened. For the same reason he ad- 
vocated a bank and the adoption of an improved system of internal communica- 
tion: and the constitutional authority to adopt such measures he did not look 
for in the enumerated powers specifically delegated to Congress, which operated 
directly upon the individual citizens of the TTnited States: but he felt that it lay 
in that complete plenary power which pertained to the government as the sole 



APPENDIX, NO. SX. 789 

and exclusive representative o£ the undivided sovereignty of tlie Repul)lic in its 
relations witli other nations. That this was his view will be clearly seen by read- 
ing the speeches delivered in 181(i in support of these measures. 

Irksome as it must be to listen to the reading of documents, I must ask you to 
give me vour attention while I read the following extracts from his speech of 
January 31, 1S16, to show that he advocated protection to manufactures as a 
means of national defense and purely as a temporary measure. In that speech 
he says: "We are now called on to determine what amount of revenue is neces- 
sary for this country in time of peace. . . . The principal expen.se of the gov- 
ernment grows out of measures necessary for its defense; and in order to decide 
what these measures ought to be, it will be proper to inquire: What ought to be 
our policy toward other nations, and what will probably be theirs toward us?" 
After discussing the first question, he proceeds to the next: "What will proba1)ly 
be the policy of other nations?" He then says: "With both these nations (Great 
Britain and Spain) we have many and important points of collision. . . _. 
With both there is a possibility sooner or later of our being engaged in war." 
Then, adverting to our relations with England, he says: "But what will be the 
probable course of events respecting future relations between the two countries? 
England is the most formidable power In the world; she has the most numerous 
army and navy at her command. Will Great Britain permit us to go on in an 
uninterrupted march to the height of national greatness and prosperity? . . . 
I will speak what I believe to be true: you will have to encounter British jealousy 
and hostility in every shape, not immediately manifested by open force or vio- 
lence, perhaps, but by indirect attempts to check your growth and prosperity. 
. . . Let us now consider the measures of preparation which sound policy dic- 
tates." After speaking of England's power to do us injury both upon the coast 
and from Canada as a point of attack, and our means of defense, he says: "Thus 
circumstanced on both sides, we ought to omit no preparation fairly within the 
compass of our means. Next, as the species of preparation, a question which 
opens subjects of great extent and importance, the navy most certainly, in 
any point of view, occupies the first place." After the most admirable argument 
in favor of the uavy as the most powerful agency for our foreign defenses, the 
armv, etc., he says: "Now let us consider the proper encouragement to be 
afforded to the industries of the country. In regard to the question how far man- 
ufactures ought to be fostered, it is the duty of this country, as a means of de- 
fense, to encourage its domestic industry, more especially that part of it which 
provides the necessary materials for clothing and defense. Let us look at the 
nature of the war most likely to occur. England is in possession of the ocean. 
No man, however sanguine, can believe that we can soon deprive her of her mari- 
time predominance. That control deprives us of the means of maintaining, 
cheaply clad, our armv and navy. . . . Laying the claims of manufacturers 
entirely out of view, on general principles, without regard to their interests, a 
certain encouragement should be tendered at least to our woolen and cotton man- 
ufactures. The failure of the wealth and resources of the nation necessarily in- 
volves the ruin of its finances and its currency. It is admitted by the most stren- 
uous advocates on the other side that no country ought to be dependent on 
another for its means of defense: that at least our musket and bayonet, our can- 
non and ball, ought to be of domestic manufacture. But what is more necessary 
to the defense of a country than its currency and finance? Circumstanced as our 
country is, can these stand the shock of war? Behold the effect of the late war 
on them! When our manufactures are grown to a certain perfection, as they 
soon will under the fostering care of the government, we will no longer experi- 
ence these evils." 

To this distressing state of things there were two remedies, and only two: one 
In our power immediately; the other, requiring much time and exertion: but both 
constituting, in his opinion, the essential policy of this country. He meant the 
navy and domestic manufactures. By the former we could open the way to our 
markets; by the latter we bring them from beyond the ocean and naturalize them. 
Had we the means of attaining an immediate naval ascendency, he acknowledged 
that the policy recommended by this bill would be very questionable; but as that 
is not the fact, as it is a period remote with any exertion, and will be probably 
more so from that relaxation of exertion so natural in peace, when necessity is 
not felt, it becomes the duty of this House to resort to a considerable extent, at 
least as far as is proposed, to the only remaining remedy. 

Pardon the digression, but I desire here to state that through all these speeches 
there breathed the strongest sentiments of devotion to the Union. In the speech 



790 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

from which I have already quoted he said tliat, in his opinion, tlie liberty and the 
union of this country were inseparably united: that, as the destruction of the lat- 
ter would certainly involve the former, so its maintenance will with equal cer- 
tainty preserve it. He did not speak lightly. He had often and long revolved it 
in his mind, and he had critically examined into the causes that destroyed the 
liberty of other States. There are none that apply to us, or apply with a force to 
alarm. The basis of our Republic is too broad and its structure too strong to be 
shaken by them. Its extension and organization will be found to afford effectual 
security against their operation: but let it be deeply impressed on the heart of 
this House and country that, while they guarded against the old. they exposed us 
to a new and terrible danger: disunion. This single word comprehended almost 
the sum of our political dangers, and against it we ought to be perpetually 
guarded. 

The very last speech that he delivered in the House of Representatives was 
like that which at the end of his life he delivered in the United States Senate. It 
was a plea for the Union. 

Sixteen years elapsed between the delivery of this speech and his reappearance 
in the national councils as a Senator of the United States. Those years were 
crowded with important events and changes. At the expiration of them the 
United States had grown to be a great and powerftil Republic, whose people 
laughed to scorn the thought of danger from any power on earth. The moder- 
ate protective tariff and other measures which he had advocated as a means of 
defense against foreign aggressions had grown to colossal systems, drawing 
wealth and power from Federal taxation, dominating and destroying the agri- 
cultural interests of the country. It was during this period that Mr. John Quincy 
Adams was elected President of the United States. The manner of his election 
by the House of Representatives over Gen. Jackson, who had received the largest 
number of electoral votes, the bold centralizing doctrines enunciated in his in- 
augural and the measures which he urged, excited opposition among Republicans 
throughout the country, in which Mr. Calhoun united. The venerable Thomas 
Jefferson, then eighty-three years of age. and living in strict retirement, whose 
mind, however, looked from the brink of the grave keenly into the future, gave 
forth the following prophetic warnings: "T see, as you do. and with the deepest 
affliction, the rapid strides with which the Federal branch of our government is 
advancing toward the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the 
consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic: and that, too, by con- 
structions which, if legitimate, leave no limits to their power. Take together the 
decisions of the Federal Court, the doctrines of the President, and the miscon- 
structions of the constitutional compact acted on by the Legislature of the Fed- 
eral branch, and it is but too evident that the three ruling branches of that de- 
partment are in combination to strip their colleagues, the State authorities, of 
the powers reserved by them, and to exercise themselves all functions foreign 
and domestic. Under the power to regulate commerce, they assume indefinitely 
that over agriculture and manufactures, and call it regulation to take the earn- 
ings of one of these branches of industry — and that. too. the most depressed — 
and put them into the pockets of the other, the most flourishing of all. . . . 
And what is our resource for the preservation of the constitution? Reason and 
argument? You might as well reason with the marble columns encircling them." 

It is not my purpose to discuss here the question of a protective tariff. I desire 
to efface myself on this occasion. My only aspiration is to present to you the 
moral and intellectual image of him whose outer form and lineaments are pre- 
sented in the admirable statue which we this day unveil. 

In one of his great speeches he stated that the station of Vice President, from 
its leisure, had given him the opportunity to study the genius of the protective 
system as a measure of permanent domestic policy: that he saw its blasting 
effects on one section, its corrupting effects on the other, and these effects in- 
creasing until the burden became intolerable under the tariff of 1S2S, which was 
the crowning act of the administration of Mr. Adams. He saw that under its op- 
eration "desolation was spreading over the entire staple region: its commercial 
cities were deserted: Charleston parted with her last ship, and grass grew in her 
once busy streets." 

He believed that the constitution was violated in using a power granted to raise 
revenue as the instrument of rearing up the industry of one section of the coun- 
try on the ruins of another: that it was, in a word, "a violation of the constitu- 
tion by perversion, the most dangerous of all. because the most insidious and 
difficult to counteract." 



API' ESDI X, SO. 23. 791 

When convinced that there was no hope for relief from Congress through tlie 
administration of Gen. Jaclvson, he advised a remedy which he l)elicved to be 
within the limits of the constitution, conducive to the preservation of the Tjnion, 
and vet fullv adequate to protect the States and the people from the abu!-e and en- 
croachments of federal power. That remed.v was State intervention or nullifica- 
tion. The State of South Carolina, in a convention duly and Icsally convoked in 
November, 1832, passed an ordinance declaring the tariff of 1832 and 1828 to be 
unconstitutional, null, and void within her limits, and of no binding effect upon 
her officers and citizens. This was followed by a proclamation from President 
Jackson declaring the ordinance unconstitutional, intended to dissolve the Union, 
and forbidding anv obedience to it upon the pains and penalties of treason. In 
defense of the action of his State, and in opposition to the doctrines of the proc- 
lamation and the legislation in support of it. Mr. Calhoun put forth those pro- 
found expositions of political principles which, as Mr. Webster afterwards said, 
-will descend to posterity under the sanction of a great name." 

It is simply impossible to give an abstract in the most condensed form of these 
principles. 

The leading idea of those expositions is that the American Union is a Demo- 
cratic Federal Republic— a political system compounded of the separate govern- 
ments of the several States and of one common government of all the States, 
called the Government of the United States. Each was created by written con- 
stitution; those of the particular States, by the people of each acting separately; 
and that of the United States, by the people of each in its sovereign capacity, but 
acting jointly. The entire powers of government are divided between the two; 
those lodged in the general government being delegated by specific and enumer- 
ated grants in the constitution, and all others not delegated being reserved to 
the States respectively, or to the people. The powers of each are sovereign, and 
neither derives Its powers from the other. In their respective spheres neither is 
subordinate to the other, but coordinate; and, being coordinate, each has the 
right of protecting its own powers from the encroachments of the other, the two 
combined forming one entire and perfect government. The line of demarcation 
between the delegated powers to the Federal Government and the powers re- 
served to the States is plain, inasmuch as all the powers delegated to the general 
government are expressly laid down, and those not delegated are reserved to the 
States unless specially prohibited. 

The greater part of the powers delegated to the general government relate 
directly or indirectly to two great divisions of authority; the one pertaining to 
the foreign relations of the counti-y: the other of an internal character, and per- 
taining to the exterior relations of the States, the purposes for which the consti- 
tution was formed being power, security, and respectability without, and peace, 
tranquillity, and harmony within. 

After a full exposition of these propositions, he employs the following strong 
and vigorous language; "Taking all the parts together, the people of twenty- 
four independent and sovereign States, confederated by a solemn constitutional 
compact into one great Federal community with a system of government, in all 
of which powers are separated into the great primary divisions of the constitu- 
tion-making and the lawmaking powers, those of the latter class being divided 
between the common and joint government of all the States and the separate 
and local governments of each State, respectively; and finally the powers of both, 
distributed among three separate and independent departments— legislative, ex- 
ecutive, and judicial— presents in the whole a political system as remarkable for 
its grandeur as it is for its novelty ^nd refinement of organization. For the 
structure of such a system, so wise, just, and beneficent, we are far more indebted 
to a superintending Providence that so disposed events as to lead as if by invis- 
ible hand to its formation than to those who erected it. Intelligent, experienced, 
and patriotic as they were, they were but builders under His superintending di- 
rection. To preserve this sacred distribution as originally settled, by coercing 
each to move in its prescribed orbit, is the great and difficult problem on the so- 
lution of which the duration of our constitution, of our Union, and in all proba- 
bilitv our liberty, depends." 

He next addressed himself to the great question: "What provision does the 
Constitution of the United States or the system itself furnish to preserve this 
and the other division of powers?" He then proceeds to show that from the re- 
lations which subsist between coordinate governments, and from a law imiver- 
sally applicable to a division of power, whether between governments or depart- 
ments of governments, a mutual negative on the part of each is necessary to 



792 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

protect each from the other, and that in a case of conflict as to the limits of their 
respective authority neither has the right to impose hy force its decision against 
the other, but must appeal to a power paramount to either, whose decision is 
final and binding on both. That paramount power iu our system is the conven- 
tion of States, the most august and imposing embodiment of political authority 
known to the American system of government. And this is the doctrine of nul- 
lification. 

As a result of the events which in an earlier part of these remarks I have dis- 
cussed, the right of nullification, even in the minds of those who once asserted 
that right, no longer has a place in the apparatus of our political system. No 
one now has the slightest dream of any resort to State interposition as a remedy 
for political grievances; nor would it be fair to state the arguments adduced by 
him in support of nullification without presenting those advanced in opposition 
to the doctrine. 

But the sincerity of his patriotism in this matter should, in justice to his name 
and fame, be cleared of the aspersions of those who have reported him as a con- 
spirator, impelled by ambition to arouse sectional animosities and passions with 
a view to tearing the ITnion asunder. And it is with a view to this alone that I 
shall further refer to his course on this question. 

In reply to this charge I cannot resist quoting his own words: "I am not ig- 
norant that those opposed to the doctrine have always, now and formerly, re- 
garded it as anarchical and revolutionary. Could I believe such, in fact, to be 
its tendency, to me it would be no recommendation. I yield to none. I trust, in a 
deep and sincere attachment to our poIi'Jcal institutions and the imion of the 
States. I never expressed an opposite sentiment, but, on the contrary, I have 
ever considered them the great instruments of preserving our liberty and pro- 
moting the happiness of ourselves and our posterity; and, next to this, I have 
ever held them most dear. Nearly half of my life has been passed in the service 
of the Union, and whatever public reputation I have acquired is indissolubly 
identified with it. To be too national h;:s, indeed, been considered by many, even 
of my friends, my greatest political fault. With these strong feelings of attach- 
ment I have examined with the utmost care the bearing of the doctrine in ques- 
tion; and so far from being anarchical or revolutionary, I solemnly believe it to 
be the only solid foundation of our system, and of the I^nion itself, and that the 
opposite doctrine, which denies to the States the right of protecting their re- 
served powers, and which would vest in the government tit matters not through 
what department) the right of determining exclusively and finally the powers 
delegated to it, is incompatible with the sovereignty of the States, if the constitu- 
tion itself be considered as the basis of the Federal Union." 

To the objection that the right of a State to interpose and arrest an Act of Con- 
gress because of its alleged unconstitutionality is inconsistent with the necessary 
authority of the government, and must lead to ff ebleness, anarchy, and final dis- 
union, he says that this power of nullification would, if unchecked, like all un- 
checked power, tend to abuse and disaster. "But it is not unchecked," said he. 
"As high as this right of interposition on the part of a State may be regarded in 
relation to the general government, the constitutional compact provides a rem- 
edy against this abuse. There is a higher power placed above all. by the consent 
of all — the creating and preserving power of the system, to be exercised by three- 
fourths of the States, and which, under the character of the amending power, 
can modify the whole system at pleasure, and to the acts of which none can ob- 
ject. Admit, then, the power in question to belong to the States, and admit its 
liability to abuse, and what are the ntmpst consequences but to create a pre- 
sumption against the constitutionality of the power exercised by the general 
government, which, if it be well-founded, must compel them to abandon it? . . . 
If, on an appeal for this purpose, the decision be favorable to the general govern- 
ment, a di.-^putPd power will be converted info an expressly granted power; but. 
on the other hand, if it be adverse, the refusal to grant will be tantamount to an 
inhibition of its exercise; and thus, in either case, the controversy will be deter- 
mined. The utmost extent, then, of the power is that a State, acting in its sover- 
eign capacity as one of the parties to the constitutional compact, may compel the 
government created by that compact to sulimit a question touching its infraction 
to the parties who created it. This amending power by a convention of the 
States is, when properly understood, the ria virdiintrir of the system — its great 
repairing, healing, and conservative power— intended to remedy its disorders, in 
whatever cause or causes originating, whether in the original defects or errors of 
the constitution itself or the operation fnd change of circumstances; . . . or. In 



Ari'i:.\DJX, xo. 23. 793 

case of a disputed power, whether it be between the Federal Government and one 
of its coordinates, or between the former and an interposing State, by declaring, 
authoritatively, what is the constitution. ... It is thus that our constitu- 
tion, bv authorizing amendments and by prescribing the autliority and mode of 
making them, has, bv a simple contrivance, with its characteristic wisdom, pro- 
vided a power which in the last resort supersedes effectually the necessity, and 
even the pretext, for force. 

"That such a remedy is provided is proof of the profound wisdom of the great 
men who formed our constitution, and entitles them to the lasting gratitude of 
the country; but it will be in vain that their wisdom devised a remedy so admira- 
ble, a substitute so infinitely superior to the old and irrational mode of termi- 
nating such controversies as are of too high a nature to be adjusted by the force 
of reason, or through the ordinary tribunals, if their descendants be so blind as 
not to perceive its efficacy, or so intently bent upon schemes of ambition and 
avarice as to prefer, to this constitutional, peaceful, and safe remedy, the wanton, 
hazardous, and immoral arbitrament of force. 

"There is indeed one view, and only one— that nullification Is secession— of 
the contest, in which force could be employed; but that view, as between the par- 
ties, would supersede the constitution itself, and would consequently place the 
State, as to the others, in the relation of a foreign State. . . . Standing thus 
toward one another, force might indeed be employed against a State; but it must 
be a belligerent force, preceded by a declaration of war and carried on with all 
its formalities. Such would be the certain effect of secession; and. if nullifica- 
tion be secession, such too must be its effect, which presents the highly important 
question— are thev. in fact, the same?— on the decision of which depends the 
question whether nullification be a peaceable and constitutional remedy that may 
be exercised without terminating the Federal relations of the State or not. 

"I am aware that there is a considerable and respectable portion of our State, 
with a very large portion of the I'nion, constituting, in fact, a great majority, 
who are of the opinion that they are the same thing, differing only in name, and 
who under that impression, denounce it as the most dangerous of all doctrines; 
and vet. so far from being the same, they are, unless indeed I am greatly deceived, 
not only perfectly distinguishable, but totally dissimilar in their nature, their ob- 
ject aiid effect: and that, so far from deserving the denunciation so properly 
helonglng to the act with which it is confounded, it is. in truth, the highest and 
most precious of all the rights of the States, and essential to preserve that very 
Union for the supposed effect of destroying which it is so bitterly anathematized. 
They are wholly dissimilar in their nature. Secession is the withdrawal from the 
Union ... a throwing off of the authority of the Union itself, a separation 
from partners, and. as far as it depends on the member withdrawing, a dissolu- 
tion of the partnership. It presupposes an association or union of several States 
or individuals for a common object. . . . Nullification, on the contrary, presup- 
poses the relation of principal and agent— the one granting a power to be exe- 
cuted; the other, appointed by him with authority to execute it— and is simply a 
declaration on the part of the principal, made in due form, that an act of the 
agent transcending his power is null and void. . . . The difference in their 
object Is no less striking than in their nature. The object of secession is to free 
the withdrawing member from the obligation of the association or union, etc. 
Its direct and immediate object, as it concerns the withdrawing member, is the 
dissolution of the association or union, as far as it is concerned. On the con- 
trary, the object of nullification is to confine the agent within the limits of his 
powers by arresting his acts transcending them, not with a view of destroying 
the delegated or trust power, but to preserve it by compelling the agent to fulfill 
the object for which the agency or trust was created, and is anplicable only to 
cases where the trust or delegated powers are transcended on the part of the 

agent. 

"It remains now to show that their effect is as dissimilar as their nature or 

ot'ject. . . . . ., j.i- 

"Nullification leaves the members of the association or union m the condition 
in which it found them— subject to all its burdens, and entitled to all its advan- 
tages comprehending the member nullifying as well as the others— its object be- 
ing not to destroy, but to preserve, as has been stated. . . . Secession, on the 

contrary destroys, as far as the withdrawing member is concerned, the associa- 
tion or' imion. ". . . Such are clearly the differences between them— differ- 
ences so marked that, inste-d of being identical, as supposed, they form a con- 
trast in all the aspects in which they can be regarded." 



794 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

Whatever may be the objections to this doctrine, it must be admitted that it 
had not in it an element of disunion. It might have proved cumbrous and ob- 
structive in its operations o£ the government ; it might have impaired its prompt- 
ness and vigor and energy of action, and probably would; but had it been recog- 
nized and acted upon by the Federal Government, it would have ever prevented a 
resort to secession, on the one hand, or a resort to force, on the other. But the 
right was not recognized: it was denied and inflexibly opposed by the general 
government, which assumed to impose its own construction of the constitution, 
against that of the States, by force. 

Just at this time Mr. Calhoun resigned the office of Vice President, and took 
his seat in the Senate in place of Gen. Robert Y. Hayne, who had been chosen 
Governor of the State. A few days after he took his seat. President .Jackson sent 
a message to Congress, transmitting the ordinance of nullification with his own 
proclamation, and recommending the passage of measures which would enable 
him to compel, by the use of military force, the obedience and submission of the 
States. 

It was upon the occasion of this message and the force bill, which became a 
law during that session, that the great debate took place between Mr. Webster 
and Mr. Calhoun, memorable for the ability and eloquence displayed, the emi- 
nent character of the two great champions of the hostile theories, and the mag- 
nitude of the questions involved. Up to the time that Mr. Calhoun took his stand 
for what he deemed was the cause of the constitution and the Union, as well as 
the liberty and the interest of the people of his own State, national honors and dis- 
tinctions and popular applause seemed to have sought him out and crowded his 
path through public life. He had up to that moment been regarded as the most 
renowned and shining character among living American statesmen, and, next to 
Jackson, the most popular. He was but one step from the Presidency, and was 
regarded as the heir apparent of President Jackson, who, it was understood, 
would serve but one terra. 

To my mind there is nothing connected with Mr. Calhoun's life so fraught with 
touching pathos, so characteristic of the grand soul of the man, as the isolation 
of his position when he took his place in the United States Senate. He saw all 
the popularity which marked the early part of his career receding from him: he 
saw a majority of all his old political associates and friends in the Senate now 
in hostile array against him. and his old political enemies in perfect unanimity 
allied with them. Not one sister State from any part of the Union stood by South 
Carolina in this final conflict. Both Houses of Congress, with the President of 
the United States, and that President Andrew Jackson, combined all together in 
the adoption of measures to force his State into submission to the law which she 
had nullified. Never a contest, to all seeming, was so unequal, so hopeless. But 
he quailed not. Strong in his own conviction of the justice of his cause; self- 
poised in the counsels of his own mind, doing nothing rashly, and yet nothing 
timidly or doubtfully; ready to immolate himself for the right which his State 
had intrusted to his defense, this noble, brave man, on whose brow God had set 
the seal of truth, whose eye beamed bright with the devotion that fired his soul- 
courage, manliness, sincerity, truth in every tone and look, greatness in everv 
lineament of his countenance— stood alone and prevailed. Yes, prevailed! For 
the controversy, when closed, was closed by the compromise act which repealed 
the law that his State had nullified. The very Congress which passed the force 
bill to coerce South Carolina into submission to the tariff of 182,<! and 1832, at the 
same session repealed those two laws: and Andrew Jackson, the man of iron will 
and pitiless purpose, in the face of his proclamation, signed the act that swept 
from the statute book the enactment which South Carolina in her asserted sover- 
eignty had declared unconsfit\itional, null, and void, and inoperative in her 
limits. 

Any account of those stormy times would be incomplete which left out the ma- 
jestic figure of Henry Clay, the matchless orator, the noble patriot, whose heart 
was the sanctuary of all noble impulses and generous aspirations, the genius of 
conciliation and harmony, who introduced his celebrated compromise bill which 
averted the storm and substituted peace for intestine strife. Immortal honor to 
the name of Henry Clay! 

And here is presented a spectacle which cannot fail to excite the pride and ad- 
miration of all tnie Americans. Henry Clay, the author of the American system, 
of which the protective policy was the most cherished principle: John C. Calhoun, 
the representative and champion of the reserved rights of the States and their 
sovereignty; Andrew Jackson, the stern, inflexible enforcer of the supreme power 



APPENDIX, SO. 2S. 795 

and paramount authority of the nation; eanh bursting tlie trammels of party, 
easting aside seelional animosity, disregarding pride of opinion and personal 
hostilities; each making concessions, and all giving their united tribute of intel- 
lect and patriotism to the good of their common country. 

By this compromise, South Carolina, although she gained the repeal of the law 
which she had nullified, and the prostration of the protective system, made im- 
portant concessions. By his statesmanship Mr. Clay (though he sacrificed the 
protective system) secured the wise provision that the protective imposts should 
be gradually reduced, covering a term of ten years, to a revenue standard. To 
this feature Mr. Calhoun assented fully, as it had always been his policy to adopt 
a gradual and tentative reduction of protective duties, and thus to secure safety 
to all interests and permanent establishment of a just and fair revenue system. 
The force bill remained on the statute book unrepealed, which asserts the su- 
preme authority of the Union over a nullifying State. 

This settlement must give rise to the most noble reflections. The reader of 
our history is apt to be saddened by the thought that the eloquence and wisdom 
and services of our greatest statesmen are exhibited, not in united efforts and 
harmonious cooperation, but in conflict among themselves and victories of one 
party over another; but when a supreme moment comes, the fact is revealed that 
what seems to be fierce combat among themselves is but the ardent strivings of 
each for the honor, perpetuity, and glory of a common country. 

I find that I ha^-e already transcended the limits that I have prescribed to my- 
self, and have not the time to even sketch hia measures and speeches during the 
remainder of his public life, all of which, except one year, was given to the public 
service. 

After the adjustment of the tariff question, or what was agreed to be its final 
settlement, he at once devoted himself to those great issues and those great polit- 
ical reforms in which every section of the country was alike interested. Among 
these was, first, the removal of the deposits of the United States from the na- 
tional bank and their transfer to the Slate banks, by order of the President, and 
also his course on the protest of the Senate against that act. On these occasions 
the speeches of Mr. Calhoun were able and fearless exposures of what he deemed 
the arbitrary abuse involved in that act and the subsequent outrageous invasion 
on the part of the Executive upon the constitutional rights and prerogatives of the 
two Houses of Congi-ess. While he occupied upon these subjects common ground 
with Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster in opposition to Gen. Jackson's administration, 
he made it very clear that upon the question of the national bank, the subject of 
currency, and other measures of national policy, his differences with those gentle- 
men and the party that they represented were marked and radical. From 1S33 to 
1843 he delivered a series of speeches upon the financial and economical problems 
of that period, which, in their thorough elucidation of the causes which had pro- 
duced the evils of a disordered currency, prostitution of credit, and general finan- 
cial embarrassment, and in their wise forecast in indicating the true remedy, 
were as able as any that he ever delivered, and indeed were pronounced by Sen- 
ators eminent for talents and long experience to be the ablest that they had ever 
heard in the United States Senate. 

On the 5th of February, 1S3.5, he made a report on the extent of government 
patronage which startled the country by its revelations of the enormous extent to 
which the abuses of the system had grown, and the degenerating influences that 
It was exercising alike upon the government and the character of the people. 
Animated and acrimonious debates arose in the Senate upon the facts stated in 
the report. In maintenance of the positions assumed therein. Mr. Calhoun made 
a speech which is perhaps as applicable to the present time as it was to those in 
which it was delivered. After showing how alarmingly the system had grown, 
he proceeded to demonstrate the causes which produced it, and which gave to it 
its growth and its dangerous influences. At the head of these causes he placed 
"the practice so greatly extended, if not for the first time introduced, of removing 
from office persons well qualified and who had faithfully performed their duty, 
in order to fill the places with those who were recommended on the ground that 
they belonged to the party in power." In speaking of the extent of its growth he 
stated that Washington in his eight years of service had made but nine removals; 
Madison, but five; Monroe, but ten; and that he, while Secretary of War for more 
than seven years, removed but two, and that for cause. 

He says: "So long as offices were considered as public trusts, to be conferred 
on the honest, the faithful, and capable, for the common good, and not for the 
benefit or gain of the incumbent or his party, and so long as it was the practice 



796 LUC7US Q. r. LAMAR: Ills LIFE, ETC. 

of the government to continue in office tliose who faithfully performed their du- 
ties, its patronage, in point of fact, was limited to the mere power of nominating 
to accidental vacancies or to newly created offices, and could of course exercise 
but a moderate influence either over the body of the community or of the office- 
holders themselves; and when the practice was reversed — when offices, instead of 
being considered as public trusts, to be conferred on the deserving, were regarded 
as the spoils of victory, to be bestowed as rewards for partisan services without 
respect to merit; when it came to be understood that all who held office, held by 
the tenure of partisan zeal and party service — it is easy to see that the certain, 
direct, and inevitable tendency of such a state of things is to convert the entire 
body of those in office into corrupt and supple instruments of power, and to raise 
up a host of hungry, greedy, and subservient partisans, ready for any service, 
however base and corrupt. Were a premium offered for the best means of ex- 
tending to the utmost the power of patronage, to destroy love of country, to en- 
courage vice and discourage virtue, and, in a w-ord, to prepare for the subversion 
of liberty and the establishment of despotism, no scheme more perfect could be 
devised: and such must be the tendency of the practice, with whatever intention 
adopted, or to whatever extent pursued." 

He then called attention to the pledges of the pai'ty supporting the present ad- 
ministration to put a stop to this enormous abuse, and he asked: "What justifica- 
tion has been offered for so gross a violation of their pledges?" To the speech 
of Mr. Benton, in defense of the administration, he made the following indignant 
reply: "No justification is e-ien attempted: the delinquency is acknowledged, 
and the only effort which the Senator from Missouri has made to defend his own 
conduct and that of the administration in adopting the practice which he then 
denounced is on the principle of retaliation. He says that he has been fourteen 
years a member of the Senate, and that during the first seven no friend of his had 
received the favor of the government, and contends that it became necessary to 
dismiss those in office to make room for others who had been for so long a time 
beyond the circle of Executive favor. What," Mr. Calhoun asked, "is the prin- 
ciple, w^hen correctly understood, on which this defense rests? It assumes that 
retaliation is a principle in its nature so sacred that it justifies the breach of 
plighted faith and the subversion of principles the observance of which had been 
declared to be essential to the liberty of the country. The avowal of such a prin- 
ciple may be justified at this time by interested partisans; but a more impartial 
tribunal will regard it in a far different light, and pronounce that sentence which 
violated faith and broken pledges deserve. ... I consider it." said Mr. Cal- 
houn, "as an evidence of that deep degeneracy which precedes the downfall of a 
republic, when those elevated to power forget the promises on which they were 
elevated: the certain effect of which is to make an impression on the public mind 
that all is juggling and trickery in politics, and to create an indifference to polit- 
ical struggles highly favorable to the growth of despotic power." 

I am proud to say. fellow-citizens, that it has been my good fortune to be asso- 
ciated with one against whose administration the only criticism which has been 
pronounced is his sacred regard for similar promises and the unconquerable in- 
trepidity with which he stands by them. . . . Speaking of the effect of this 
practice upon the character of a party, he adds: "Their object is to get and to 
hold office: and their leading political maxim, openly avowed on this floor by one 
of their former Senators from Mew York, now Governor of that State. Mr. Marcy. 
is that 'to the victors belong the spoils of victory!' — a sentiment reiterated during 
the present session, as I understand, by an influential member of the House, and 
who had the assurance to declare every man a hypocrite who does not avow it. 
Can any one who will duly reflect on these things venture to say that all is sound 
and that our government is not undergoing a great and fatal change? Let us not 
deceive ourselves. The very essence of a free government consists in consider- 
ing offices as public trusts bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the 
benefit of an individual or a party; and that system of political morals which re- 
gards offices in a different light, as public prizes to be won by combatants most 
skilled in the arts of political tactics and intrigue, and to be used and enjoyed as 
their proper spoils, strikes a fatal l)low at the very vitals of free institutions." 
Mr. Calhoun said: "Experience has shown that there is a great tendency in our 
system to degenerate into this diseased state, and I may venture to repeat— it 
cannot be done too often — what is stated in the report: that whenever the execu- 
tive patronage shall become sufficiently strong to form a party based on its influ- 
ence exclusively, the liberty of the country, should that state of things continue 
for any considerable period, must be lost." 



APPENDIX, NO. 2S. 797 

It gives me pride and pleasure to say that South Carolina has never departed 
from these great principles. I cannot refrain from paying my tribute of applause 
to the ability and eloquence and firmness with which Senator Butler, of your 
State, sustained these doctrines on the floor of the United States Senate. In 
reply to a vivid and truthful portrayal, by a political friend, of the terrible mis- 
government through which the people of the South had passed, and to the inquiry 
if he would have retained in the departments at Washington those who were en- 
gaged in that misgovernment, he replied: "Why, Mr. President, the people of the 
South rejoice too much in a restoration of their liberty to care about the paltry 
offices in Washington. . . . When it comes to a great question of this kind I 
am not a Southern man. I hope that I represent the people of this country in 
desiring the improvement of its civil service; it is an object which rises high 
above the considerations of party or of section, in my humble judgment. . . . 
As compared with the improvement of the civil service of this government, I say 
to the Senator as a representative in part of the State of South Carolina, I will 
give up every offlce in the departments at Washington, and I will go before my 
people and sustain myself upon that position." Gen. Wade Hampton has given 
the sanction of his name to the maintenance of these principles in his own practi- 
cal and effectual way by advocating legislation to suppress the abuses of govern- 
ment patronage. As an individual I desire to express my high appreciation of the 
fidelity of South Carolina to her old landmarks, as evinced in the recent resolu- 
tions of her Legislature on the subject of civil service reform, and her just and 
manly support of the President's conduct on this subject. 

In iS42 Mr. Calhoun addressed the Senate upon an amendment to the constitu- 
tion offered by Mr. Clay to abolish the veto power of the President, in a speech in 
which he discussed with irresistible force, indeed, with overwhelming power, the 
principles which underlie the reciprocal relations of the different departments of 
the Federal Government, the symmetrical proportions of the whole system, and 
the marvelous, yet admirable, combination of checks and balances designed for 
the perpetuation of constitutional liberty. The young men of this country who 
aspire to statesmanship or public usefulness might study this speech with lasting 
benefit and edification. 

In 1S43 he retired from the United States Senate, with a view to permanent re- 
tirement from public life. In a short time, however, he was called to the office 
of Secretarv of State by President Tyler, near the close of his administration, to 
conclude tlie negotiations for the annexation of Texas, which he accomplished 
with his usual ability and success— a measure which added immensely to the 
territory, resources, and power of the United States. 

In 1S4.5 the status of the Oregon question was such that war with England 
seemed to be inevitable. The administration of Mr. Polk had committed itself 
to a withdrawal of the notice to England of the termination of the treaty for the 
joint use and occupation of that Territory, with a view to claim and take posses- 
sion of the entire Territory up to 54° 40', and a majority of both Houses of Con- 
gress were supposed to favor the policy. It was warmly supported by Gen. Cass 
in the Senate, and the venerable ex-President John Quincy Adams in the House. 
The former repeatedly declared that "war is inevitable." indeed, "almost upon 
us." A general uneasiness pervaded the country. In Mr. Calhoun's own words, 
"stocks of every description fell, marine insurance rose, commei-cial pursuits 
were suspended, and our vessels remained inactive at the wharves." All over 
the countrv there was a demand that Mr. Calhoun, as the most powerful and influ- 
ential member of the Democratic party, should at once be returned to the Senate 
to prevent the carrying out of the war policy of the new administration. Mr. 
Huger resigned his seat in the Senate, and Mr. Calhoun was unanimously elected 
to take his place. His speech on the Oregon question, soon after he took his seat, 
was a masterpiece of political wisdom, sagacity, and rare eloquence, and reveals 
his characteristic courage. It shows the deep impression which the war of 1S12 
had made upon his mind with regard to the dangers of war to Republican institu- 
tions, and the importance of avoiding it whenever it can be done with safety to 
national honor or the rights of the people; but no one can read his utterances 
upon the grand and noble mission of the American Republic and harbor for one 
instant any doubt as to his devotion to the Union and his horror of every cause 
that would imperil its perpetuity. 

On the 11th day of May. lS4fi. President Polk sent a message to Congress in 
recognition of the fact that war existed between the United States and Mexico, 
and recommending the raising of means for its prosecution. The scene was a 
solemn one, and what occurred was often spoken of by the members of that body. 



798 LUCIUS Q. a LA MAR: JUS LIFE, ETC. 

A motion was made to print twenty tliousand copies o£ tiie message and docu- 
ments. Mr. Calhoun rose and objected, and said that we were on the eve of great 
events, and expressed the hope tliat we would proceed calmly and deliberately. 

It is evident that he foresaw the consequences of the war thus precipitated. 
He foresaw that it would result in the acquisition of Mexican territory. He 
knew that the aversion of the North to the institution of slavery would cause the 
majority of Congress to exclude that part of the country interested in this insti- 
tution from any share in the advantages to be derived from the admission of that 
institution into the territory thus acquired. He knew that if the North, with no 
interest in the matter except a moral sentiment, was so determined, it would be 
met with an equal determination of resistance by the Southern States. He spoke 
of this as the "terrible difficulty:" and it was so to him, for he saw in it the ele- 
ments of disunion and of blood. It has been said that it is easy for a good man 
to resist wrong when it is clearly opposed to the right: but when virtue is opposed 
to virtue, is the real rending of the soul in twain. Mr. Calhoun loved the Union 
with religious devotion, but he loved the South also. A conflict between his love 
for the Union and his love for the Southern people — that was a terrible thing for 
him, which burdened his heart with sadness and grief. He earnestly sought to 
prevent the occasion for renewing the strife between the sections. In his reply 
to Mr. Benton he spoke as follows: "Every Senator knows that I was opposed to 
the war. but no one knows but myself the depth of that opposition. With my 
conceptions of its character and consequences, it was impossible for me to vote 
for it. When, accordingly. I was deserted by eveiy friend on this side of the 
House, Including my then honorable colleague among the rest (Mr. McDuffle). I 
was not shaken in the least degree in reference to my course. On the passage of 
the act recognizing the war, I said to many of my friends that 'a deed has been 
done from which the country will not be able to recover for a long time, if 
ever.' and added that 'it has dropped a curtain between the present and the future, 
which, to me, is impenetrable: and for the first time since I have been in public 
life I am unable to see the future.' I also added that 'it has closed the first vol- 
ume of our political history under the constitution, and opened the second, and 
that no mortal could tell what would be written in it.'" 

That second volume has been written, and the world knows its contents. We 
are now in the third volume of our constitutional history. May its recorded 
story correspond with Calhoun's divination of the possibilities of our future des- 
tiny as delivered in 1S46 in the Oregon debate! He said in substance that "Prov- 
idence had given us an inheritance stretching across the entire continent from 
ocean to ocean, from north to south, covering by far the greater and better part 
of its temperate zone, and comprising a region not only of vast extent, but 
abounding in all resources, excellent in climate, fertile and exuberant in soil, ca- 
pable of sustaining, in the plentiful enjoyment of all the necessaries of life, a 
population of ten times our present number: that our great mission as a people 
is to occupy this vast domain: to replenish it with an intelligent, virtuous, and 
industrious population; to convert the forests into cultivated fields: to drain the 
swamps and morasses and cover them with rich harvests: to build up cities, 
towns, and villages in every direction: and to unite 'ihe whole by the most rapid 
intercourse l)etween all the parts." He then rose to higher grounds and a 
broader view, and stated that we were charged by Providence not only with the 
happiness of this great and rising people, but in a considerable degree with that 
of the human race. After passing through a rapid review of the great discov- 
eries and inventions, multiplied beyond all former examples, by which the vast 
powers of nature were rendered subservient to the purposes of art, to the spread 
of civilization, to the general progress of the nation in knowledge and its dif- 
fusion through all ranks of society: he turned more especially to the two great 
agents of the physical world, steam and electricity — "the latter of which," he said, 
"had been made an instrument for the transmission of thought by lightning itself. 
Magic wires are stretching themselves in all directions over the earth: and when 
their mystic meshes shall have been united and perfected, our globe itself will be- 
come endowed with sensitiveness, so that whatever touches on any one point will 
he instantly felt on every other," 

He declared that all this improvement and progress are but the dawn of a new 
civilization, more refined, more elevated, more intellectual, more moral, than the 
present and all others preceding it. "We have been raised up." said he, "by 
Providence to advance these great and noble purposes. . . . We have a gov- 
ernment of a new order, perfectly distinct from all others which have preceded it. 
a government founded on the rights of man: resting not on authority, not on 



APPENDIX, NO. 33. 799 

prejudice, not on superstition, but on reason and consent. All civilized govern- 
ment, if it succeeds, must in the course of time conform to its principles. I trust 
that we shall not fail to fuUiU our highest destiny." 

Fellow-citizens, the institution of slavery! That question has been settled. 
Slavery is dead; buried in a grave that never gives up its dead. Why reopen it 
to-day? Let it rest. Yet if I remain silent upon the subject, it will be taken as 
an admission that there is one part of Mr. Calhoun's life of which it is prudent 
for his friends to say nothing to the present generation. Dissimulation and 
evasion were so foreign to his character that in his own case no one would dis- 
approve and even disdain such silence more than he. I have this to say: That 
with reference to the constitutional status of slavery in the States. Mr. Calhoun 
never entertained or expressed a sentiment that was not entertained and ex- 
pressed by Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, and all the eminent 
statesmen of his time; that slavery was an institution of society in the States, 
sanctioned and upheld by the Constitution of the I'nited States: that it was an 
institution of property, recognized, protected, and enforced even upon the States 
where slavery did not exist, by the fundamental law of the Union: that it was an 
institution of political power which, under the provisions of the constitution, in- 
creased the representation of the Southern States on the floor of Congress and in 
the electoral college, was admitted by every public man in the country who had 
the slightest title to position as a statesman. 

The only difference between Mr. Calhoun, on the one hand, Webster and Clay 
and such statesmen, on the other, was that the measures hostile to slavery which 
they sometimes countenanced, and at other times advocated, he saw and predicted 
were in conflict with these guarantees in the constitution, and that their direct 
tendency and inevitable effect, and, in many cases, avowed motive, was the de- 
struction of slavery in the States. And while Mr. Webster and Mr. Clay dis- 
claimed any such motive and denied any such probable effects, he declared to Mr. 
Webster in debate that the sentiment would grow and increase until, trampling 
down in its strides all the forms of the constitution, he (Mr. Webster) would 
himself be compelled to succumb or be swept down beneath it. 

Vain the forms of law! vain the barriers of the constitution! vain the consid- 
erations of State policy! vain the eloquence a:id the compromises of statesmen! 
His predictions were verified to the letter. They were all swept away before the 
irresistible force of the civilization of the nineteenth century, whose moral senti- 
ment demanded the extinction of slavery. 

Every benefit which slavery conferred upon those subject to it, all the amel- 
iorating and humanizing tendencies which it introduced into the life of the 
African, all the elevating agencies which lifted him higher in the scale of rational 
and moral being, were the elements of the future and inevitable destruction of the 
system. The mistake that was made by the Southern defenders of slavery was in 
regarding it as a permanent form of society instead of a process of emergence 
and transition from barbarism to freedom. If at this very day the North or the 
American Union were to propose to reestablish the institution, it would be im- 
practicable: the South could not and would not accept it as a boon. Slavery as it 
existed then could not exist under the present commercial and industrial systems 
of Europe and America. The existing industrial relations of capital and labor, 
had there been no secession, no war, would of themselves have brought about the 
death of slavery. 

Fellow-citizens, at the commencement of my remarks I stated my estimate of 
Mr. Calhoun's private and personal character, also his character as a statesman 
and a thinker. As an orator and debater he has often been described. His 
friend, personal and political. Mr. Rhett. speaks of "his earnestness and elevation 
of language, which bear the mind on as if on a swift, deep current:" of "his close, 
compact logic, which moved with the precision and measured tread of a Spartan 
phalanx." Senator Hammond said of him; "The intellect of Mr. Calhoun was 
cast in the Grecian mold, intuitive, profound, original, descending to the minutest 
details of practical affairs, and soaring aloft with a balanced wing into the high- 
est region of invention. The force of his imagination, his command of language, 
his enthusiastic temperament, eminently qualified him for declamation of the 
highest order: but his themes were as well adapted to it as those of Demosthenes 
himself." Mr. W^ebster's idea of him was thus expressed: "The eloquence of Mr. 
Calhoun, or the manner of his exhibition of his sentiments in public, was part of 
his intellectual character. It grew out of the qualities of his mind. It was plain, 
strong, terse, condensed, concise, sometimes impassioned, yet always severe." 
I have given these descriptions by others of Mr. Calhoun's style, because I feel 



SOO LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

unable to characterize it in a manner satisfactory to my own mind. I do not 
think that elevation of language, terse, condensed expression, force of logic, soar- 
ing imagination, earnest feeling, and impassioned declamation, adequately ex- 
press all its qualities. I have thought that his eloquence was due more to the 
simple majesty of his thoughts than to the diction in which they were clothed or 
the logical processes by which they were presented. The chief quality of his 
style seems to be that of giving the tnie impression of a profound and elevated 
mind, communicating its thoughts and feelings to the minds of others in words 
plain and clear and sentences simple and natural. There is between the human 
mind and truth a perfect correspondence. It was created for truth as its object: 
and when brought into contact with it, the mind, by the very law of its being, 
instinctively and intuitively embraces truth with credence and faith, unless prej- 
udice or passion or some other agency interposes lietween the two and leads it 
away. Now, Mr. Calhoun's style, I think, had this great merit among those al- 
ready mentioned: it brought before the minds of men the pure, unsophisticated 
truth of his thought as it existed in his own mind. When, therefore, he spoke, 
those who listened to him were brought into communion direct with his own 
great thoughts, splendid conceptions, prophetic foresight, moral grandeur, and 
soul-kindling passion: and they would feel their own minds strengthened, en- 
riched, enlarged, and ennobled by the contact with his intellectual and moral 
nature. 

Mr. Calhoun's conception of the duties belonging to the station that he occu- 
pied indisposed him to personal controversies or to sarcastic retorts upon his 
opponents: but when remarks of this character by them left him no other alter- 
native than to notice them, his replies never failed to impress all who heard him 
with the consciousness that he moved in a sphere of thought and feeling far above 
the reach of his assailant. TTpon one occasion a Senator from Delaware, com- 
menting upon the distinction which Mr. Calhoun had drawn between sovereignty 
itself and the delegation of sovereignty to the different departments of the gov- 
ernment (a distinction now familiar, and never denied), said that this was meta- 
physical reasoning which he could not comprehend. To this Mr. Calhoun replied 
as follows: "The Senator from Delaware calls this metaphysical reasoning, which 
he says he cannot comprehend. If by metaphysics he means that scholastic re- 
finement which makes distinctions without diffprence, no one can hold it in more 
utter contempt than I do: but if, on the contrary, he means the power of analysis 
and combination, that power which reduces the most complex idea into its ele- 
ments, which traces causes to their first principles, and by the power of generali- 
zation and combination unites the whole in one harmonious system, then, so 
far from deserving contempt, it is the highest attribute of the mind. It is the 
power which raises the man above the brute, which distinguishes his faculties 
from mere sagacity, which he holds in common with inferior animals. It is this 
power which has raised the astronomer from being a mere gazer at the stars to 
the high intellectual eminence of a Newton or a I^aPlace. and astronomy itself 
from a mere observation of isolated facts into that noble science which displays 
to our admiration the system of the universe. And shall this high power of the 
mind, which has effected such wonders when directed to the laws that control 
the material world, be forever prohibited, under the senseless cry of metaphysics, 
from being applied to the high purposes of political science and legislation? I 
hold them to be subject to laws as fixed as matter itself, and to be as fit a subject 
for the application of the highest analytical power. Denunciation may indeed fall 
upon the philosophical inquirer into these first principles, as it did upon Galileo 
and Bacon when they first unfolded the great discoveries which have immortal- 
ized their names: but the time will come when truth will prevail in spite of prej- 
udice and denunciation, and v.iien politics and legislation will be considered as 
much a scheme as astronomy and chemistry." 

Suggestions of a touching nature present themselves to me at this moment, but 
I have not the time nor the strength to speak of them here. You will pardon me, 
however, for pausing to express my personal gratification at recognizing the 
presence of one who is here in the place of her honored and illustrious father, 
whose name is inseparably associated with these ceremonies on account of the 
eloquent address which he deliverpd at the laying of the corner stone of this 
monument — the martyr, patriot, and orator, Lawrence M. Keitt. of whom I can 
say truly, as was said by Charles James Fox: "It is difhcult to determine whether 
we most admire the statesman or love the man." 

I cannot forbear, either, to allude to the venerable and beloved Carolina ma- 
tron who, amid all the perils of war and the storms of battle, carried, concealed 



M'fKsinx, .\(j. :.'/,. 801 

on her person, the sacred fund which was dedicated to the erection of this mon- 
ument. 

Ladies of the South Carolina Association, I have attempted to respond to the 
call with which your kindness has honored me. I regret deeply that absorbing 
duties of an official character, leaving me not even the intermission of a day of 
freedom, have allowed no opportunity to prepare for the performance of the task 
in a manner worthy of the theme and of the occasion. It is well that this monu- 
mental statue on South Carolina's soil has been reared through the instrumental- 
ity of her own fair daughters. His lite was one uninterrupted homage to woman. 

Mr. Calhoun was the true son of South Carolina. His just fame and great 
name were the fruits of her social system, and will be her glory when succeeding 
generations shall learn and appreciate the lessons of political tnith taught by 
him, and shall inhale his pure spirit of patriotism, his exalted conception of duty, 
and become inspired by the honor, fidelity, courage, and purity of life, which 
rooted themselves in the soul of the man whose statue South Carolina women 
have erected in commemoration of the affectionate reverence with which they 
commend him to the honor, love, imitation, and confidence of mankind. 



Appendix No. 24, 

ALUMNI ADDRESS. 
Delivered before the Society of the Alumni, at Emory College, June 24, isno. 

Ladirx aii(J Gentlemen: In response to an invitation which could not w-ell be de- 
clined without a greater capacity to say "no" than I possess, I find mvself once 
more in the classic groves of Emory College, and before a body of my country- 
men of Georgia to whom I am attached by ties of the slncerest interest and of 
hereditary friendship. 

Gentlemen of the Alumni, in the lifetime of every man occasions befall which 
excite feelings that the ordinary assurances of reciprocal courtesy do not fully 
express. Indeed, just in proportion as such feelings are deep, and partake of the 
more delicate and refined sentiments of the heart, in that exact proportion are 
they unfit for public exhibition. Such an occasion is to us the present moment 
of reunion, after years of separation, of the sons of our (iliiid mater, within whose 
sheltering care we were trained for the conflicts of life. The thrilling associa- 
tions, the sacred sympathies which silently come to us at this moment, when we 
note with bated breath the mysterious movement of our inner life, are all the 
more vivid and intense because they cannot be embodied in speech. 

Here linger the shades of the departed great, and in every tremulous echo are 
heard the voices, now silent forever, of many whom Georgia honored and Georgia 
loved. 

At every period of her annals the history of Georgia is rich in groups of great, 
choice, aiid shining men — learned jurists, able lawyers, wise politicians, orators 
of magical eloquence, illustrious statesmen, inspired preachers— whose memories 
constitute their priceless legacy to a people grateful for the distinguished serv- 
ices rendered by them, and still more grateful for the ennobling influence which 
their intellectual power and moral force have left behind. 

The great men of a country are the precious, the inestimably precious, gift of a 
gracious Providence to its people; and the homage which we pay to the great— 
the love and the cherishing of their memories, as expressed in the rearing of 
stately monuments: in bestowing their names on our cities, our counties, and our 
children; in weaving their best thoughts into our daily discourse; the preservation 
from generation to generation of traditions and anecdotes concerning them — is 
not a mark of inferior or subservient spirit, nor does it proceed from any un- 
worthy motive of popular adulation. It is, on the contrary, the result of a pure 
sentiment, high, heroic, in harmony with a constitution of mental and spiritual 
life ordained of Heaven. What says the great poet? 

Lives of great men all remind us 
We can make onr lives sublime. 

It is a law woven into the nature of man, attested by history, by science, by liter- 
ature and art, and bv daily experience, that strength of mind and force of charac- 
ter are the supreme rulers of human affairs. In every age, in every society in 
which there are any stirrings of progressive life, there has been and there is a 

51 



802 LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

class of men, known by differing names, but who for convenience may be desig- 
nated as the Intellectual leaders — authors, poets, statesmen, jurists, publicists, 
soldiers, clergymen — whose ideas and principles, operating in the realms of 
thought and passion, find their embodiment in the institutions of society and the 
constitutions of government, and guide the peoples in their slow, uncertain, 
sometimes reluctant, progress toward morality, civilization, knowledge, and 
freedom. 

I do not wish to be understood as adopting the theory emitted by Carlyle, in 
his work on "Heroes and Hero Worship." that the great man of a generation is a 
being superior to his race, giving it what it had not and what could not be drawn 
from its joint estate. The idea that I seek to convey is that the truly great man 
is great because he collects, concentrates in himself, and impersonates the ideas, 
sentiments, and faculties of the mass of society: whose members, feeling the at- 
traction of the same gifts within themselves, also feel the heroic incitement to 
higher standards, make braver endeavors to reach those standards, and thus are 
lifted up to a higher plane. The intellectual preeminence of our leaders is. there- 
fore, at best, only a higher and more refined development of natural powers that 
are common to all: their utterances and labors are only the expression of truths 
of which all are profoundly, although mutely, conscious. Like the precious 
metals when refined and fashioned into forms of beauty or of utility in the arts, 
they are still neither richer nor nobler than when imbedded as ore in the moun- 
tain sides or scattered through the placer mines. . . . 

In these days we hear much of the materialism of the present age. of what is 
called plutocracy — the power of the wealthy class — the evils of what are called 
trusts, meaning combinations of capital to control the prices of the necessaries 
of life: of the fact that the Ignited States Senate is filled with millionaires: and of 
the alleged decay of the influence of virtue, intellect, and integrity in the direc- 
tion of our public affairs. I do not share in the opinion that plutocracy has this 
country in its grasp. It is true that, owing to the operation of certain great po- 
litical forces, a policy has for many years been fastened upon the national gov- 
ernment and upon some populous manufacturing and mining States, wliich sys- 
tematically favors the rich and powerful classes of society, with a view to bind 
them to the support of their measures and to secure that support to the Federal 
Government in its encroachments of power. It cannot be denied that the direct 
tendency of such an unholy alliance between political power and organized cap- 
ital, each working for its own aggrandizement, is to corrupt even a virtuous and 
patriotic people and to undermine the institutions of constitutional liberty. But 
I believe that agencies are now at work which, in the end. will break up this com- 
bination. That alliance is even now regarding with terror the labor movements 
and the signs of a general uprising against their rapacity, injustice, and debauch- 
ery of public virtue. You have heard of the millionaires in the Senate and of the 
great railroad magnates and the manufacturing capitalists: yet here. too. as much 
as in any country of the world, stand intellect and virtue above wealth, and no- 
bility of character is more and more making for itself a new sign: the realization 
of the masses that in high places of honor and trust a man's first duties are to 
his own final judges — the voices of right, of jiistice, of liberty, of posterity, of 
conscience, of God. 

Bethink you! Of all those who are known to wield the power of money, where 
is one who, because of that power, holds moral strength with our people? Among 
them all. where is one to whom the great heart of the American people turns 
with that affectionate reverence and deep confidence felt for many moneyless 
men whose honored names you could not hear me utter without bursts of ap- 
plause or without perceiving in the atmosphere the divine thrill of patriotism 
and of glory? Who is the one the sight of whose name upon the pages of your 
country's history shall cause your pulses to beat in quicker measure or make 
your eyes to kindle with a new light of wonder and of love? Never, I think, has 
there been a time when there was a more widespread, genuine, and heartfelt 
reverence for noble character and great intellect than now. There is. however, 
no distinguished consideration, no homage, no worship for the mere millionaire. 
Mark the contrast between your feeling toward him and that toward the truly 
great man of the day. Where is it that the wealth of Gould and Huntington, 
and even of the national treasury, all combined, could wield such power and win 
such triumph as that of a great statesman and orator, like I have heard in Geor- 
gia, when, addressing his fellow-citizens from great heights, he assumes in them 
intelligence and virtue akin to his own? Listen to the tumultuous shouts as 
they catch sight of his form and the tones of his voice! Mark how they crowd 



APPENDIX, NO. 2.'u 803 

around him — packed together to look, to hear, to learn, to love — eyes glistening, 
hearts palpitating, until conviction seizes them all as one social organism, trans- 
figured by the miglity enthusisam inspired by the magic of the orator's eloquence! 
All the power of office and of wealth must fall before this; and it is because the 
people, in their innermost consciousness, are ever open to the power of truth 
and goodness and the beautiful sovereignty of right. Beneath all the rugged- 
ness of their manners and the prosaic forms of their speech lie always the broad 
foundations of native insight, of manly instinct, of potential nobilities, which 
enable them on occasion to rise to a comprehension of, and sympathy with, the 
finest mental and moral achievements of statesmen and philosophers. 

Nowhere have these truths received a more striking illustration than in Geor- 
gia. Her great men were regarded by her people as their friends and daily com- 
panions. Her Governors, Jackson, Troup, Clarke, Crawford, Lumi)kin, McDon- 
ald, Howell Cobb, and Brown; her Senators, Forsyth. Berrien, Dawson, Colquitt, 
Toombs, and Stephens — were all men of natural but very high character, of sim- 
ple tastes, plain and true in speech, with clear perception of justice; with strong 
and unaffected interest in farms and crops and weathers and the common inci- 
dents of home and country life; with a uniform self-respect, combined with a nat- 
ural reverence for every other man. So that it was perfectly easy for them to 
associate with the plain and uneducated poor. Whenever they returned from 
their official services (either at the national capitol or in the gubernatorial chair 
or in the chambers of justice), not as exalted personages, but as unchanged citi- 
zens, to sit upon the plain wooden bench in the country church or on the split 
bottom chair before the village store, then not only old friends, but also honor, • 
came and sat beside them. 

It is no part of my purpose to pursue this train of thought any further. If 
what I have said has caused any one of these youthful, manly spirits to feel stim- 
iilated in his aspirations to join that order of superior beings who so live as to 
live again in other lives made Ijetter by their presence, in other lives made purer 
and nobler through a striving to follow after, I shall feel myself happy indeed 
and more than repaid for my efforts. 

[Mr. Lamar then touched upon the benefits of higher education, and showed 
how through the stimulus and example of her distinguished sons a literary senti- 
ment developed over the entire Commonwealth of Georgia, and the principles of 
her educated men became her public opinion. He then continued: ] 

Some fifty years ago, perhaps a few years previous to that time — within the 
memory of many a living man — a general and vigorous movement began in the 
Methodist Church of Georgia to provide for the collegiate training of its own 
youth. This movement arose in part from a conviction that so large a denomina- 
tion of Christians should be duly represented, according to the numbers of its 
membership and adherents, in high stations of special influence and usefulness, 
and that its sons should have the intellectual training necessary to fit them to 
take their places in the front rank in social life, in business enterprises, in the 
halls of justice and legislative chambers, in the arena of politics, and the field of 
literature. A still stronger motive originating the movement was an abiding 
faith that the truths of Christianity are in no way inconsistent with the most 
fearless investigation of scientific truth or the highest culture in letters, and that 
the practical principles of the Christian religion are broad enough and solid 
enough to strengthen the foundations of our Republic, as well as to clothe its 
stately superstructure with ever growing grace and beauty. 

The mightiest impulse, however, which aroused the Methodists of Georgia to 
the sacred duty of providing for the literary training of their youths under the 
direction and hallowing influence of their own Church, sprang from a dissatisfac- 
tion with the tendency and character of the modern intellectual culture — its lack 
of the element of religious belief and its separation from Christian faith. Along 
with the rapid advance of literature and scientific discoveries, scientific material- 
ism, irreverent speculations of philosophy, and the flippant skepticism of letters, 
were gaining ground. Unbelief was growing more imposing to men of culture, 
and their minds were becoming less imbued with homage to the solemn majesty 
of the eternal life which broods over the scenes of their present brief existence. 
Along with this dissatisfaction was a profound conviction of the worthlessness 
and moral inadequacy of all science, literature, art, historic knowledge, and in- 
tellectual culture, unaccompanied by faith in duty and immortality in God and 
Christ, as springs of motive and the inspiration of life. To meet this felt want of 
a place for education, where piety should inspire science, and culture should con- 
firm and strengthen piety, the Methodist Conference and membership founded 



804 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 

Emory College, and dedicated it as a temple to science and religion, with devout 
aspiration that the two thus united should lift each the other upward, and aid 
each other onward in blessing the people ot Georgia. 

[Mr. Lamar then entered upon the purposes, principles, and influences of 
Emory College. Illustrating these points, he said, among other things:] 

I heard the first commencement sermon preached to the students of Emory 
College. I distinctly recollect the personality of the preacher who delivered that 
sermon, Rev. Alexander Speer. He was a man of unusually large physique, with 
a face marked by heavy features that would have been coarse but for the lines of 
thought which indicated a high intelligence, and but for a fervent spirit which 
gave refinement to his expression. His text was: "Let us lay aside every weight, 
and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race 
that is set before us. looking unto Jesus." Of course I cannot reproduce the 
words of the sermon, but I wish that I could place before this assembly the suc- 
cession of vivid and ineffaceable impressions which it produced tipon the plastic 
mind of an unsophisticated youth. 

[The speaker then presented to the audience an eloquent outline of the sermon, 
leading up to a picture of the character of St. Paul, as derived from the sermon, 
the leading events in his life, his picturesque aspect on Mars Hill, and the illus- 
trations of the preacher in the discussion of his text drawn from the history of 
Paul. Among other things, he said: ] 

His next point (I hardly dare to refer to it) was the conversion of St. Paul, de- 
scribed by him as the greatest miracle ever encountered in human history, differ- 
ing from all other miracles — the spiritual miracle of the seizure and transforma- 
tion of a soul by the inbreaking of spiritual light, giving it a sight of Jesus Christ, 
risen and glorified, the pledge of resurrection and eternal life to the dead wlio 
died in Christ. 

He then addressed himself to his text, his evident purpose being to show how 
brilliant endowments of mind and high attainments can be made more glorious 
and exalted by infusing into the exercise of them a holy and spiritual motive. He 
told us that the hope of immortal life and the absorbing love of Christ could not 
blind the great apostle to the beauty and grandeur of the classics, and how he 
drew from his classic stores illustrations of Christian truth. He drew a graphic 
picture of the Olympic games: how the different competitors, for the purpose of 
strengthening their bodies and hardening their muscles, placed weiglits upon 
their limbs, which, when the occasion came for the final struggle, they threw 
aside. He then spoke of the race itself: how every nerve and muscle was strained 
to the utmost: how, with eager eye upon the goal, the contestants turned neither 
to the right nor to the left, never pausing to pluck a flower that grew by the path- 
way or to drink of the sparkling waters that gushed from the earth — pressing 
forward until the goal was reached and the victory was won: and then the shouts 
of victory, the rapture of triumph, the ecstacy of exultation, when the laurel 
wreath was placed upon the victor's brow. He analogized to this the Christian 
race, emphasizing the salient points — the sacrifices and self-abnegations incident 
to the consecration of a Christian's life: and finally the joy of the Christian's 
victory, in which with the rapture of triumph there need be mingled no agony of 
defeat to the others joined in the race: for that race fand the heavy muscles of 
his face quivered, and his voice vibrated with repressed emotion as he exclaimed), 
if run with patience, was one in which all could be victors and none be left be- 
hind, while the exulting strains would swell in height and depth and tenderness 
of tones, as if raised in union by an angelic choir. With the still greater differ- 
ence that, while the wreath of the Olympic victor was one of perishable leaves 
which would fade upon the brow, those whicli encircled the crown of the Christian 
would stamp upon his brow even in death the signet of immortality. 

At the same commencement, three days thereafter, the literary address was 
delivered by one who stood upon the rostrum the most perfect model of manly 
beauty my eyes ever beheld. 

[It has been said of Phidias that, at the cost of years of labor, he embodied into 
one statue the loftiest conception which had ever entered the Greek imagination 
— a statue of such majesty, such beauty, such benignity, that the Greeks felt, in 
its presence, a moral effect greater than that produced by any other work of art. 
The orator of that occasion, however, cotild without a conscious effort supply to 
the mental vision of his audience a living face and form of supreme beauty and 
nobleness which no sculptor's chisel had ever wrought into marble and no artist's 
brush had ever placed on canvas.] 
I see that your thought has outrun my utterance, and that I need not call that 



APPENDIX, NO. 2 J,. 805 

name which is a hoiiseliold word in Georgia wlierever genuine greatness has an 
admirer or the Christian religion a follower. 

[The orator then in glowing terms referred to Bishop George F. Pierce as one 
who. in his opinion, towered above the greatest of all great Georgians. He then 
gave from memory several passages of that great speech, which he said he had 
not read since his graduation in 1S45. After other references of the same charac- 
ter, among them a description and partial rehearsal of a debate in his college 
days in the Phi Gamma Society betvv'een two of the students, since become 
distinguished — all full of interest; holding his audience as if by magic, showing 
a memory phenomenal in its accuracy, and a descriptive power wonderful in 
Tividness, he continued:] 

One of the impressive incidents In the student life of the classes of 1844 and 
1845 was a sermon delivered by Bishop Joshua Soule. Bishop Soule was a ven- 
erable man, who, in appearance and bearing, was a photographic likeness of the 
Duke of Wellington, as I saw the portrait of the latter when in London — the same 
aquiline features, the same militant look and glance of the eye. He was a noted 
man of that day — noted for the sanctity of his life, for his great intellectual 
power, and for a strongly marked individuality. As he rose in the pulpit his 
very aspect produced a marked impression, an tinspeakable ascendency, upon 
his audience. All seemed to feel that they were in the presence of one who held 
communion with the skies and had come to shed upon those before him the in- 
fluences that he had gathered in that communion. His sermon was intensely 
metaphysical, and yet was delivered with such felicity of diction and earnestness 
of purpose that it was made intelligible and impressive to all. 

The text was: "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, 
whether it be of God." He addressed himself mainly to that part of the congre- 
gation who were going forth into life as men of education and culture, saying 
that there existed among that class doubts and uncertainty whether the doc- 
trine and person of Christ are from God. He said that day that his purpose was. 
under the prompting of the Holy Spirit, whose aid he invoked, to convince them 
that the system of salvation, as revealed by Christ and his inspired apostles, was 
neither unphilosophical nor unscientific nor irrational, and to refute the notion 
sometimes entertained in colleges and academic halls that unbelief is a mark of 
high intelligence or a condition which mtist obtain in a cultivated mind. He 
stated with some emphasis that it was no part of his purpose to depreciate the 
province of reason and human knowledge in the examination of the claims of 
Christianity. "It has from the very first." he declared, "submitted itself to the 
critical judgment of men, and challenges the investigations of history and science 
into its revelations and the evidences by which it is supported; into its principles, 
the authenticity of its records, the verity of its asserted miracles, and the divine 
commission of its founder." But he warned them that "it is not a mere system 
of philosophical truth, or theorj' of scientific mysteries and phenomena, inviting 
the investigation of the learned, but also a rule of conduct in this life and a guide 
to eternal life for mankind." 

He then laid rapidly before them a comprehensive conspectus of studies which 
they would have to master fully, in order to arrive at a definite conclusion; such 
as the authenticity of the Scriptures, the credibility and inspiration of the writers, 
their harmony, the consistency of their narratives with the researches of history, 
a critical knowledge of ancient documents, their age and purity, ancient history — 
Egyptian. Arabian, Persian, Chaldean, Hebrew, Grecian. Roman — geography, nat- 
ural history, geology, philology, criticism, the principles of interpretation, and 
politics. While he did not do\ibt the wisdom and duty of such investigations by 
those who had the opportunity and the capacity to conduct them — as the results, 
whenever they were faithfully conducted, had been to confirm the proofs and 
cause wonder at their strength — yet not less than a lifetime could be long 
enough to exhaust them all. But the vast mass of mankind — the poor, the ig- 
norant, the unlearned, immersed in labor, business, and the ordinary occupations 
of life — could know nothing of them. 

[The speaker then showed, quoting passage after passage from the sermon, 
how Bishop Soule proceeded to argue that after all the strongest and final evi- 
dence of the truth and divinity of revealed religion consisted, not in the re- 
searches of history or the explorations of science or the reasonings of philosophy, 
but in the personal experiences of the saints. The witness of the Spirit is the su- 
preme and unanswerable testimony — a testimony reaffirmed, in the prayers and 
in the hymns of throngs of pure and strong-minded men, by the unutterable joy 
which has lighted the dying eyes of multitudes as they have passed through pain 



806 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HLS LIFE, ETC. 

into the valley o£ the shadow. This is a testimony wliich it is vain to deny. The 
incredulity wliich questions it will question every fact in history, in science, in 
philosophy; for it is certified to us by evidences similar in nature to, but far more 
overwhelming in number than, those which are generally received, and which 
alone can be relied upon, to prove any accepted physical or mental or moral fact: 
the experience and knowledge of credible men.] 

Conscious of the imperfect manner in which I liave reported this remarkable 
exhibition of intellectual power, I shall refrain, and shall pursue these reminis- 
cences no further. I shall not attempt to give an idea that I have of a dramatic 
description by Bishop Andrew of the scene between Abraham and Isaac as they 
ascended the mountain of Moriah. I cannot undertake it now, exhausted as you 
must be by the heat of the day and the lengtli of my speech. 

[The speaker felt that lie had disappointed an expectation of his audience that 
he would deliver to them an address embracing the results of observation, re- 
flection, and study, gathered in the course of a protracted and not altogether un- 
eventful life; but he assured them that he had never, in all the vicissitudes of 
alternate failure and success in that life or in his contact with the leaders of men 
and of nations, found any richer treasures of thought or nobler incentives or pro- 
founder wisdom than he received at Emory from the founders, professors, and 
great preachers, some of which he had attempted to recall and lay before the 
audience on this commemorative occasion. Indeed, he owed this service to the 
wise of former years as a debt of filial gratitude: for those men were, from the 
day when he met them in the acme of their powers, in a sense friends and com- 
panions up to the present hour. In the darkest moments, when depressed by the 
dangers that threatened our defenseless people, he had been cheered and encour- 
aged by them; and their unfading countenances had looked down upon him from 
the portrait galleries of memory. They had animated him with renewed faith in 
the immutability of truth and the invincibility of right. The speaker then 
turned to reminiscences of a lighter and more amusing nature, and concluded 
with a peroration, beautiful, thrilling, and melting.] 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 

[SEK INDKX 01' NAMKS on )'AliES 811-820.] 



Address of the Democratic Committee 

of 1875 to the people of Mississippi; 

257, 258. 
Ames' Administration in Mississippi; 

230-240. 
Amnesty: Bills for,274; Debateon,1876, 

274, 275; Measures, 137-139. 
Appeal of the Mississippi Legislators to 

the people of the United States, 1875; 

238, 239. 
Army Appropriation Bills; 377-385. 

"Backbone" Patents, Stoppage of the; 

476, 477, 495. 499. 
Baltimore Convention of 1860; 82. 
Banditti Dispatch, Sheridan's; 207-210. 
Belknap Impeachment, The; 279-282. 
Bird Family, The; 22-24. 
Black Codes, The; 158, 159, 242, 260. 
Bland Bill, The; 324, 327, 332. 
Bloodv Shirt, The; 194, 285, 353, 418, 

444, 537. 
Bourbons, The; 394-396. 
Boutwell Committee, The; 312-317. 
Bureau of Labor, The; 498, 505. 

Cabinet, Cleveland's: Formation of, 

469-472; Member of. 472-527; Harmo- 
ny of, 551, 552. (See Secretary.) 
California, Admission of; 46-49. 
Canvass: Of 1872, 173; of 1874. 203, 204; 

of 1875, 229, 259; of 1876, 290; of 1S79. 

397, 408, 411; of 1880, 422; of ISSl, 431- 

447; of 1884, 452-460. 
Carpetbaggers, The; 147-151, 164-166, 

176, 177, 194, 259, 262, 264, 311, 312, 

327, 475. 
Carriages, Sale of Departmental; 475. 
Caucus, Chairman of the Democratic, in 

1875, 265. 
Centennial: Exposition Bill, 273, 276- 

279; the centennial year, 273; named 

for centennial orator, 247. 
Charleston Convention of 1860, The; 

82, S3. 
Childhood and Early Traits; 27-33. 
Church, Joins the; 557, 5.59, 564. 565. 
Cincinnati Convention of 1880, The; 

419. 
Civil Rights Bill, The; 184, 205, 212, 213. 
Civil Service, The; 473, 474, 480. 
Clinton Riot, The; 261. 
Color Line, The; 216, 240-247, 250, 251, 

254, 256, 258, 356, 438. 
Committees, Debate over Senate, in 

1881; 424-426. 



Compromise Measures of 1850. The; 46- 
49, 64, 87. 

Confederate: Service in the Army, 94- 
101, 115, 116; Appointed to Provision- 
al Congress, 94 ; Russian Mission, 103- 
110, 639; Diplomatic Dispatches, 106- 
110. 

Congress: Candidate for, in Georgia, 
58; Elected to Thirty-fifth, 63, 70-72; 
Elected to Thirty-sixth, 80; Appoint- 
ed to Confederate Provisional, 94; 
Elected to Forty-third, 172, 174, 178; 
Elected to Forty-fourth, 249. 

Congress: The Thirty-Jifth, 72; the For- 
ty-fourth, 265; the Forty-fifth, 321, 
322; the Senate of Forty-seventh, 422. 

Constitution of 1868, The Mississippi; 
161, 162, 164, 173. 

Constitutions, The Submission of; 68,72. 

Convention: At Forsyth, Ga.. 1855, 59; 
Congressional, at Holly Springs, 1857, 
70; Mississippi Constitutional, of 1865, 
156; Mississippi Constitutional, of 
1868, 161, 162; District Congressional, 
of 1875, 249, 251; State Democratic, of 
1875, 251-256; Taxpayers', of 1875, 231; 
State Democratic, of 1877. 318-321; 
National Democratic, at Cincinnati, 
in 1880, 419; State Democratic, of 1881, 
434. 

Copiah County, Disturbances in; 457- 
459. 

'■D.\TGiiTEi: of Mendoza, The," M. B. 
Lamar; 17. 

Davis Pension, Debate on. In 1879; 365- 
371. 

Death, Mr. Lamar's: 570; Condolences, 
571-573; Proceedings: In the Supreme 
Court, 571, 588-590; in the Senate, 571; 
in the House, 571 ; in the Interior De- 
partment, 571 : in Mississippi, 571, 572; 
at Emory College, 572; Obsequies. 573- 
583; "In Meraoriam," by the Supreme 
Court, 590. (See Remarks and Trib- 
utes on.) 

Degree: Doctor's by Harvard Univer- 
sity; 507. 

Democratic Party in Mississippi: Dis- 
banded in 1873. 176. 249; Reorganized 
in 1875, 249; condition of in 1879, 394- 
397. 

Disabilities, Political: Under, 172-174; 
Removed, 175. 

Dispatches to Confederate Government; 
106-110. 

(807) 



808 



LUCIUS Q. a LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 



Dueling, Mr. Lamar's Views on; 200 
391-393. 

EcuME.NicAL Conference of 1891, Mem- 
ber of; 565. 

Education; 28-36. 

Election Frauds Denounced; 443. 

Elections of 1878. Mr. Blaine's Resolu- 
tion to Investigate; 354-362. 

Electoral Commission. The; 293-301, 
601, 602. 

Enfranchisement of Negroes. Article 
on; 371. 

Epidemic: of 1878. 352, 353; of 1879,397. 

Exodus, The; 414-418. 

Falk.ner's Station, Political Rally at; 
250. 

Fencing, Skill in; 375, 376. 

Foote, Debate with, in 1851; 51-55. 

Force Bills, The; 205, 213-215. 

Forsyth (Ga.) Convention of 1855; 59. 

Fourteenth Amendment, The; 145; Re- 
jected, 160. 

Preedman's Bureau. The; 144, 152-154 
158. 356. 

Freedmen. The; 144. 152-154. 

Fugitive Slave Laws. The; 49, 53, 54, 87. 

Greenback Party, The; 394, 395; in 
Mississippi, 435, 440. 

Hamburg Massacre, The; 282-285. 

Illxess, Mr. Lamar's Last; 566-570. 

Impeachment of Ames, Davis, and Car- 
dozo. The; 263, 264. 

Inaugural of President Hayes; 305. 

Inauguration of President Cleveland; 
471. 

Independent Party, The, 319; in Missis- 
sippi, 435, 440. 

Indians, Lamar's Management of the; 
491-494, 503-505^ 

Instructions, Legislative, to the United 
States Senators; to Mr. Lamar in 
1S78, 330, 331; Davis' Letter on, 362- 
365; Question, 397-408. 

Interstate Commerce Commission, The; 
505. 

Interview: by H. Grady, in 1875, 224- 
228; the Cincinnati, of 1878, 353; by 
the Baltimore Sun, 1889, 550-552. 

Ka,>;sas: Admission of, 64-69, 72. 73; 

the Struggle for. 64-69, 72, 73. 
Keitt-Grow Fight, The: 74-76. 
Know-nothing Party in Georgia. The; 

58. 59, 
Kuklux Klan, The; 164, 165, 172, 443. 
Kuklux Prosecutions, The; 131, 164-166. 
Kukluxism Denounced; 443 

Labor, Bureau of; 498, 505. 
Lamar Family, The; 13, 14. 
Lands, Lamar's Management of the 
Public: 475-477, 495. 496, 500-503. 



Law Studies; 37. 

Legislature: Georgia, of 1853, 57, 58; of 
Mississippi, 1865, 157, 158; of Missis- 
sippi, 1866-67, 158, 159. 

Letter on R. E. Lee; 180, 656-658. 

Letter to the New York Herald; 216- 
217. 

Letter to President Hayes; 307-309. 

Letter to P. F. Liddell; 89, 633-639. 

Letters of Credence, to Russia; 639. 

Longstreet Family, The; 37-44, 120. 

Louisiana Affairs: 1871-72, 195-197- 
1873-74, 201-203; 1874-75, 205, 206; 
Commission of 1877, 306-309. 

Louisiana and Mississippi; 230. 

Loyal Leagues, The; 164-166, 241. 

Ma.mai. Labor School, The Georgia 
Conference; 28-32. 

Marriage: First, 37; Second, 507, 508. 

Matthews Resolutions of 1878 on Pay- 
ment of Government Bonds, The; 
324, 325, 327, 332. 

Message of 1878, The President's; 354. 

Methodist Churches: The Division of, 
on Slavery; 34, 35. 

Metropolitan Police in Mississippi, The- 
239. 

Mississippi and Louisiana; 230. 

Mississippi, Repudiation bv; 326, 327 
329. 

Mississippi River Commission Bill, 
The; 380-382,387. 

Missouri, Controversy over the Admis- 
sion of; 46, 47. 

Montgomery Convention of 1861; 94. 

NEAGi.ECase, The; 542, 543. 

Negroes: Article on Enfranchisement 
of, 371; Exodus of, 414-418. 

Negro Question, The; 371, 415, 416, 551. 

New Hampshire: Canvass of, in 1875; 
217-223, 225. 226. 

New Orleans Pacific Railroad. The 
Land Patents to; 476, 477, 495, 499. 

Newton County, Ga., In the Legislature 
from : 57. 58. 

Nicaraugua, Walker's Expedition to; 
69, 70. 

Nineteenth Mississippi Regiment. Lieu- 
tenant Colonel of; 62, 94-101. 

Offices, Lamar's Method in the Dis- 
tribution of; 473, 474, 480-490. 

Officers of Senate: Struggle over Ap- 
pointment of, in 1881; 426-430. 

Oklahoma, Boomers in; 494, 495. 

Opinions as Justice. Mr. Lamar's: 546- 
548, 589, .593, 594. 598. 600, 603-606. 

Ostracism in the South. Social; 149. 

Pacific Railroad: Chairman of House 

Committee. 349: Member of Senate 
Committee. 350. 
Pensions, Management of as Secretary; 
496, 497. 



IXDEX OF SUBJECTS. 



809 



Platforms, Democratic State; of 1875, 

255, 256; of 1877, 321. 
Police, Colored Companies of; 239. 
Presidential Election of 1876; 290-292. 
Professor, Elected; 84, 124-127. 

Railroads, Control of as Secretary; 

496. 
Readjusters, The Virginia: 423. 424. 
Reconstruction: In the South, 137-164; 

in Mississippi, 156-164. 
Religious Inclinations and Experience; 

56, 557-565. 
Remarks and Tributes on Mr. Lamar's 
Death: Secretary Noble's Order, 571; 
Dr. Candler's Discourse, 579-582; Mr. 
Vilas, 584; Senator Walthall, 584-586; 
Hon. J. R. Tucker, 587; Attorney-Gen- 
eral Olney, 588, 589; Chief Justice 
Fuller, 589, 590; Resolutions of the 
Illinois State Bar Association, 590; 
B. K. Bruce, 593, 594; George F. Hoar, 
594; Bishop Galloway, 594-596; John 
L. T. Sneed. 596-598; James M. Ar- 
nold, 598-600; Harry P. Judson, 600- 
602; Legislature of North Dakota, 602, 
603; Press Comments, 572. 573. 602- 
607. 
Reports: Battle of Williamsburg, 99, 
100; as Envoy to Russia. 106-110: on 
Pacific Railroad. 350: First as Secre- 
tary of the Interior, 490-499; Second 
as Secretary. 499; Third as Secretary, 
499-505. 
Representation: Southern, in Congress, 

3.55-361. 
Republicans: The Liberal Republican 
Movement, 1870-75, 155, 169-172; Na- 
tional Union Republicans in Missis- 
sippi, 163; Radical Republicans in 
Mississippi, 395-397, 435. 
Repudiation by Mississippi; 326, 327, 

329. 
Resignation: Seat in Thirty-sixth Con- 
gress, 89: Secretaryship. 526-528. 
Richmond, Convention of 1860 at; 82. 
Riots: At New Orleans. 1874. 202; at 
Vicksburg, 1874, 232-236: at Clinton, 
1875, 261. 262; at Yazoo City, 1875, 261; 
at Hamburg, S. C. 1876. 282; in Co- 
piah County in 1880, 458. 
Russia; The Mission to. as Confederate 
Envoy, 103-110. 639. 

••Scalawags." The; 147-151, 164-166. 

Secession: Movement for. 86-91; Pet- 
tus' Message on, 88: the Convention, 
89-92, 94; Mississippi Ordinance. 91; 
Lamar's Views on. 73. 74, 87. 88. 92, 
93, 429, 430. 465-468. 

Secretary: Appointed, 469-472: Course 
and Character of His Administration. 
472-489, 519, 520, 524. 527, 530-532. 536, 
581, 586, 587, 593, 594, 598, 603-606; Re- 
• ports to the President, 490-505. 

Sherman -Davis Imbroglio. The; 462- 
465. 



Senate: Mentioned for, 269-272; Elect- 
ed, 272; Seat in Doubt, 311-316; Seat- 
ed, 316-318; Reelected, 431-447. 

Shoestring District, The; 362. 

Silver; Remonetization of, 321, 323-330; 
Speech on, 1878, 327-329, 701; Speech 
on, 1879, 342-346; Views on, 342-348, 
441, 554, 556. 

Slavery, Contests over; 34, 35, 46-51. 

Solid South, The; 353, 421, 428-430, 457. 

"Solitude," Residence at; 60, 61, 63. 

Speaker of the House, Mentioned for; 
204. 

Speeches, Construction of, 200. 

Speeches: 

[m, mentioiieil f/, givcu. a, iibstraclcrl.] 

1. Popular, against Foote in 1851, o, 
51-54 

2. Georgia Legislature, 1854, w, 57. 

3. House: On Kansanand Nicaraguan 
Affairs, 1858; in. 72, 73; »/, 609-618. 

4. House; Vallandigham - Campbell 
Contested Election, 1858: /h, 76. 

5. Before the Mississippi Legislature, 

1858, III, IS. 79; (/. 618-620. 

6. House: Eulogy on Harris, 1859, m, 
79. 

7. House: Tariff, 1859, m, 79. 

8. Before the Mississippi Legislature, 

1859, III. 80. 

9. House: Election of Speaker, 1859, 
III. 81://, 621-624. 

10. House: Slavery and Slaveholders, 

1860, III, Sl-.n. 624-633. 

11. Charleston Convention, 1860, »i, 83. 

12. At Columbus, Miss., 1860, iii, 85. 

13. At Brandon, Miss., 1860, n, 87. 

14. In Richmond. Va., 1861, a, 95, 96. 

15. In England, 1863, a. 112, 113. 

16. In Atlanta, Ga., 1864, m, 113, 114; 
</. 639-656. 

17. Near Petersburg. Va., 1865, m, 115. 

18. At the University of Mississippi, 
1866, III 157, 158. ' 

19. At the University of Mississippi, 
1870, ;h,127. 

20. At Emory College, 1870, in. 33, 34, 
128, 559, 564. 

21. At the Agricultural Association 
of Carroll County, 1870, <i, 129, 130. 

22. At Holly Springs, Miss., 1871, ni, 
135. 

23. At Tupelo, Miss., 1872, m, 173. 

24. House: West Virginia Contested 
Election, 1873, in, 179. 

25. House: West Virginia Contested 
Election, 1874, in. 180. 

26. House: Eulogy on Charles Sum- 
ner, 1874. I/, 184-187: in. 181-183, 187- 
195, 199, 200, 201, 229, 272, 478, 480, 
534, 536, 554, 584, 588, 596-599, 602, 
604. 605. 

27. House: Louisiana Contested Elec- 
tion, or Misrule in the South. 1874, 
m. 195. 198-201. 209; ,j. 659-669. 

28. At Tupelo, Miss., 1874, in, 204. 



810 



LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: ms LIFE, ETC. 



Speeches: 

29. House: Civil Rights Bill, 1S75, m, 
212. 213. 

30. Popular: In New Hampshire, 1S75. 
a. 21S-223; /», 247. 

31. Marshfield Club, Boston. 1S75, a, 
224. 

32. Falkner's Station, Miss., 1S75, o, 
250. 251. 

33. Mississippi Democratic Conven- 
tion, 1875, (I, 252-256. 

34. At Coffeeville, Miss., 1S75, »//,259. 

35. Caucus of Democratic Members of 
the House, 1875, <;, 265-26S; in. 268, 
269. 

36. Before the Mississippi Legisla- 
ture, 1876, III. 272, 275. 

37. House; Centennial Appropriation, 
1876, III, 276-279; </, 670-674. 

38. House; Belknap Case, or Privi- 
lege of Members, 1876, in, 280-282; 
(!, 674-681. 

39. House: Hamburg Massacre, 1876. 
Ill, 282, 285; j/, 282-284. 

40. House: Personal Explanation, 

1876, III. 285. 

41. House: Policy of the Republican 
Party in the South, 1876, a, 285-289; 
(/, 682-697. 

42. House: Electoral Bill, 1877, n, 698, 
699, 294-297. 

43. House (undelivered): Electoral 
Count, 1877, in, 301; (/. 699-701. 

44. State Democratic Convention, 

1877, (I, 320, 321. 

45. Senate: Seating Senator Butler, 
of South Carolina, 1877, iii. 322. 

46. Senate: On Paying Government 
Bonds in Silver, 1878, in, 89, 90. 323, 
•330, 339-341,343 ; a, 327-330 : (/. 701-718. 

47. Senate: Refusing to Obey Legis- 
lative Instructions, 1878, u, 333, 334; 
in. 334-339. 

48. Senate: Special Term of Court at 
Scranton, Miss, 1878, in, 348. 

49. Senate: Aid to Texas Pacific Rail- 
road, 1878, ni. 349-352. 

50. Senate: Southern Election Frauds, 
and the Solid South. 1S78, '/. 356- 
362; //I, 359, 362. 

51. Whitworth College, 1879, in, 397. 

52. Popular: In Canvass of 1879: Hol- 
ly Springs. ///, 71; Coffeeville. ni. 
410; Vicksburg, in, 410; Oxford, in, 
411; (/, 297-299, 309, 310, 342-348, 398- 
408. 

53. Senate: Exodus of Negroes, 1880. 
in, 416-418; <;, 723-738. 

54. Popular: At Lafayette Springs, 
Miss.. 1880, m, 419. 

55. Cincinnati: At National Demo- 
cratic Convention, 1880. in. 419. 

56. Popular: At Holly Springs, Miss.. 
1880, in and a, 419-422. 

57. Senate: Placing Grant on the Re- 
tired Army List, 1881, m, 422; ;/, 738. 



Speeches: 

58. Senate: Alliance between Repub- 
licans and Virginia Readjusters in 
the Senate, the Solid South, 1881; 
III and u, 428-430; y, 739-748. 

59. At A. and M. College of Missis- 
sippi, 1881, ///,433. 

60. Popular: In Canvass of 1881: At 
DeKalb, ii, 436, 437; at Canton, in, 
437, 438; at Yazoo City, ni and a. 
438-442; at Hazlehurst. m, 443. 

61. Senate; Tariff, 1883, m, 449-452, 
605; (/. 748-773. 

62. Senate: National Aid to Educa- 
tion, 1884, /;(, 452; </, 774-779. 

63. Popular: At Holly Springs, Miss., 
1884,(7,452-460; m. 459, 460. 

64. Senate; Sherman - Davis Affair, 
1885, -/, 462-465. 

65. Charleston, S. C; Unveiling of 
Calhoun Monument. 1887, ;», 60. 61; 
III and II, 508-513; //, 779-801. 

66. New York City: Banquet of the 
Chamber of Commerce, 1887, )// and 
!l, 513-518. 

67. Lecture to Y. M. C. A., Washing- 
ton, 1890. in. 563- 

68. Emorv College, 1890, m, 552. 580, 
591 ; II, 801-806. 

69. Center College, Ky., 1891, in, 553, 
554, 567. 

Spoils System, The; 480-489. 

Squatter Sovereignty; 69. 

Supreme Court; Mentioned for Justice, 
518-523; Appointed, 523; Confirma- 
tion, 523-526; Press Comments, 535- 
537; Installed. 540; Estimate of, and 
Anecdotes, 548, 549. (See Opinions.) 

Symposium in the North American Re- 
view, 1879, on the Negro Question, 371. 

Tariff, Speech on, 1883, 449-452. 
Taxpayers' Convention of 1875; 231. 
Tributes to Mr. Lamar's Memory. (See 

Remarks, etc.) 
Troops: Withdrawal of in 1877: 304-309. 

University, A National; Suggestion of; 
498. 

VALLANDiiniA^r - Campbei.i. Contest, 

The; 76. 
Vice President, Mentioned for; 200. 205, 

257, 271, 537. 
Vicksburg Riot. The; 232-237. 
Virginia Readjusters, The; 423, 424. 

Warren County, Race Troubles in; 152, 

232-237. 
White Man's Club of Pascagoula. 243- 

244. 
White Man's Party, The; 245. 
Williamsburg. The Battle of: 98-101. 
Williamson Family. The; 21, 22. 
Wilniot Proviso. The: 47. 50, 54. 
Woman's Influence: 44. 

Yazoo City, Riot at. 1S75; 261. 
Yazoo County, Resolutions, 1875; 251. 



INDEX OF NAMES. 



[See Index of Sithjects on Pac^es 8ii;-,sio.] 



"AcADEiiic Memorials;" Waddell; 56, 

559. 
Acker, JoelM.; 159. 
Adams, Charles F.; 106, 148, 155, 170, 

226, 247. 
Adams, John; 405, 498, 556, 597. 
Adams, John Q.; 446. 
Advance, The Winona; 200, 532. 
Advertiser, The Boston; 1S9. 198, 218. 
Advertiser, The New York; 373. 
Advertiser-Republican, The Savannah; 

190. 
A. and M. College of Mississippi; 433. 
Alcorn, James I..; 71, 94, 121, 127, 135, 

136, 164. 176-178, 202, 231, 245, 269, 

312. 438. 598. 
Alfriend, F. H.; 413. 
Allen, John M.; 342, 571. 
Allen, Robert H.; 313, 473. 
Allen, Gov. William; 208. 
Allison, W. B.; 334, 341, 380. 
Alston. Col.; 21. 
Alston, R. A.; 225. 
Alta Californian, The: 247. 
"American Conflict, The:" 70. 
Ames, Adalbert; 149, 162. 163, 176-178. 

211, 230-241, 245, 250, 252, 253. 257, 

261-264, 271, 272. 312-314. 319, 438. 
Ames, Mrs. Blanche B.; 263. 
Ames, Fisher; 599. 
Anderson. Gen. R. H.; 98. 
Anderson. Mrs.; 578. 
Andrew, James O.; 35. 36. 562. 
Andrew, John A.: 189, 287. 
Anthony, H. B.; 183. 202. 317, 388. 426. 
Anthony. Samuel; 33.562. 
Appeal, The Memphis; 63, 189, 191, 269, 

271. 319, 320, 421, 422, 433, 445, 446, 

454-460, 532. 
Argus, The Albany; 268. 
Argus. The San Francisco; 537. 
Arnold, Benedict; 365, 464. 
Arnold, James M.; 598-600. 
Arnold. Matthew; 375. 
Arthur, Chester A.; 534, 539. 
Atkins, J. D. C; 503. 528. 
Autrey, James L.; 61. 62. 119. 
Avalanche, The Memphis; 433. 

Bacon, A. 0.;544, 577. 
Bailey, David J.; 58, 59. 
Bailey, James E.; 334, 365. 
Baltimore, Lord; 14. 
Banks. N. P.; 257,276. 
Banning. H. B.; 203. 
Barker, Walter; 552,553. 
Barksdale. E.; 85. ISO. 193. 248, 302, 321, 
364, 397. 411, 412, 432, 434, 442. 



Barksdale, William; 74, 75, 87. 94. 

Barnard, F. A. P.; 77, 78, 81, 93, 176, 332, 
333. 

Barnum, W. H.; 318. 

Barr, Hugh A.; 572. 

Barry, William S.; 83. 91. 92. 

Bartlett, C. L.; 574, 575, 578. 

Barton, Roger: 61. 

Bayard, T. F.; 210, 226, 270. 298, 313, 
314, 331, 339, 379, 388, 418, 452, 471, 
472, 527. 

Beaird, J. D.; 233. 

Beck, J. B.; 198. 263, 382, 388, 427. 

Belknap. W. W.; 207, 279, 281, 479. 

Bell, John; 407. 

Beman, ; 28, 30. 

"Bench and Bar of Georgia, The;" 16, 
20. 

Benjamin, J. P.; 90, 103-110, 200. 

Bennett, E. D.; 545. 

Benton, Thomas; 53, 250, 406. 

Berrien. John M.; 406. 

Bingham. J. A.; 175. 

Bird, Empson; 22. 

Bird, John G.; 23, 24. 

Bird, Sarah W.; 18, 21, 24. (See Sarah 
W. Lamar.) 

Bird, Susan W.; 22-24. (See Susan Wil- 
liamson.) 

Bird. Dr. Thompson; 18, 22, 23, 524. 

Black, Jere; 263. 465-468. 

Black, John C; 497. 

Black, W.C; 579. 

Blackburn, J. C. S.; 280. 

Blaine, J. G.; 68. 92, 93, 134, 188, 192, 
215, 227, 274-277. 280-282, 305, 306, 309, 
317, 318, 321, 324, 339, 350, 354-362, 
368-371, 377, 379, 382, 383, 386, 388, 
389. 414, 445, 452, 454, 523, 539, 593, 
599, 605. 

Blair, H. W.; 416. 

Blair, Montgomery; 303,371. 

Bland, R. P.; 324. 

Blatchford, Samuel; 534, 547, 549, 574, 
578. 

Bledsoe, A. T.; 46, 57. 175. 

Blount. James H., Jr.; 575. 

Bocock. T. S.; 75. 

Boutwell, G. S.; 183, 309, 312-314, 316- 
318 

Bradley, Joseph P.; 299. 545. 547-549. 

Brame, Thomas W.; 436, 437. 

Branham. Mrs. F. E. ; 42-45. 60, 419, 422. 
(See Miss F. E. Longstreet.) 

Branham, H. R.; 45, 60, 419. 

Branham, Longstreet; 106. 

Breckinridge. J. C: 84. 

Breckinridge, W. C. P.; -554. 

(fill) 



812 



LCVIUS Q. C. LAMAH: lllS LIFE, ETC. 



Brewer, David J.; 22, 545. 547, 574, 578. 

Bright, John; 107. 

Bristow, B. H.; 538. 

Britton, A. T.; 523-524. 

Brooke, Wall^er; 106. 

BrooliS, Phillips; 603, 604. 

Brooks, Preston; 277, 390. 

Brown, A. G.; 76, 87, 90, 94, 163, 164, 

179, 246. 248. 
Brown, Bedford; 406. 
Brown, B. G.; 169, 170. 
Brown, George F. ; 253. 
Brown, Henry B.; 547, 571, 574, 578. 
Brown, John F.; 571,572. 
Brown, John Y.; 554. 
Brown, Joseph A.; 127. 
Brown, Joseph E.; 113. 114, 427. 
Brown, R. M.; 173. 

Bruce, B. K.: 269, 331. 342, 411, 418. 593. 
Bryant, W.C; 208,209. 
Buchanan, J. W.; 443. 
Buchanan, James; 66, 67, 70, 72. 81, 407, 

466, 468, 477-479, 485. 
Bulletin, The San Francisco; 537. 
Burden, R. F.; 578. 
Burke, Edmund; 402, 403, 595, 599. 
Burnet, D. G.; 16. 
Burns, Dick; 392. 
Burr, Aaron; 365. 
Butler, B. F.; 84, 242, 263, 264, 274, 507, 

605. 
Butler, J. C; 200. 
Butler, M.C.; 322,441. 

Cable, E. C; 84. 

Calhoun, J. C; 47, 54, 200, 224, 250, 294, 

296, 391, 398, 402, 403, 405, 410, 411, 

445. 460, 466. 508-513, 521, 551, 595. 
"Calhoun Monument, Historv of;" 508, 

509. 
Cameron, Angus; 313, 314. 
Cameron, J. D.; 428. 
Campbell, Duncan G.; 22, 23. 
Campbell, John A.; 22. 25, 26, 84. 
Campbell, John W.; 23. 
Campbell, Lewis D.; 76. 
Campbell. Marv; 22.25. 
Canbv. E. R. S. ; 117. 
Candler, W. A.; 552. 578-583. 
Capers, William; 562. 
Capital. The Washington; 262, 334, 386. 
Cardozo, T. W.; 232-234, 258, 263. 
Carlisle. J. G.; 456. 
Carpenter, M. H.; 196, 202, 382-384, 546, 

593 
Carson, H. L.; 265,542. 
Carter, J. C; 518. 
Casey, J. F.; 195. 
Cass^ Lewis; 52. 407. 
Castelar, Emilio; 179. 
Catchings, T. C; 374. 375. 409. 410. 446. 

447. 473. 534. 584, 586, 587. 
Center College: 553. 554. 567. 
Central, The: 173. 
Chalmers. H. H.; 2.57, 350. 397. 
Chalmers, J. R.; 362. 411, 431. 



Chamberlain, D. H.; 305, 309, 441. 
Chamberlain, Joseph; 514, 518. 
Chamber of Commerce, The New York; 

513-518. 
Chandler, Zach.; 370, 371, 477, 478. 
Chappell, A. H.; 37, 45, 58. 
Chappell, Mrs. L. H.; 15, 37, 45. 
Cheesborough, Miss E. B.; 509. 
Christiancy, L P.: 339. 
Chronicle, The San Francisco; 268. 
Chronicle and Sentinel, The Augusta; 

247, 537. 
Claiborne, J. F. H.; 434. 
Clapp, J. W.; 71. 
Clarion, The Jackson: 87, 127, 134, 158, 

166, 172, 173, 180, 191, 193, 199, 205, 

217, 237, 242, 245, 246, 248, 254, 259- 

262, 269, 270, 274, 275, 277, 278, 302, 

320, 337, 338, 363, 378, 379, 397, 448, 

477 556 557 
Clarke, Charles; 83, 94, 156. 
Clarke, E. D.; 126, 135, 136, 177, 397, 434. 
Clarke, Elijah; 21. 
Clarke, John: 18, 22-24. 
Clarke, Nancy; 23. 
Clarke, Mrs. Nancy; 22. 
Clay, C. C; 90,121,122. 
Clar. Henrv; 52, 58, 341, 391, 406, 445, 

460, 466, 511, 521, 551, 595, 599. 
Clavton, Powell; 210. 
Cleveland, Grover; 242, 302, 454-457, 460. 

469-471, 473-476, 479, 480, 485-489, 492. 

499, 504, 506, 514, 541, 542, 545, 550- 

552, 518-522, 526-528, 530, 531, 541, 542, 

545, 550, 551, 554, 555, 568, 593, 596, 

600, 603-606. 
Cleveland, Mrs. F. F.: 521, 555. 
Cleveland, Miss Ruth; 555. 
Clvmer, Hiester; 279, 280. 
Cobb, Howell; 70,123. 
Cobb, Mrs. Howell; 102. 
Cobb, Thomas W.; 18, 19. 
Coburn, John; 213. 
Cockerill, J. A.; 373,374. 
Cockrell, F. M.; 326, 384, 385, 472. 
Coke, Richard; 379. 
Colfax, S.; 140. 

Collier, ; 521. 

Colquitt, A. H.; 225. 527. 

CoLston, R. E.; 98. 

Commercial. The Cincinnati: 190, 209, 

278. 
Commercial, The Vicksburg; 431. 
Commercial-Advertiser. The New York; 

190. 
Commercial-Appeal, The Memphis; 590. 
Commercial -Gazette, The Cincinnati; 

479, 480. 497, 535, 536. 
Commoner. The; 130. 
Conger. O. D.; 237, 284, 393, 464. 
Conkling, R.; 210. 339. 354. 359. 375. 379- 

391. 414. 425, 444, 445, 529, 605. 
Constitution, The Atlanta; 521, 606, 607. 
"Constitutional Convention" (Jame- 
son's): 68. 
Constitutionalist, The Augusta; 433. 529. 



INDEX OF NAMES. 



813 



"Constitutions" (Poore's); 68. 

Cooley, Tliomas M. ; 538. 

Cooper, Peter; 208. 

Courier, Tlie Buffalo; 536. 

Courier, The Cliicago; 268. 

Courier- Journal, The Louisville; 190, 

199, 278, 279, 388, 389, 444, 445, 497, 

498, 554, 606. 
Courtenay, W. A.; 509. 
Covode, John; 75. 
Cox, S. S.; 74-76, 138, 147, 150, 157, 162, 

197, 202, 265, 274, 281, 283, 292, 300, 

378 454. 
Craft! Henry; 168,544. 
Craige, of North Carolina; 74. 
Crawford, Joel ; 16-18. 
Crawford, N.B.; 443. 
Crawford, W. H.; 19. 
Creamer, W. R. ; 518. 
Crosby, Peter; 232-236. 
Curtis, George W.; 339, 518. 
Curtis, G. T.; 522.555. 
Cushing, Caleb; 77,84. 
Cushman, John F.; 71. 

Dahlgren, Mrs. and Admiral; 506. 
Dana, C. A.; 208. 

Davenport, ; 232. 233. 

Davis, A. K.; 258,263. 

Davis, Clementius; 14. 

Davis, David; 170, 226. 293, 299, 383, 423- 

425. 
Davis, H. G.; 381. 
Davis, H.W.; 90. 
Davis, Jefferson; 49-51, 62, 83, 85, 87, 90, 

94, 97, 103, 104. 109, 121. 122, 128, 131, 

182, 200, 274, 277, 362-371. 389. 397, 

407, 462-466, 471, 478, 484, 506, 583, 

584, 604. 
Davis, Joseph R.; 389. 
Davis, J, C. B.; 5S4, 
Davis, Reuben; 74, 87, 90, 94, 352. 
Dawes, H.L.; 175. 
Dean, Miss Hennie J.; 507, 508. (See 

Hennie J. Holt.) 
Dean, James; 507. 
Delane, John T. ; 374. 
Delano, Columbus; 478, 
Democrat, The Columbus; 191. 
Democrat, The New Orleans; 387-388, 

443. 
Democrat and Courier. The Natchez; 

431, 432. 
Denniston, J. 0.; 335. 
Dent, Louis; 164, 177, 178. 180, 245, 438. 
Depew, C. M.; 518. 
Derby, Lord ; 107, 
Dessau, Washington; 573, 574, 577. 
DeTrobriand, P. R.; 206, 207, 209, 230, 

239. 
Dickinson, Don M.; 526, 534. 
Dill, B. P.; 63. 
Disraeli, B.; 111,112,127. 
■'Division and Reunion;" 146, 169, 170. 
Dorsey, A. W.; 232.233. 
, Dougherty, Charles; 19. 



Douglas, S. A.; 64. 69, 82-84, 445. 

Dubuclet, ; 246. 

Durant, Thomas J,; 264. 

Durell. B. H.; 197. 

Duval's History of Mississippi; 163. 

Dwight, Theodore; 534. 

Eahle, William E. ; 584. 

Early, J. A.; 98. 

East Mississippian, The; 24G. 

Eaton,'John; 498. 

Eaton, W. W.; 339, 407, 408. 

Edmunds, G. P.; 210, 328, 339, 358, 359, 

365-368, 388, 461, 462, 472, 539. 
Eggleston, B. B.; 162, 163, 173. 
Eliot, Charles W.; 507. 
-Elliott's Debates;" 399. 
Ellis, E.John; 376. 

Emory, ; 133. 

Emorv, W. H.; 196, 206. 

Emory College; 32-36, 38, 128, 129, 552. 

554, 559, 564, 572, 578-581, 591. 
Endicott, W. C; 472. 
English, W. H.;419, 421. 
Enquirer, The Cincinnati; 281, 353, 359, 

360. 535. 
Enquirer, The Columbus; 114. 
Enquirer, The Richmond; 190. 268, 269. 
Eustis, J. B.; 447. 
Evans, James; 33. 
Evarts, W. M.; 148, 155, 208, 310. 
Everett Edward; 595. 
Ewing, Thomas; 481. 
Examiner, The Aberdeen: 390, 413, 417, 

418. 
Examiner, The San Prancisco; 285. 

Fairciiild, Charles S.; 514,545. 
Falkner, W. C; 251. 
Parmer's World, The; 15. 
Pearn, Walker; 108. 113. 
Peatherston, W. S.; 133, 264, 270, 313. 
"Federalist, The;" 400. 
Ferrv. O. S. ; 81. 
Ferrv, T. W,; 341. 
Field, D.D.; 341. 
Field, Stephen J.; 22, 542, 547. 
Fillmore, Millard; 52. 
Pitch, Martha; 22, 23. 
Fitch, Thomas; 22. 23. 
Fitzgerald, O. P.; 40, 128. 558. 582, 583. 
Flewellen, Dr.; 462, 569, 578, 579. 
Flournov, R. W,; 172-174, 310. 
Foote, H. S.; 49-55, 407. 
Fornev, John W.; 190. 
Forrest. N. B, ; 120. 
Foster, Charles; 220, 421, 429. 
Frantz, A.J,; 448. 
Freeman, Mrs. K. W. ; 525. 
Free Press, The Detroit; 256, 519, 606. 
Free Trade Club, of New York; 452. 
Frelinghuysen, F. T.; 210. 
French. 0. C; 174, 
Prve, W, P.; 221. 

Puller, Chief Justice W. M.; 543, 546, 
547, 571, 574, 576, 578, 589, 590. 



8U 



LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAJi: Ills LIFE, ETC. 



Fuller, Mrs.; 57G, 578. 
Fulton, Robert B. ; 572. 
Furlong, C. E.; 235. 

Gaxlatix, Albert; 556. 

Galloway, Bishop C. B.; 557-565, 594- 

596. 
Gardner, Ex-Gov. ; 224. 
Garfield, J. A.; 283, 284, 288, 294, 371, 

391, 419, 421, 422, 433, 435, 441, 446. 
Garland, A. H.; 285, 365, 367, 383, 472, 

475, 492, 520, 584, 587. 
George, J. Z.; 260, 261, 270, 290, 319, 412, 

426, 463, 518, 584. 
Georgia Conference Manual Labor 

School, The: 28-32. 
"Georgia Justice, The;" 18. 
Gholson, S. J.; 83. 
Gibson, William J.; 330. 
Giles, William B.; 405. 
Gilliam, Sarah; 21,22. 
Gladstone, W. E.; 346. 
Glenn, D. C; 161. 
Glenn, G. F.; 578. 

Glenn, Rev. ; 562. 

Globe, The Boston; 189, 603. 

Globe, The Chicago; 605. 

Globe, The Congressional: 67^ 79, 130. 

(See Congressional Record.) 
Globe - Democrat, The St. Lotiis; 262, 

462, 463, 466. 
Goar, F. M.; 178,304. 
Gordon, James; 332, 342. 
Gordon. J. B.; 210, 217, 223-225, 259, 

260. 304. 379, 381. 386. 460. 571, 574, 

575, 584. 
Gorham, G. C. : 426, 
Gorman. A. P.; 469. 
Gould, Jay; 354, 477. 
Govan Family, The ; 62. 
Grady, H. W.; 224-228, 521. 
Grant, U. S.; 92, 140, 146. 1.50, 152, 163, 

164, 169, 171, 172, 177-180, 182. 195. 

197, 198, 201, 202, 210-212, 219, 222. 

227, 228, 241, 261. 264, 270, 271, 279, 

281, 290, 298, 305, 311, 314, 315, 359, 

414, 421, 422, 429, 431, 441, 471. 
Gray, Horace; 547, 571. 
Greeley, H.;70, 169-172. 270, 290. 
"Green Bag, The;" 58. 
Griffin, Sarah; 22,25. 
Groesbeck, W. S.; 208. 
Grow. G. A.; 74, 75. 
Gu-stin, G. W.; 574. 575. 
Guttenberger, Prof.; 578. 579. 

Haiix, Michael; 206. 

Hale, Eugene; 221. 421, 429. 

Hamilton, Alexander- 346. 421, 528. 

Hamilton. W. T.; 210. 

Hammond. E. S.; 543. 

Hammond, J. H.; 89, 90. 

Hampden. John; 368. 

Hampton, Wade; 302, 309. 318. 371, 553. 

Hancock. W. S.; 98, 419-421. 

Hanna, E. P.; 475. 



Hardeman, Thomas; 57, 579. 

Hardy, William H.; 569. 

Harlan, John M.; 547, 554. 

Harley, Mrs.; 578. 

Harper, R. G.; 34, 56, 58, 61. 

Harper's Weekly; 330, 339-341. 

Harrington, W.; 92. 

Harris, G. E.; 257. 

Harris, I. G.; 367, 381, 463, 472. 

Harris, J. W. M . ; 122, 123. 

Harris, N. H.; 102, 115, 122, 123. 

Harris, T. L. ; 79. 

Harris, W. P.; 148-150. 161, 180. 236, 237, 

240, 270, 544. 
Harrison, Benjamin H.; 550. 
Harrison, Burton N.; 121. 471. 
Hartridge, J.; 284. 
Harvard University; 507. 
Harvey, Evalina; 15. 

Harvey,- ; 224. 

Hawkes, F. L.; 61. 

Hawkins, Mary; 38, 40. 

Hawley, J. R.; 213, 463, 464. 

Hayes. R. B.; 152, 291, 297-299, 302, 305- 

310, 316, 318-321, 324, 348, 353. 354. 377, 

378, 596, 605. 
Heiskell, Mrs. G. L.; 470, 483. (See Sa- 
rah A. Lamar.) 
Helper, Hinton R.; 80. 
Hendricks, T. A.; 226, 255, 290, 291, 371, 

454 455. 
Henry, Patrick; 143, 345, 411, 599. 
Henry, R. H.; 435,436. 
Herald, The Atlanta; 224-228. 
Herald, The Boston; 189, 272, 318, 520, 

593. 
Heraid, The luka; 245. 
Herald, The Kemper; 436, 437. 
Herald, The New York; 141. 199. 200. 

216, 217, 241, 242, 262, 271, 275. 279. 

364. 387, 452, 477, 478, 527, 528. 
Herald, The Omaha; 491. 
Herald, The Rochester: 604, 605. 
Herald. The Vicksburg; 245. 246. 273. 

277, 337, 391, 395. 410. 432, 4.33. 442. 
Herald, The Washington: 223. 
Herald, The Yazoo City; 442. 
Hewitt, A. S.: 290, 377, 518. 
Hill, A. P.; 98-101. 115. 
Hill, B. H.; 255, 274-276, 278. 304, 330, 

333, 335, 339. 341. 379, 424-426, 440. 

453, 455, 599. 
Hill, B. H., Jr.; 453. 
Hill, David B.; 518. 554. 5.55. 
Hill, James; 174. 
Hill, R. A.; 131-135, 174, 309. 572. 
Hill. W. B.; 58. 

"History of the Supreme Court." far- 
son; 555. 
Hoadly, George; 208. 
Hoar, E. R.; 183. 184. 
Hoar, G. F.; 193, 221. 222. 281, 287. 365- 

368. 371, 375, 388, 418. 421. 426, 427, 

439, 457-459, 529, 545, 594. 
Holden. W. W.; 139. 
Holt, Chief Justice; 554. 



ISDKX OF .\AM£S. 



815 



Holt, Mrs. Hennie J.; 507, 508. (See 

Mrs. Hennie D. Lamar.) 
Holt, William S.; 507, 508. 
Hood, J. B.; 109. 

Hooker, C. E.; 12G, 162, 44G, 447, 587. 
Hooker, Joseph E.; 98. 
Houston, Rev. Dr.; 559. 
Howard, O. 0.; 152. 
Howard, Thomas; 225. 
Howe, T. 0.; 143. 210. 341, 441. 
Howry, Charles B.; 572. 
Hudson, Edmund; 318. 
Hughes, Wesley ; 33. 
Humphreys, B. G.; 152, 157-159, 162, 163. 
Hunt, Ward; 534. 
Hunter, R. M. T.; 90, 131, 200, 405. 
Huntington, C. P.; 477. 
Hurlbut, S. A.; 215, 237. 
Hutchins, ; 373. 

Illustrated Ajiekicax, The; 194. 
"Impending Crisis," Helper's; 80. 
■ Index and Appeal, The Petersburg; 190. 
Ingalls, J. J.; 375, 464. 472. 523. 
Ingersoll, R. G.; 562. 
Inquirer, The Columbus (Ga.); 16. 
Inquirer, The Philadelphia; 209. 
Intelligencer, The Anderson; 199. 
Intelligencer, The Oxford; 84, 
Inter-Ocean, The Chicago; 490, 605, 606. 
Irby, John L. M. ; 553. 
Isom, T. D.; 419, 572. 
Item, The New Orleans: 481. 

Jacksox, Alexander M. ; 71. 

Jackson, Andrew; 372. 406, 480, 528, 
588. 

Jackson, James; 84, 127, 128, 348. 563. 

Jameson, John A.; 68. 

Jarratt, Devereux; 21. 

Jefferson, Thomas; 153. 154, 268, 341, 
345, 405, 411, 421, 463, 466. 498, 555, 556, 
588, 597. 

Jeffords, Hon. E.; 163. 

Jenkins, A. G.; 98. 

Johnson, Andrew; 123, 138-142. 144-146, 
152, 155, 156, 159, 162. 345. 445. 

Johnson, H. V.; 463. 

Johnson, Mark; 15. 

Johnston, Joseph E.; 97, 101. 115, 117, 
120. 

Johnston, Richard M.; 303. 

Johnston, William P.; 15, 16, 371-373. 

Jonas, S. A.; 390. 391, 413, 417, 418. 

Jones, George W. ; 407. 

Jones. John P.; 525. 

Journal. The Atlanta; 552. 

Journal, The Illinois State; 443, 444, 

Journal, The Jacksonville; 476. 

Journal. The Newark; 330. 

Journal, The Providence; 519. 

Journal, The Syracuse; 199. 

Journal. The Toledo; 498. 

Journal. The Wilmington; 199. 

"Judge Longstreet, Life of." Fitzger- 
ald; 40-42,128. 



Judson, Harry P.; 600-602. 
Junkin, W. F.; 509. 

"Kansas" (American Common- 
wealths); 67. 

Keitt, L. M.; 74, 75. 

Kellogg, W. P.; 196, 197, 201, 202, 206, 
207, 209, 220, 230, 246, 285, 291, 306, 
316, 317, 322, 427, 431, 441. 

Kelly, ; 131. 

Kelly, J. K.; 188,256. 

Kemper, Col. J. L.; 101. 

Kent, Chancellor; 400. 

Kernan, Francis; 339, 408. 

Kerr, M. C; 176, 265,456. 

Key, David M.; 310. 

Kev, J. S.; 25. 

Kimbrough, B. T.; 572. 

King, Benjamin; 330, 435, 439, 440, 443. 

King, C. T.; 578. 

King, J. F.; 520. 

Kirkwood, S. J.; 478. 

Knott, J. Proctor; 292, 293, 374, 377. 554. 

Kossuth, Louis; 369. 

Laoiilisox, Miss; 578. 

"Ladies' Repository, The;" 34, 562. 

Lamar, Albert R.; 453. 

Lamar, Ann; 14. 

Lamar, C. A. L. ; 113. 

Lamar, Mrs. C. A. L.; 576. 

Lamar, Fannie E. ; 45, 126. (See Fannie 

L. Mayes.) 
Lamar, Miss "Gussie" (See Sarah A. 

Lamar) . 
Lamar, Harmong; 32,34. 
Lamar. Mrs. Hennie D.; 508. 555. 568- 
570, 574, 576, 578, 594. (See Hennie 
J. Dean.) 
Lamar, Mr. and Mrs. H. J. ; 577. 
Lamar, J. J.; 15. 24. 
Lamar, Jefferson M.; 20. 24, 29, 34. 72, 

101, 102. 
Lamar, John (1) ; 14. 
Lamar, John (2) ; 14, 15. 
Lamar, John (3); 15. 
Lamar, John (4); 15-17, 27. 
Lamar, Dr. John; 14. 
Lamar, John B.; 102. 
Lamar, Mrs. Jennie L.; 576. (See Miss 

V. L. Lamar.) 
Lamar. Lavoisier L. ; 15, 303. 
Lamar, L. Q. C. (1) ; 15, 17-20, 24, 28, 37, 

38, 113, 430, 570. 
Lamar. L, Q. C. (3); 189, 312, 484, 53S, 

569, 576, 578. 
Lamar, Mrs. L. Q. C, Jr.; 538. 
Lamar, Mary; 102. 
Lamar, Miss Mary Ann. (See Mrs. M. A. 

Longstreet). 
Lamar. M, B.; 15-17,27,372, 
Lamar, Peter; 14. 
Lamar, Rebecca; 15. 
Lamar, Robert; 14. 

Lamar, Sarah A.; 205. (See Mrs. G. L. 
Heiskell.) 



816 



LUCirS Q. C. LAMAR: lIIS LIFE, ETC. 



Lamar, Sarah W.; 24, 28, 29, 31-34, 45, 

430. 562. (See Mrs. S. W. Troutman.) 
Lamar, Thomas (1); 14. 
Lamar, Thomas (2) ; 14. 
Lamar, Thomas (3); 14. 
Lamar. Thomas R.; 15. 
Lamar, T. B.; 20, 24, 29, 34, 71, 72, 114. 
Lamar, Miss V. L.; 205, 521. (See Mrs. 

Jennie L. Lamar.) 
Lamar, Mrs. V. L.; 34. 37, 41-45. 59. 76, 

97, 106, 110, 124, 128, 172, 188, 191, 204, 

211, 228, 304, 312, 333, 341, 342, 364, 

414, 419, 420, 422, 449. 460-462. 559, 

560, 598. (See MissV. L. Longstreet.) 
Lamar, Zach.; 15. 
Lane, G. W.; 28,34. 
Langestraat, D. S. ; 37. 
Lanman. Charles; 524. 
"Laughlin's Mill's Political Economy;" 

324. 
Law, William; 19. 
Lawton, A. R. ; 575. 
Lea. Luke; 232. 233. 
Leader, The Cleveland; 481, 536. 
Ledger, The Brookhaven; 435. 
Ledger, The Philadelphia; 209, 539, 605. 
Lee. O. S.; 234. 
Lee, R. E.; 117, 130, 182, 200, 463, 479, 

601, 606. 
Legare, H. S.; 19. 
Lester. German; 71. 
Liddell, P. F.; 89. 
Lincoln, A.; 69, 86, 88, 109, 122, 137-139, 

532, 606. 
Lindsay, W. S.; 112. 
Logan, J. A.; 202, 210, 422. 426, 427. 
Longstreet, A. B.; 33, 35-41, 45. 58. 59. 

63. 76, 81, 85, 86, 89, 128, 561, 582, 598. 
Longstreet, Miss F. E. (See Mrs. P. E. 

Branham). 
Longstreet, Mrs. F. E.; 40-42, 76, 124, 

126,559. (See Miss F. E. Parke.) 
Longstreet. James; 97, 98, 101. 
Longstreet, J. C; 20, 24. 
X^ongstreet, Mrs. M. A.; 20, 24, 101, 123. 

(See Mrs. M. A. Ross.) 
Longstreet, Miss V. L.; 37. (See Mrs. 

V. L. Lamar.) 
Longstreet. William; 38. 
Lovejoy, Owen; 75. 
Lowell, — -; 197. 
Lowry, Robert; 135, 148, 164, 176, 270, 

434, 436, 437, 439, 455. 
Lumpkin. J. H.; 19. 
Lynch, J. R.; 362. 

McCakdle, W. H.: 148, 176, 411, 412. 

McClellan, G. B.; 97. 

McCormick, A. P. ; 554. 

McCrarv, George W.; 310. 

McDonald, J. E.; 298. 313, 314. 

McDowell, Irvin; 162. 

McDuffie. George; 599. 

McRncrv, John; 196, 197, 201, 202, 205, 

246, 291, 298. 
McFarland, Noah C; 500, 501. 



McGehee, F. C. ; 556-557. 

McGehee, Louisa; 15. 

Mcintosh, J. R.; 442. 

McKenney, James H. ; 540, 584. 

McKenney, R. L. ; 578. 

McMillan, S. J. R.; 313, 314, 418. 

McPherson, J. R.; 408. 

McQueen, John; 75. 

McRae, J. J.; 86, 94. 

McTyeire, H. N.; 35. 

Madison, James; 345, 400, 405, 411, 498. 

"Madison Papers, The;" 399, 405. 

Mahone. William; 423-427. 457. 

Mail, The Canton; 191, 246. 

Mail and Express, The New York; 519, 

520, 554. 
Mangum, Willie P.; 406. 
Manning. Daniel; 471. 
Manning, Van H.; 133, 420. 
Marcy, William L.; 480. 
Marshall, John; 446, 556. 
Marshall, S. S.; 221. 
Marshall. Thomas; 529. 
Marshfield Club, The; 223, 224. 
Martin, W. G.; 100. 
Martin, W. T.; 157. 
Mason. James M.; 90, 103. 105-107. 109. 
Mathews, Joseph; 83. 
Matthews. Stanley; 324. 325. 327, 331, 

332, 350, 407, 431, 440, 547. 
Maury, William A.; 545. 
Ma.xey, Samuel B.; 365, 379. 
Mayes, Edward; 312, 460, 461, 540, 545, 

563. 
Mayes. Mrs. Fannie L. ; 419, 480. (See 

Fannie E. Lamar.) 
Mayo, A. D. ; 458. 

Mead, ; 28. 

Means. Alexander; 28, 34. 
"Memoriam. In," by Supreme Court; 

473. 590. 
Mercury, The Meridian; 191, 273. 
"Methodism, The History of," Mc- 
Tyeire; 35. 
Miller, A. L.; 574, 575. 
Miller, H. V. M.; 225. 
Miller, Hugh R.; 46. 
Miller, Samuel F.; 547. 
Mills, Roger Q.; 294. 
Mississippian, The Weekly; 70. 
"Mississippi, History of," Duval; 163. 
" Mississippi, History of." Lowry and 

McCardle: 148, 176. 
Mississippi State Gazette, The; 78. 79. 
Mitchell, JohnH.: 587. 
Montgomery, Mary; 22. 
Montgomery. M. A.; 572. 
Montgomery. William; 75. 
Montgomery, W. B.; 415, 416. 
Moreland, Mary A.; 15. 

Morgan. ; 578. 

Morgan, J. B.; 455. 
Morgan. John T.; 334. 379. 463. 
Morney. the Count de; 108. 
Morphis, J. L.; 231. 
Morrill, J. S.; 210. 



IKDEX OF NAMES. 



817 



Morrill, Lot M.; 183,339. 

Morris, Joshua S.; 23S. 

Morton, O. P.; 149, 155, 182, 210, 252, 

263, 287, 294, 298, 311, 312, 316, 320, 

321 339. 
Mott.'c. H.; 61, 62, 83, 94, 96, 97, 99, 100. 

119. 
Muldrow, H. L.; 528, 533. 
Mullins, John; 96, 100. 
Murray, P. B.; 342. 
Musgrove, Henry; 174, 231. 

Myers, ; 28. 

Myers, Jasper; 162. 

Napoleox, Louis; 108, 109, 374. 

Nation, The; 274, 339. 

National Republic, The; 213. 

National Review, The Nashville; 537. 

National View, The Washington; 520. 

Neagle, David; 542,543. 

Nelms, Frank; 392. 

New, JephthahD.; 273. 

Newman, Cardinal; 557, 582. 

Newman, William T.; 549, 550. 

New Mississippian, The; 536. 

News, The Chicago; 536, 537. 

News, The Emporia: 531, 532. 

News, The New York; 603, 604. 

News, The West Point; 422. 

News and Courier. The Charleston; 511. 

Niblack, W. E.; 178. 

Nicholls, P. T.; 306, 316, 317. 

Niles, Henry C; 572. 

Nineteenth Mississippi Regiment, The; 

63, 94-101. 
Nisbet, Eugenius A.; 127, 128. 
Nisbet, James; 127, 128. 
Noble, John W.; 571. 
Nordhoff, Charles; 241-243. 
.Morth American, The; 76, 338. 
North American Review, The; 193, 288, 

371. 

Gates, William C. ; 518, 519. 
O'Brien, William J.; 237. 
Olney. Richard; 588, 589. 
Ord, E. O. C; 152, 160, 162. 
Osterhaus, P. J.; 157. 
Owens, A. T.; 572. 

Packard, S. B.; 195-197. 305-307, 309. 

316. 
Packer, A. G.; 234, 235,253. 
Paine, E. T.; 225. 
Paine, Henry W.; 224. 
Palmerston, Lord; 107. 
Pardee, Don A.; 543. 544. 
Park, R. E.; 555, 569. 
Parke, Emsley; 40. 
Parke. Miss F. E.; 40. (See Mrs. F. E. 

Longstreet.) 
Parker. Dr. ; 570. 
Parker, F. W.; 218. 

Parks, : 562. 

Patterson, R. W.; 574. 575. 
Paulding, Commodore; 70. 

52 



Pearson, Sam; 577. 

Pegues, Alexander; 561. 

Pendleton, George H.; 208, 408, 416, 424- 

426, 440. 
Penn, D. B.; 202,246. 
Pennypacker, G.: 485. 488. 
Pepper, Dr. William; 568, 569. 
Percy, W. A.; 331. 

Perrin, ; 241. 

Pettus, John J.; 85-88. 

Peyton, E. G.; 175. 

Phelps, Sheffield; 512. 

Phelps, W. W.; 220, 335. 

Phi Gamma Society, The; 33. 

Phillips, Wendell; 371. 

Piatt, Donn; 108, 386, 467, 468, 479, 480, 

513. 
Picayune, The New Orleans; 74, 75, 246, 

271 359. 
Pickett, George E.; 98, 99. 
Pierce, Franklin; 370. 
Pierce, George; 562, 579. 
Pierce, H. L.; 286. 
Pierce, J. L.; 132-135, 174, 392. 
Pierce, Lovick; 33. 
Pierrepont, Edwards; 261, 262. 
Pike. Albert; 373. 
Pilot. The Jackson; 174, 217, 234, 252, 

256, 272. 
Pinchback, P. B. S.; 196-198, 
Pinckney, C. C; 509. 
Pinkney, William; 599. 

Pinson, ; 121. 

Plant, R. H.; 577. 

Pococke, Mr. and Mrs. ; 106. 

Poland. L. P.; 222,227. 

Poore, Ben P.; 68. 

Porter, Fitz John; 441. 

Post, The Boston; 256, 289. 360. 

Post, The New York; 140. 

Post, The New York Evening; 268, 390, 

451, 452, 536, 604. 
Post, The Sacramento; 268. 
Post. The Washington; 360, 373, 478, 

528. 
Potter, C. N.; 220. 
Potter, J. F.; 74,75. 
Powers, R. C; 174, 175. 
Powers, Mr. and Mrs. V.; 576. 
Prentiss, S. S.; 599. 
Press, The Hernando; 200. 
Press, The New York ; 534. 
Press, The Philadelphia; 190, 475, 476. 
Preston, Mrs. M. J.; 509. 
Price, Mayor; 578. 
Pruden, 0. L.; 471. 
Prvor. Roger A.; 98-101, 264, 544. 
Pugh. George E.; 407. 
Pugh, J. L.; 471,584. 

QriTMAN, John A.; 50, 51, 74. 

Randall, Samuel J.; 193. 211, 214, 265, 

274. 275. 300. 456. 
Randle, Aurelia; 15. 
Randolph, Hannah; 38. 
Randolph, T. F.; 326. 3:19. 408. 



818 



LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAE: MIS LIFE, ETC. 



Ransom, M. W.; 334, 360, 472. 

Raum, G. B.; 457. 

Record, The Congressional; 203, 237, 

241, 279, 285, 325, 367, 377, 378, 386, 

387, 418, 424. 
Record, The Rebellion; 101, 463, 464. 
Redpath. James; 309, 314, 31.5. 
Reemelin, Charles, 130, 131, 170-175, 182, 

258, 336, 480. 

Reeves, ; 578. 

Register, The Mobile; 433. 
Reporter, The Holly Springs; 246. 
Republic, The St. Louis; 275, 303, 462, 

600. 
Republican, The Brandon; 431, 448. 
Republican, The Springfield; 190, 223. 
Republican, The Woodville; 247. 
Revels, H. R.; 311,312. 
Review of Reviews, The; 600-603. 
Reynolds, A. E.; 121. 
Reynolds, R. 0.; 313.314. 
Richardson, Miss; 578. 
Richelieu, Cardinal; 13. 
Riddleberger, H. H.; 426-428, 472, 525, 

534, 535. 
Riley, Bennett; 48. 

■■Rise and Fall of the Confederate Gov- 
ernment," Davis; 87. 
Roane, William A.; 572. 
Robbins. William M.; 280. 

Roberts. -; 131. 

Rocky Mountain, The; 269. 

Rogers, W. R. ; 577. 

Ross, John B.; 20. 

Ross, Mrs. M. A.; 199, 419, 449. 461, 470, 

524-526, 567-569. (See Miss Mary Ann 

Lamar.) 

Round, ; 28. 

Rozell, B. S.; 73. 
Rusk, Thomas J.; 16. 

S. A. E. Fraternity, The; 576, 578. 

Saltonstall, Leverett; 224. 

Sargent. A. A. ; 287. 

Saulsbury, Eli; 210, 334, 382, 385. 426. 

Sawyer, Philetus; 535. 

Sayler, Milton; 222. 

Schurz, Carl; 148, 155, 170, 209, 210, 226, 

310, 488, 489. 
Seashore Gazette, The; 389. 
Sentinel, The Augusta; S8. 
Sentinel, The Grenada; 410, 432. 
Sentinel, The Milwaukee; 247. 
Sentinel, The Yazoo City: 438-442. 
Seward, William H.; 77. 89. 109. 
Seymour, Horatio; 391. 
Sharkey, William L.; 121, 156. 

Sheats, ; 241. 

Shellabarger, Samuel; 421. 

Shepard, Elliott F.; 554. 

Sheridan, G. A.; 198. 

Sheridan, P. H.; 207-210, 212, 230. 239, 

263. 
Sherman. .John; 80, 81, 183, 210. 294, 310, 

324, ?,:A. 464, 465, 471, 514, 523. 
Sherman, W. T.; 92, 117, 211, 462-465. 



Shields, James; 365, 44L 

Shorter, J. A.; 447. 

Shuey, Theo. F.; 367. 

Simmons, Rev. J. C; 29, 552, 561, 562. 

Simms, W. H.; 336. 

Simpson, Bishop; 429. 

Simrall, H. F.; 160, 163. 

Singleton, O. R.; 87, 94, 256, 366-368, 

411, 412. 
Skelton, Newt; 392. 
Slidell, John; 90, 103, 105, 109. 
Smalls, Robert; 282,283. 
Smith, C. P.; 55, 79. 
Smith, C. S.; 514,518. 
Smith, Rev. G. G.; 25. 
Smith, Hoke; 569, 573. 
Smith, James M.; 59. 
Smith, R. H.; 577. 
Sneed, John L. T.; 596-598. 
■•Solitude;" 60, 61, 63. 
Solomon, W. G.; 578. 
South, The Holly Springs; 269, 421.. 
Sparks, William H.; 24. 
Sparks, W. J.; 475, 476. 
Speer, Emory; 575, 578. 
Speer, Robert M. ; 237. 
Spencer, G. E.; 317. 
Spight, Thomas; 250, 251. 
Spofford, W. M.; 317,322. 
Spring, L. W. ; 67. 
Spurgeon, Rev. C. H.; 110, 111. 
Stahlnecker, W. G.; 513. 
Stakely, C. A.; 509. 
Standard, The Bridgeport ; 603. 
Stanford, Leland; 525, 535. 

Stanton, ; 79. 

Star, The Kansas City; 474, 475. 

Star, The New York; 386, 537. 

Star, The Pascagoula: 245. 

Star, The Washington ; 450. 

Stark, Judge James H.; 58. 

Stearns, W. F.; 63. 

Stephens, A. H.; 114, 179, 182, 371, 463. 

Stevens, Thad.; 141, 143-145, 155. 

Stevenson, Adlai E.; 554, 584. 

Stevenson, Ex-Gov. 421. 

Stewart, William M.; 193, 525, 533, 535, 

540, 584, 587. 
Stone, John M.; 249, 263, 314, 315, 432, 

434. 
Stoneman, George; 150. 
Storm, John B.: 215. 
Storv, Joseph: 19, 400. 
Stovall, P. A.; 512. 
Strange, Robert; 406. 
Street, H. M.; 331. 
Strong, Christopher B.; 37. 
St. Thomas' Hall; 61, 62, 119. 
Sullivan, William V.; 572. 
Summers, Willie; 441. 
Sumner, Charles; 141, 183-194, 272, 277, 

34.S, 390, 478, 480, 584, 594, 596, 597, 

599, 604. 605. 
Sun. The Baltimore; 550-552. 
Sun. The Denver; 606. 
Sun, The New York; 387, 479, 490. 



l.\DK.\ OF SAMK8. 



819 



Supreme Court, Carson's History of 

the-; 265, 541, 542, 555. 
Sykes, B. O.; 133. 

Tait, CiiAULES; 22. 

Taylor, Gen. Richard; 117, 156. 

Taylor, Zacliary; 48. 

Telegram, The New York; 534. 

Telegraph, The London: 374. 

Telegraph, The Macon; 123, 269, 311, 
569-571. 573-583. 

Telegraph, The Philadelphia; 605. 

Teller, H. M.; 476, 477, 499-501. 

Terrell, J. M.; 574, 575. 

Terrv, David S. ; 542. 

Texas Pacific Railway; 303, 349, 350, 
354, 372. 

Thackeray, W. M.; 110, 111. 

Thomas, Gen. G. H.; 109. 

Thomas, Rev. J. E.; 590. 

Thompson, Rev. E.; 34, 562. 

Thompson, Bishop E.; 34, 562. 

Thompson, Jacoh; 56, 57, 76, 83, 477-480. 

Thompson, R. W.; 310. 

"Three Decades o£ Federal Legisla- 
tion," Cox; 74, 75, 138. 147, 150, 157, 
162, 197, 202, 292, 300, 378. 

Thurman, A. G.; 183, 191, 200. 209, 210, 
226, 255, 270, 271, 298, 306. 322, 354-356, 
359, 365, 368, 373, 388, 407, 441. 

Thweat, Mrs. Elizabeth; 22. 

Thweat, Peterson; 22. 

Tilden, S. J.; 290, 291, 297-299, 301-303, 
315, 440. 

Times, The Chicago; 275-277. 

Times, The Greenville; 247. 

Times, The London; 374. 

Times, The New Orleans; 191, 338, 339, 
417, 437, 438. 

Times, The New York; 209, 387, 471, 

472, 473. 482, 496. 

Times, The Philadelphia; 223, 262, 268. 
Times, The Vicksburg; 232. 
Times-Democrat, The New Orleans; 

473, 474, 607. 
Tinsley, T. D.; 577. 
Tipton, T.W.; 210. 
Toombs, Robert; 90, 131, 182. 
Townsend, M. L; 276, 277. 
Tracev, Edward, D. ; 59. 
Transcript, The Boston; 189, 603. 
Tremaine, Lyman; 188, 189. 
Trescott, W. H.; 288. 

Tribune, The Chicago; 242, 385, 386. 
Tribune, The Minneapolis; 606. 
Tribune, The New York; 134, 135. 169, 

199, 237, 256, 257, 262, 279, 353, 354, 

387, 450-452, 478, 479, 497, 523, 604. 
Troutman, H. B.; 24-26. 
Troutman, Mrs. S. W.; 24-26, 101, 123, 

411, 582. (See Sarah W. Bird.) 
Trumbull, Lyman; 170. 
Tucker, Beverly; 106. 
Tucker, J. R. ; 584, 587. 
"Twenty Years in Congress," Blaine; 

68, 92, 93, 192, 305, 309, 324, 593. 



U.MO.N, TiiK Nasitvili.k; 530. 

Union, The Washington; 303. 

University of Mississippi; 28, 38, 45, 63, 
76-78, 84, 94, 124, 126, 127, 318, 352, 
534, 554, 555, 559, 560, 590, 598. 

Urquhart, John; 14. 

VALi..\M)Uiii.vM, C. L. ; 76. 

Vance, Z. B.; 385, 416,463. 

VanDorn, Earl; 94. 

VanEaton, H. S.; 511, 512. 

VanWyck, Charles H.; 477. 

"Verse Memorials," M. B. Lamar; 16, 17. 

Vest, George G.; 463,520. 

Vickers, George; 175. 

Vigers, ; 206, 207. 

Vilas, W. F.; 472, 521, 522, 526, 534, 538, 

.539, 541, 545, 546, 584. 
Virgin, W. H.; 569, 570, 575, 576, 577. 
Voorhees, D. W.; 178, 325, 382, 388, 416, 

417, 424, 440. 

Waddei.i., John N.; 56, 121, 559, 561. 
Waite, M. R.; 298, 538, 540, 541. 547. 
Walker, Robert J.; 66, 70, 72, 517. 
Walker, William; 69, 70, 72. 
Wallace, William A.; 317, 318. 367. 
Walthall, E. C; 119. 120, 126, 127, 204, 

260, 263, 313, 323, 336, 365, 379, 386, 

387, 398, 411, 412, 453, 469, 472, 473, 

520, 521, 525, 533, 534, 538, 553, 561, 

566, 571, 576, 578. 584-586. 
Walthall, Mrs. Mary L.; 538. 
Walton. Thomas; 71, 133. 
Warmouth, H. C; 195-197, 335. 
Warner, Hiram; 19. 
Warren, Lift; 37. 
Washburne, C. C; 75, 115. 116. 
Washburne, E. B.; 75, 115, 116. 
Washington, George; 130, 143, 341, 346, 

368, 405, 411, 483, 498, 528, 532. 
Washington. H. W.; 544. 
Watson, J. W. C; 269, 419, 420. 
Webster, Daniel; 52. 54, 200, 224, 277, 

391, 406, 445, 460, 466, 467, 511, 512, 

599 
Wells, G.W.; 132,133,257. 
West, A.M.; 121. 
West, J. R.; 210. 
West, William A.; 92. 465-468. 
Wharton, T. J.; 179. 180. 
Wheeler, Erasmus; 458. 
Wheeler, W. A.; 221. 291. 299, 333, 416. 
Whig, The Richmond; 537. 
Whig, The Vicksburg; 80, 84, 89. 
Whistler, John; 131-133. 
Whitfield. A. H.; 572. 
Whitie. Lucius; 34. 
Whitney, W. C; 472. 
Whitworth College ; 397. 
Wiggins, Mrs. Susan R.; 20. 21. 56. 
Wightman, J. T.; 40, 41,564. 
Wilcox, C. M.; 98, 99,101. 
Williams, Charles G.; 237. 
Williams. George H.; 196, 209. 262, 263. 
Williamson, Charles: 22. 
Williamson, Micajah (1); 21, 22. 



/f( 



i\^'' 



820 



LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR: HIS LIFE, ETC. 



Williamson, Micajah (2) ; 22. 

Williamson, Peter; 22. 

Williamson, Susan; 21. (See Susan W. 

Bird.) 
Williamson, Thomas J.; 22. 
Williamson, William; 22. 
Willson, J. 0.; 509. 
Wilmot, David; 47. 

Wilson, ; 443. 

Wilson, Edgar S.: 577. 
Wilson, Henry; 122.256. 
Wilson, Jeff.; 310. 
Wilson, Jeremiah M.; 584. 
Wilson, Woodrow; 146, 169, 170. 
Wiltz, J. A.; 206,207. 
Winchester, Boyd; 490. 
Windom, William; 416-418. 
Wirt, William; 599. 
Wise, Henry A.; 95. 
Withers, Robert E.; 334, 380-382. 



Wood, T. J.; 153. 

Woodford, S. L.; 318. 

Woodruff, Charles N.; 578. 

Woods, William B.; 518-520. 

World, The New York: 199, 213, 268, 

318, 354, 362, 532, 534, 535, 538, 539. 
Wright, C. E.; 395-397. 
Wright, D. B.; 63, 71. 
Wright, John M.; 576. 

Yancey, William L. ; 561. 

Yellowly, J. B.; 435. 

Yeoman, The Kentucky; 198. 

Yerger, J. Shall; 156. 

Yerger, William; 159. 

Youmans. LeR. F.; 587. 

Young. George H.; 84, 85. 

Young, H. E.; 508, 509. 

Young. W. C; 554. 

Y. M. C. A. at Washington; 563, 564. 



^ 



